Five surprising health benefits of running

Running is a funny thing.

If you give credence to a school of evolutionary thinking, then going for a run is fundamental to the human species. In the days before we had invented projectile weapons such as spears and darts, early man captured his food using a technique known as persistence hunting. Groups of hunters would rely on their stamina to chase prey for hours, hounding the animal until it finally slowed due to exhaustion.

Our superiority in the animal kingdom can be traced back to the simple fact that we are very good long-distance runners.

And yet running hurts. Go for a run after work today and you'll probably wake up tomorrow with stiff limbs and a firm resolution to spend more evenings on the couch watching TV. As doctors often warn, running is a high-impact exercise: every stride sends shudders of force up your anatomically complicated ankles and through your delicate knees, goading your joints and muscles into injury. Surely something that causes you physical pain cannot be good for you?

It's a question that has received mounting attention in recent years, thanks in large part to the release of 2009's cult-spawning book Born To Run, which saw journalist Christopher McDougall look into the increasing incidence of injuries among amateur runners.

Citing barefoot running tribes and ultra-marathon competitors, McDougall laid the blame of running's pain firmly at the trainer-clad feet of shoe companies. Thickly padded soles, he argued, had changed our running style, encouraging us to 'heel strike' rather than land on the ball of our feet. Millenia of evolution had been chucked out the window like last season's mouldy pair of trainers.

Whatever your approach to footwear and stride, a plethora of scientific research continues to refresh the idea that running has very real and genuine benefits to the Average Joe.

1. Runners make better partners

Research released yesterday suggests that men who regularly run long distances should win in the evolutionary battle to reproduce.

Scientists from Cambridge University studied 542 runners at the Robin Hood marathon in Nottingham and found that those who finished faster were more likely to have stronger sex drives and higher sperm counts.

They posit that the good runners are likely to have good stamina in their blood, thanks to ancestors who were excellent persistence hunters. Men who could catch dinner would also have the pick of the females, meaning that they passed down stronger genes to their progeny.

“The observation that endurance running ability is connected to reproductive potential in men suggests that women in our hunter-gatherer past were able to observe running as a signal for a good breeding partner,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Danny Longman.

“It was thought that a better hunter would have got more meat, and had a healthier – and larger – family as a consequence of providing more meat for his family."

2. Runners make better thinkers

Not only is an endurance runner more likely to bring home the bacon, but he also makes for more learned conversation once the food is cooked and set on the table.

Scientists this week discovered that the same bodily process that helps fuel the body efficiently also improves memory and learning.

A single protein, called estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERRγ), controls the release of energy to the muscles and the brain. Become good at producing ERRγ and your performance in memory tests as well as marathons should improve.

"This is all about getting energy where it's needed to 'the power plants' in the body," said Prof Ronald Evans, director of Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California.

"The heart and muscles need a surge of energy to carry out exercise and neurons need a surge of energy to form new memories."

Anecdotally, there are plenty of instances of great thinkers who have also been impressive runners. Enigma code breaker Alan Turing could run a marathon in two hours 46 minutes; British politician and journalist Matthew Parris managed two hours 32 minutes; while Nobel Prize winning scientist Wolfgang Ketterle once clocked two hours 49 minutes.

3. Runners tend to be happier

It's long been the insistence of avid runners that going for a jog makes them feel better. To the uninitiated, it can sound like the pious sermon of the faintly unhinged – but there is now concrete scientific evidence to substantiate their claim.

In autumn last year, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden discovered that aerobic exercise like jogging purges the blood of a substance known as kynurenine, which accumulates during times of stress and is believed to be linked to depression.

“It is possible that other kinds of exercise will also have an effect, like resistance training such as weightlifting," said Dr Jorge Ruas, principal investigator at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. "But our results support the use of aerobic exercise like biking and running.

“Skeletal muscle appears to have a detoxification effect that, when activated, can protect the brain from mental illness.”

Exercise is also believed to encourage the body to release serotonin, which improves mood. Ultra-marathon runners often speak of 'surfing a wave of serotonin' while covering the type of distances that make non-runners cringe.

4. Runners protect themselves from cancer

It's common sense that an active lifestyle begets a healthy body - but jogging seems to be particularly beneficial when it comes to helping ward off the evils of cancer.

In a wide-ranging paper that was published in 2009, Finnish scientists revealed their conclusions after studying the health of a group of 2,560 middle-aged men over the course of roughly 17 years.

They found that the men who were physically active were the least likely to develop cancer. No surprise there. What was more interesting was that those who ran - or did exercise of a similar intensity - for 30 minutes a day were the most protected, exhibiting “a 50 percent reduction in the risk of dying prematurely from cancer,” according to Sudhir Kurl, medical director of the School of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Kuopio.

5. Runners can hear better

According to research conducted at Bellarmine University in Kentucky, US, running increases blood flow to your ears, which results in improved hearing.

Dr. Paul Loprinzi studied 1,082 adult women and concluded that those with higher cardio respiratory fitness had better hearing function at high and low frequencies. The women with higher aerobic fitness were six per cent more likely to have good hearing than bad hearing.