Last fall, tech entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Bryan Johnson spent two hours having all the plasma in his body removed. There was nothing wrong with his plasma; he simply hoped that replacing it would help him achieve eternalÌęyouth. ÌęSo, despite very limited scientific evidence, Johnson swapped it all for a protein-based fluid called albumin.

It’s not the first time Johnson’s pursuit of immortality has made the news. The 47-year-old allegedly spends about $2 million on anti-aging treatments each year. In 2023, he injected himself with a liter of plasma harvested from his then-17-year-old son. At the time, Johnson he was trying to “become like an 18-year-old.”

I turn 32 this spring. That’s not old, but it’s old enough to have gotten my first few wrinkles. Over the last few years, I’ve watched my friends get laser facials and boob jobs. I’ve watched them spend a fortune on face creams and dyes, an endless and expensive game of whack-a-mole with their laugh lines and battle scars. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and I feel validated. Sometimes, it does, and I feel I’ve been left to grow old alone.

As women, we’re taught that we are desirable as long as we’re beautiful. We’re useful as long as we’re young. But it’s not just the cosmetic aspects of aging that scare me. I’m also afraid of the pain and endless surgeries my grandparents—both in their mid-80s—are enduring right now. I’m afraid of having to hang up my ice axes and skis, and give up steep trail runs for slow walks around the pond. I’m afraid of the day that achy knees cost me access to all the places I love.

That fear is very human—and very common. While Johnson may be one of the more extreme longevity obsessives, he’s far from the only one.

You may have heard of 81-year-old real estate mogul Kenneth Scott, who spends about on “vampire facials”—a skin treatment involving injections of your own blood plasma—supplements, and other unproven therapies. Or posh gym chain Equinox, which recently launched a $40,000-per-year membership aimed at helping its members live longer. Other folks go the budget route, paying just $10 to $100 per month for , an off-label immunosuppressant that’s recently become the darling of longevity zealots.

With the advent of experimental new therapies, pop-science books like The Blue Zones, and big-name wellness influencers like Andrew Huberman and Wim Hof, more people than ever are tapping into the longevity trend. According to research firm Grandview, the current longevity market was valued at $37 billion in 2020. By 2028, it’s projected to .

I get it; I’m not immune to the allure. But still, when I first started reading about the extreme lengths people go to for longevity—the plasma swaps, the drugs, the weird diets—my initial reaction surprised me. It wasn’t bemused curiosity; it was a flash of fist-balling, brow-sweating, red-hot anger. It pissed me off. I just couldn’t put my finger on why.

Bound By Biology

It’s said that there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. And while a privileged few have proven that extreme wealth can help you avoid taxes, they have yet to successfully fend off death. With infinite money and resources, most problems seem solvable. But how much control do we really have over our lifespans?

To find out, I called up Cambridge professor Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, a Nobel laureate in chemistry and author of Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality.

I chose Ramakrishnan because of his expertise in this field. But, more importantly, he’s not peddling anything. Unlike other top longevity authors and researchers,ÌęRamakrishan isn’t selling a training plan, video course, or pill. He doesn’t own any longevity-coaching startups, and he doesn’t have any supplement sponsors forking over a commission.

Our lifespan is dictated by factors outside of our control, Ramakrishnan told me. All our cells undergo regular wear and tear just from living, eating, and surviving. Different species have adapted different strategies for dealing with that wear and tear. Some animals have robust mechanisms for cleaning out problematic cells, which helps them live longer. But developing and maintaining those mechanisms takes energy and biological resources.

That cost might be worth it for a large animal, which isn’t likely to get eaten quickly. An elephant, say, is going to last a while, so it makes practical sense for the species to develop some strategies for cleaning out dead cells and living longer so it can reproduce more and defend the community group.

Small animals, on the other hand, tend to get eaten pretty early in life. To work with that constraint, they evolved to grow, mature, and reach reproductive age as fast as possible. It never benefitted them to develop sophisticated biochemical machinery for dealing with old age because they never got there. For millions of years, small animals evolved under that constraint. Everything about a rabbit or mouse—from their rapidfire puberty to their litter size to their fast metabolisms—adapted within the bounds of this shorter life. Same with human beings. All of our machinery is adapted to work within a medium-sized lifespan.

In other words, our capacity for longevity is built into the blueprint of our species. It’s the framework—not a feature you can freely dial up or down.

The Illusion of Control Ìę

Still, some human beings live longer than others. Take Jeanne Calment, the oldest woman who ever lived. She died in 1997 at the age of 122. Allegedly, she also smoked a cigarette and drank a glass of port wine every night.

