Jog On: How Running Saved My Life

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Talking openly about mental health has really grown in the last decade. But I can clearly remember a frustrating period where depression was the only topic discussed. In the last few years anxiety has poked its anxious little head up and now there are many books about people’s experiences with anxiety, and it’s great to read similar experiences and coping mechanisms. Maybe I’ll write my own some day. As someone who has grappled with anxiety for several years, and has found running to be a really effective way of managing the symptoms, I was naturally drawn to this book. And indeed, though the author's experiences of anxiety differ from my own, there was so much that I found myself agreeing with (and thinking 'thank goodness someone else knows how it feels!'). After starting last summer, I would run with regular members and talk about my mum with those I’d come to know better. It helped me put my mind in the right place to face another day of caring for Mum before she passed away in October. A few days afterwards, I was running.

Many Running Space members live with mental health issues. Some have attempted suicide or been affected by those who have. I listened to other people’s stories and they listened to me. We gave each other a lot of mutual support. At first, the running was secondary to the talking side, which was easing me into being more social again. But the more I ran, the more I could feel my mental health improve. Running gave me the keys to help make me better.Bella discusses the impact of running on her life, she mixes both personal anecdotes with factual information. She advises how to incorporate exercise in to your life incrementally and to make it a lifestyle change, she covers lots of important and interesting topics such as the importance of not over-doing it, the gentrification of exercise in general leading to it seeming inaccessible and the chasing of the runners high. Vybar Cregan-Reid, author of Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human, thinks that we still have more work to do to persuade people that exercise really is an effective way to improve our mental health.

Bella’s brilliant love letter to running turns into an extraordinarily brave and frank account of her battle with anxiety. A compassionate and important book’ Joe Lycett I realised getting up to run was a habit that gave my days a structure. Although my counselling has been the foundation for all the positive things in my life in the past three years, the running has added to that. Together, they have changed my outlook and I’m now less anxious than I was. Even though it’s still soon after Mum’s death, running has helped me feel I’m in a better place. I began walking in a local nature reserve. I would walk until the panic lessened and, instead of hearing my own whiny voice in my head, I became aware of the birdsong around me. This escapism became a daily focal point and soon my walks got faster and longer. After a few weeks, walking wasn’t fast enough to keep up the momentum of movement required to quieten my mind: it made more sense to run. Courage, a pilot for United Airlines, had the strength to drive himself to the nearest hospital, where an emergency balloon angioplasty stabilized him before serious damage was done. But four months later he had chest pains again, then four months after that he went into surgery for a double bypass operation. At the age of 53, Courage got word from the FAA: his career as an airline pilot was over.

Numerous studies have shown how exercise – and running, in particular – can be beneficial to mental health. A link between physical activity and mental wellbeing has not been irrefutably proven, but there is growing evidence from around the world of its benefits. For example, a review re-evaluating earlier studies, which was published in Australia’s Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, concluded that aerobic exercise three times a week at a moderate intensity over nine weeks can help to treat depression. Bella's brilliant love letter to running turns into an extraordinarily brave and frank account of her battle with anxiety. A compassionate and important book' Joe Lycett A US study of 1.2 million people published in The Lancetin in 2018 found those who exercised reported better mental health. And, closer to home, in a study conducted by Elizabeth Goyder, professor of public health at the University of Sheffield, 69% of 60,000 UK parkrunners surveyed said their mental health had been improved by their regular Saturday morning 5K. Running, quite simply, has changed my life," he says. "It saved me from what can be a devastating disease. Now I have a decent, normal life." I have run on and off throughout my life, though, if I'm honest, I’d never really enjoyed it. But my relationship with running has fundamentally changed over the last year.

Today, Johnson, 44, an account director for a life insurance company in Chattanooga, Tenn., runs 45 to 55 miles a week. He's completed four marathons. And, he says, "I am virtually asthma-free. I could relate to a lot in this, both her history of anxiety and how helpful exercise has been for her. It was actually pretty meta listening to an audiobook about running for mental health while I was running for mental health. I had planned to finish it while running my first half marathon. But it didn’t quite pan out that way.One possible tactic would be for doctors to suggest exercise and offer discounted gym membership as an accompaniment to medication and therapy. The GP Andrew Schuman says that exercise is an increasingly important topic in his conversations with patients dealing with mental health issues. Sport and exercise are important for both body and mind. Jog On is one person’s brutally honest and insightful account of how running had a positive impact on their mental health’ Jimmy Anderson