Exercise is good for you. There’s a headline to share with your friends over dinner or at the office kitchenette. Everyone knows that exercise has positive physical effects and even though people do commonly say they feel good after exercising, the acceptance that exercise also helps with emotional health is not quite as immediate. However, a new study has shown that exercise certainly does impact regulation of emotions.
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The study involved equal numbers of men and women who were assigned to either an exercise group (aerobic exercise) or no exercise group (this group just engaged on stretching). The subjects all completed a survey to establish their mood and then either jogged for 30 minutes or stretched for 30 minutes. They then watched a sad scene from the movie The Champ before completing questionnaires to determine their regulation of their emotions. Lastly, all subjects watched an amusing clip from the movie When Harry Met Sally.
The results showed that subjects with poor regulation of their emotions, that is, those who said there was nothing they could do stop themselves feeling sad, felt less sadness if they were in the exercise group than if they were in the non-exercise group. Those who had exercised were better able to draw on “goal-directed cognition” to manage their emotions.
It seems that jog you are going on will do more for your heart than open your blood vessels.