“She was simply lucky that she didn’t come down with cancer or other diseases,” Ramakrishnan says. “There’s definitely luck involved.”

There’s also genetics. In an old but often-cited on twins, researchers found that about 25 percent of longevity was heritable—in other words, predetermined by your genes. The remaining 75 percent can be influenced by individual lifestyle factors.

But when it comes to those lifestyle factors, we don’t have as much control as we’d like to think. According to the Social Determinants of Health, a for thinking about factors that influence overall health, our personal habits—like eating, smoking, drinking, and exercising—only account for about 30 percent of influencing factors. The rest are structural and social forces far harder to control: about 40 percent of a person’s health is determined by socioeconomic factors, 10 percent by their physical environment, and 20 percent by their access to healthcare.

Even if radical new therapies did come online in our lifetime, there are bigger forces at play here. A in the journal Nature indicates that people cannot live much longer than they do now. There is a cap on the human lifespan, and we’ve reached it. No one has lived to 120 since Calment died. There’s no guarantee that anyone ever will. At least, not until we cure all cancers, dementia, and other neurological diseases—something Ramakrishnan says is still very far off.

The truth is we have little control over our lifespans. Many of us obsess over what we eat and how we exercise not because these habits hold the secret to health and longevity, but because we feel helpless, and are comforted by the illusion of control. But even if you eat and exercise perfectly, you can still die young.

When The Plan Goes Awry

My father wasn’t perfect. He often worked too much. He stayed up too late. He had a weakness for Little Debbie Nutty Buddies. He once binged an entire season of Game of Thrones in a single sitting even though he’d sworn to my brother and I that he’d wait to watch it with us (we’ll forgive him someday). And often, at the dinner table, he would make me laugh so hard I’d shoot orange juice out my nose.

But he did a lot of things right, both as a dad and as a health-conscious American man. He ate mostly rice and vegetables, wore sunscreen, and woke up at 5:00 A.M. every day to run five miles and lift weights. He was thin. He had a rich social life. He was a good husband and father. He spent time outside. And despite all that, he died from an out-of-nowhere heart attack at age 53.

Six months before my dad’s funeral, I lost my dear friend and former boyfriend Alexander. He was a vegetarian. He fasted. He’d just taken the MCAT and was on track to be a doctor. He exercised and stretched. He even flossed every day. And he right before he turned 25.

Both of themÌędid practically everything right. And they’re gone.

And that, I realized, is why I’m angry.

Johnson often wears a T-shirt that says “Don’t Die,” as if it was that easy. As if, for my dad, it was avoidable—and all his fault for not doing the right things or adopting the correct obscure therapies soon enough.

As if, instead of spending his free time with his family, he should have been flying to Dallas to get his plasma replaced or consulting with overpaid doctors about a custom nutrition plan. As if that would have saved him. As if any of us could be so arrogant as to pretend to play defense with the Reaper.

Can You Extend Your Life?

Of course, it’s Johnson’s prerogative to spend his free time pursuing various therapies and longevity-boosting routines. We all have our hobbies. And maybe it’s not my place to say this is a less-worthwhile use of time than dodging cactuses on a steep trail run under the hot Colorado sun, which is how I spend many of my free afternoons.

The good news is that some studies show that lifestyle choices can make some difference—and even help offset our genes. One long-term study published in 2021 examined more than 350,000 individuals with DNA markers indicating they were genetically predisposed to early death. The study showed that exercise and other healthy habits reduced that chance of early death in those populations by . The effects aren’t necessarily dramatic. The researchers estimated that even if you adopt such habits by age 40, they’re only likely to add about five years to your life. Still, eating relatively healthy and exercising: definitely good for you.

The nitty gritty of what you eat or how you exercise tends to be less important. A recent study shows that only exercising on weekends is just as beneficial for your health as sticking to a strict daily routine. Concepts like the Blue Zone Theory—which purports that people living in certain areas of the world hold the secrets to longevity—rest on shaky science, according to critics.

However, some research shows that how much you eat does matter. In animal studies, animals placed on restrictive diets tend to live longer than those that aren’t. A quick caveat, though: these fasting studies often use animals on a gluttonous, all-you-can-eat diet as the control group. They don’t always compare fasting mice to mice who eat in moderation.

“So these studies might just show that all-you-can-eat isn’t healthy, not necessarily that fasting is the benefit,” Ramakrishnan says. Regardless, the science does indicate that caloric intake makes a difference.

Sleep is another big lever you can pull. One of more than 700,000 U.S. veterans showed that folks who slept at least seven hours a night lived 18 percent longer on average. And even if you don’t sleep a ton, sticking to a can also increase your life expectancy.

