Have you ever ran a 5k or a whole marathon? Are you in school and recently ran the mile? There are millions of people who have. Running is known by a lot of people, and it is done by a lot of people. But a lot of people also don’t run for many reasons; some aren’t physically capable, some are too busy, and some are just lazy. Running is the concept of moving but at a fast pace. But more people should start running, including you.

Running has many benefits. It improves your overall health. Studies have shown that running increases your good cholesterol, increases your immune system, and decreases your chance of getting blood clots. If you are a woman, running decreases your chances of getting breast cancer and strokes. Over two dozen studies have shown that women who exercise have a thirty to forty percent lower chance of getting breast cancer. If you have early-stage diabetes, HPB, or osteoporosis, running is for you, and it decreases your chance of getting heart attacks and heart diseases. A study conducted in 2013 states that higher levels of physical activity reduced the risk of coronary heart disease by twenty-one percent in men and twenty-nine percent in women. Running also helps lose weight and burn calories, and running is one of the best ways to do that.

Running helps with memory. In a study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers have found that repeated aerobic exercise boosts the size of the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that deals with verbal memory. Also, old people should run (unless they aren’t able to) because it slows your mental descent. Finally, the American Heart Association says if you run 150 minutes a week it will help keep your blood pressure in the good area.

Running helps with cardiovascular endurance. The more someone runs the longer they can run, and the faster they can run. How that happens is when you run more your heart can become stronger. So your heart can pump more blood to your lungs, and you will get more blood and oxygen in your muscles, which you need in order to run.

Running slows down your aging. It doesn’t slow down your physical aging, but it does slow down your biological aging. Biological aging refers to the telomeres that protect your chromosomes. But as you get older those telomeres get shorter, which is aging. When you run, or exercise in general, it lengthens the amount of time it takes for your telomeres to get smaller, but if you want to slow the process down a lot you have to run a lot, no pain no gain. Larry Tucker from Brigham Young University studied people who run/exercise at least thirty to forty minutes a day five days a week and people who don’t run/exercise that much. The people with high exercise had a nine-year difference in biological age than people who don’t exercise that much.

Running has many benefits, physically like improving your cardiovascular endurance and mentally like improving your memory. More people have started running over the years. Some people run because it’s fun, some people run for the benefits, some people run because they have to. But no matter why you run you will still get the benefits it brings. It doesn’t matter if you have barely run since school or if you are in school. Get out there and just run.

-Sai Settipalli