This new study result is surprising: Apparently, regular workouts make us happier in the long run than money. What's behind it?
We all know it: getting up to sport is usually much more difficult than the training itself. But afterwards we feel really great about it! This could explain the result of a large-scale new study published by researchers at Yale and Oxford universities in The Lancet. Accordingly, a regular workout for our well-being is better than being financially well off.
The researchers collected data from over 1.2 million Americans and compared the effects of physical activity and the financial situation on mental health. For this purpose, the test subjects answered questionnaires in which they had to state, among other things, how often they had felt mentally bad in the past 30 days, for example due to stress, how regularly they did sport and how much they earned. A total of 75 physical activities, such as grooming and weight lifting, were reported.
Sport makes you happy …
The conclusion: People who moved regularly felt mentally uncomfortable for an average of 35 days a year. In subjects who were hardly physically active, it was 18 days more. In addition, the scientists compared the data with the subjects' income. The physically active participants felt just as good as those who do not exercise, but earned around $ 25,000 more a year than the active people. The other way around, this means that you would have to earn significantly more money to achieve the same happiness boost that sport has.
… but only in moderation
Does that mean that we have to put on our sports shoes every day and start running? No! The study also shows that our well-being is only improved through sport for a certain training period per week. More accurate: Three to five units for 30 to 60 minutes each should be ideal. In contrast, the mental health of the subjects who exercised for more than three hours a day was worse than that of the subjects who were not active at all. And: sports in which you deal with others improve mental health the most. This includes not only classic team sports such as football, but also cycling courses, for example.