Cold-exposure therapy and contrast therapy (the practice of alternating between heat and cold) are also commonly touted as ways to boost longevity. But while cold therapy has been shown to help —both contributors to chronic disease—the effects aren’t necessarily long-lasting. Longevity studies thus far have mostly been limited to mice and worms. There’s no evidence that cold exposure can make human beings live longer.

Does Biohacking Really Work?

So, what about the biohacking stuff—the rapamycin and the lasers and the thing Kenneth Scott does where he bathes his face in his own blood? Does that give us the power to take back control?

Ramakrishnan calls some of these therapies “promising.” Rapamycin, for example, mimics the effects of calorie restriction by targeting similar metabolic pathways. In mice, rapamycin has been shown to extend lives by 20 percent. But humans aren’t mice.It’s also only FDA-approved as an immunosuppressant for organ transplant patients, because it helps prevent the body from rejecting the new organ. Its side effects include slower wound healing and a higher risk of infection—the opposite of what you want if you’re trying to live forever.

Stem cells are another promising (albeit new) area of research, Ramakrishan says. So are genetics—i.e., reprogramming cells. However, both involve injecting human beings with new cells or new DNA, which is difficult to do safely.

Johnson’s plasma replacement strategy represents another approach: cleaning out senescent cells that have stopped dividing because they’re too old. Scientists think they can have a domino effect on nearby cells, causing them to become senescent, too. This is an enormously complex process, though. And while plasma replacement sounds good in theory, it might not actually address any of the root causes of senescence. We just don’t know yet.

In other words, the science on all of this is new. The studies that do exist are small and mostly inconclusive. And many of the folks who say otherwise are trying to sell you something.

Yes, there are some promising therapies and drugs on the horizon, Ramakrishnan says, but it could take decades before they’re available. Plus, they’re expensive and time consuming.

As I researched, I started to do some mental math, adding up all the time I’d spend planning out therapies, working to pay for them, and agonizing over whether or not they worked. I realized it wasn’t worth it: I was more likely to spend years missing my life by trying to extend it. Perhaps the right question to ask isn’t how to live a longer life, but how to live a better life.

The Gift of Growing Old

When I started writing this story, I wanted to punch Johnson in the teeth. For his dumb shirt. For his arrogance. But now, I just want to shake him. He—and all of his adherents—are missing the point: the hours you spend swapping plasma or getting your skin lasered to look younger are hours you could be spending with your family and friends. The money you spend on rapamycin could go toward a plane ticket to visit that college roommate you haven’t seen in ages, or to a date night with your partner. Spend it on a scuba certification, a telescope that lets you see the stars, a skydive, a dance lesson, a concert. On any one of a million things that make this life worth living.

I think of the afternoons I’ve spent flopped on my housemate’s bed, talking between sunbeams about what it means to grow older. I think of the pre-party minutes we’ve spent examining each other’s roots, our new freckles, the pudgy bellies we laughed over. I have such fond memories of growing up—even when it was hard or painful or ugly. I want fond memories of growing old, too.

Alexander never got the chance to watch his hair go gray, or to see time etch his laugh lines into place. He will be 24 forever. I think often of how much he’s missed.

If I’ve learned anything from his death—or that of my dad—it’s that aging is a privilege. It’s precious and bittersweet and wonderfully human. It isn’t easy. But nothing worth doing is.

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If it weren’t for travel, Margie Goldsmith, age 80, says she would have died at least three times by now. Ten years ago, the globe-trotting author and travel writer endured a risky surgery for pancreatic cancer. Two years later, the cancer returned. A few years after that, Goldsmith was diagnosed with lung cancer. She survived it all, she is sure, because she’s been a world traveler for 50 years.

You’ll be forgiven if you’re a little skeptical. After all, globetrotting isn’t often a prescription for the ill or infirm. But recent research suggests that travel and tourism could have powerful impacts on your health and even longevity.

How Travel Helps to Slow Aging

According to a this fall by Fengli Hu, a PhD candidate at Edith Cowen University in Perth, Australia, travel could be a powerful tool for slowing down the aging process. Hu’s main theory is fairly straightforward: Many of the lifestyle practices medical and mental-health experts endorse—like social engagement, appreciating nature, walking, and learning new things—are intrinsic to travel.

But the novelty of Hu’s research is that it creates a foundation for thinking about travel in terms of entropy. Travel, she writes, is a way to maintain a “low-entropy state”—in other words, a state of optimal health and efficient bodily function. Since she published the paper, dozens of media outlets have covered her work.

In a video call with șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, Hu says she didn’t expect so much attention, especially given that the research is only theoretical at this point. She’s just begun to set up the related experiments, which will be completed in 2025. But the interest makes sense.

