SPRINTHIT : A MENTAL HEALTH HIT YOU HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR

SPRINTHIT : ALL IN THE MIND

●     Our brains manufacture a cocktail of mood-altering pharmaceuticals which act as a reward system in response to exercises like INTERVAL RUNNING.

●     For example, endorphins numb the discomfort associated with running while dopamine and serotonin are associated with feelings of pleasure and well-being.

●     A plethora of research shows the beneficial effects of SPRINT INTERVAL TRAINING has on our mental health and cognition, but being sedentary disrupts this reward-system; people who are sedentary actually get a weaker cocktail hit than regular exercisers.

●     Running intervals has also been shown to have positive benefits for other neural and cognitive disorders from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to Parkinson's, and it has been shown to improve memory, attention span, and various aspects of cognition including math and reading abilities.

The essence of senescence.

We’ve previously discussed how vigorous exercise like the high intensity interval training  programs that are incorporated in the Sprinthit app have positive effects all over your body. The signalling mechanisms underlying their reach are still being worked out, but the range is profound. Apart from directly engaging your nervous and circulatory systems(both of which pervade your entire body), when you do your sprints, your exercising muscles will release hundreds of chemicals into your bloodstream, and researchers are only beginning to understand the myriad ways these chemicals affect us. No part of your body is untouched.

One of the exciting areas of research extolling the benefits of exercise (including sprinting) relate to its effects on the brain. For instance, researchers have posited that activities like sprinting improve cognitive function by challenging the brain to coordinate a rush of visual and other sensory information to navigate and maintain speed and balance. Our brains, like our bodies, have evolved to run, and natural selection adopted a neat trick to make us want to be active.

Exercise: a natural high

Our brains manufacture a cocktail of mood-altering pharmaceuticals in response to physical activity. There are three main endogenous drugs that our bodies produce in response to the kind of exercise we advocate at Sprinthit: endorphins, dopamine and serotonin.

Endorphins. The chemicals you have probably already heard of when it comes to exercise. Endorphins are natural opioids—they help us to tolerate (or perhaps even enjoy) the discomfort of our sprints. Endorphins allow us to go for a run without noticing our lungs are burning, our muscles are sore and our feet have blisters. But there is a catch: although their effects can last for hours, endorphins aren't produced until after twenty or more minutes of intense, vigorous activity-great for Sprinthit users, but not every exercise will give you an endorphin hit!

Dopamine. Evolution developed our brains to produce dopamine in response to behaviours that increase our reproductive success. Things like having sex, eating rich food and doing physical activity(e.g. by hunting and gathering food) are obvious candidates deserving of our brain’s reward system. Dopamine is the cornerstone of this system; it tells us "go at it again." Unfortunately however, this reward system is exclusive; non-exercisers are denied access because dopamine is only released during exercise (not before).   Worse still, the dopamine system works like a rewards program; the more you exercise, the more active your dopamine receptors are, and the reverse is true for those who are sedentary (and people who are obese have even fewer active dopamine receptors). This means that those who are sedentary and obese have to work harder for longer (it can take months) to get the full benefits of the reward program.

Serotonin, like dopamine, is a neurotransmitter that helps us to feel pleasure and control our impulses, but it also affect show we remember, sleep and lots of other things. Our brains produce serotonin when we engage in beneficial behaviours like taking care of our children, being in physical contact with loved ones, spending time in natural light, and (you guessed it), when we exercise. Non-exercisers are at risk of having lower serotonin activity, making them more vulnerable to being depressed and unable to overcome the impulse to avoid exercise. This creates a vicious cycle of lowering serotonin levels coinciding with sedentariness.

Elevated levels of serotonin induce feelings of well-being, and help us to control non adaptive impulses—impulses that don’t contribute to our health or survival. When your serotonin levels are low, you’re more likely to be impulsive, anxious and depressed, and exercise has been shown to be effective at restoring serotonin levels.

Real-world research

Our bodies have evolved to be active most of the time. When we’re inactive or sedentary, this disrupts our reward-systems; people who are sedentary actually get a weaker cocktail hit than regular exercisers. You could argue that this is an evolutionary design flaw, one that has only recently been exposed by our lifestyles in a modern, industrialised world.

That doesn’t mean it’s all doom and gloom for those just starting out with Sprinthit though; plenty of research shows the beneficial effects of sprinting on our mental health and cognition. We’ll focus on depression, stress andanxiety, and cognitive function.  

How Does Physical Activity Help?

One of the largest analyses conducted to date investigated the relationship between physical and mental health in more than one million Americans. The 2018 study found that regular exercisers had 12-23% lower levels of mental health problems than sedentary people matched for sex, age, education, and income. And these findings were not a once-off. Dozens of more focused,high-quality analyses have confirmed that exercise helps prevent and treat depression disorders and to a lesser extent generalized anxiety disorder.

When it comes to HIIT-based programs like sprinting in particular, a recently published meta-analysis which included 58 randomised controlled trials found that HIIT leads to moderate improvements in mental well-being, depression severity and perceived stress. HIIT also seems to improve sleep and psychological distress (but this finding was based on a smaller subset of studies).

Outside of depression and anxiety, exercise has lots of other mental health benefits. When it comes to our ability to tolerate stress, regular physical activity lowers overall reactivity to stressfulsituations, keeping down chronic levels of cortisol. A nice example of this comes from a study that used public speaking to induce a stress response in two groups of men: a group of runners and another group of sedentary non-exercisers. The groups were similar in things like age, body mass index and general anxiety levels, but their reactions to stress were very different: both groups showed elevated heart rate and cortisol levels, but the runners’ response was smaller and dissipated more quickly.

In another study of college-aged women evaluating the effects of 8-weeks of running, while the exercise regime had no effect on their weight (we discussed why this might be the case in blog #3), it did reduce their stress response. When they were exercising regularly, their bodies produced 30% less adrenaline and cortisol each day.

Exercise has also been shown to have positive benefits for other neural and cognitive disorders from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to Parkinson's, and it has been shown to modestly but significantly improve memory, attention span, and various aspects of cognition including math and reading abilities; people who run more have brains with enlarged memory regions, more cells, and increased blood supply.

The limits of exercise.

So exercise alters brain chemistry, enhances electrical activity, and improves brain structure, and all of these effects are beneficial for depression and anxiety (among other things). But it’s important to remember that these benefits arise only because we are poorly adapted for excess sedentariness. On this basis, exercise may only be medicinal because persistent inactivity increases our vulnerability to mental health disorders—those who are regularly active are probably already getting all the benefits. Exercise is not a magic pill either; it is just one of many factors that affect the brain and the mind, it can’t cure every ill. For depression and anxiety in particular, it is not a substitute for other effective therapies like psychotherapy and medication.

Take Home Message

With all of this in mind, when applied appropriately, the HIIT and SIT exercises in the Sprinthit program have been shown to be associated with profound effects on mental health. Even though the programs are tough, knowing its potential benefits for your cognition, mood, stress and mental health (and the short amount of time it takes to complete a session) should be a nice motivation to make the sessions part of your weekly, if not daily, routine!

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