She says, “Many people are looking for a way to keep young and healthy, and travel can be a cost-effective way to improve their physical and mental health and slow down the aging process.” It’s cost effective, she says, because folks don’t necessarily have to travel to pricey, far-flung locations to experience the benefits.

The theory of entropy comes from physics; it refers to the natural tendency of systems to move from a state of organization and order to one of chaos and disorder. Entropy has also been used as a framework for thinking about aging and disease. When you’re young and healthy, your internal systems run smoothly. That’s order. As you age, cellular mutations and dysfunctions proliferate. That’s disorder—a high-entropy state.

Entropy almost always moves in one direction, Hu says, “but can be mitigated or slowed down with certain measures.” Being a tourist, she says, may be one.

Travel—that is, relaxing, leisure-focused travel—has the power to reduce stress, it encourages exercise, and it forces you to meet and socialize with new people. All of that keeps you sharp and optimizes your body’s performance and efficiency. As a result, Hu says, it could help you stave off physical and mental decline and potentially live longer.

How Travel Relieves Stress

Goldsmith started traveling when she was 32, in the wake of a nasty divorce. She needed something to pull her out of depression, and she’d always wanted to go to the Galapagos. So, she went.

“They say you can move a muscle, change a thought,” Goldsmith says. “Well, it turns out you can also move your location and change a thought.”

The change was exhilarating. Since then, Goldsmith has traveled to 149 countries. Travel has made her a more generous, compassionate person, she says. It’s also made her more resilient.

“I look at people my age, and they look like my grandmother,” she says. “They’re bent over with arthritis and they’re not moving. That will never be me. Travel gives you a more active life, a bigger life. It will keep you young.”

So far, experimental studies seem to support both Goldsmith’s experience and Hu’s research. One of the best-known is the Helsinki Businessman Study, a 50-year experiment involving more than 1,200 Finnish participants who filled out lifestyle and habit questionnaires between the 1960s and 2010s. In a , Timo Strandberg, MD, PhD, found a strong correlation between vacation time and longevity.

Participants in the intervention group—600-plus men who were given a strict health-and-nutrition regimen during the early years of the study—had a 37 percent higher chance of dying before their mid-70s, if they took fewer than three weeks of vacation per year. Those who took more than three weeks of vacation per year lived longer. Why?

“These men who had less vacation were more psychologically vulnerable to stress,” Strandberg said in a video call with șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. That stress included participants’ family and work obligations, as well as the added pressure to stick to a structured health-and-fitness regime. Taking more vacation seemed to benefit participants in the intervention group, likely by keeping their stress in check, Strandberg says.

Surprisingly, the amount of vacation time participants took seemed to have no correlation to longevity in the control group—those who weren’t given a health and fitness routine to stick to. The upshot? Giving yourself extra rules and routines can be stressful, no matter the intention. And the more stress, obligations, and prescribed regimens you have in your life, the more critical vacations may be. (Fitness fanatics, we’re looking at you.)

The Case for More Frequent VacationsÌę

Stress of any kind can have cumulative negative effects.

“One theory is that your acute stress—which can be good and healthy and help you avoid danger and so on—can turn into chronic stress,” Strandberg said. “Then that will show up in biological terms and in different markers in the body.” A vacation has the potential to act as a reset, chipping away at your total stress load and bringing it back down to healthy levels.

Strandberg adds that while the health benefits of a vacation include stress relief and lower cortisol levels, the effects are only temporary. As a result, he recommends taking several four- to five-day vacations throughout the year rather than a single three-week vacation. That way you’re continually keeping your stress in check rather than saving it all up for a single blow-out.

Kiki Keating, a travel curator and trip guide based in New Hampshire, is a firm believer in frequent travel. Keating, who identifies as “a very young 62,” just hiked 90 miles along the Portuguese coast and has a handful of other trips—including an overseas tour she does every year with her 86-year-old mother—on the docket for the coming year. The travel keeps both active, and it gives them something to look forward to. That sense of purpose, she says, is key to both living long and facing setbacks with determination. She’s watched many people use an upcoming trip as a life ring to pull out of depression or weather an injury or illness.

Goldsmith is one. Her first pancreatic surgery was extremely dangerous, a six-hour operation that only 25 percent of patients survive. But she felt she would make it; she had places yet to see.

As she recovered, dreams of travel motivated her to keep moving. “As soon as I got out of the hospital, the first thing I did was travel,” she says. Likewise, when facing a knee-replacement surgery earlier this year, she booked trips to Ireland and Scottsdale to give her something to look forward to—and motivate her to do everything she could to recover faster.

Travel Keeps Your Mind Sharp

But you don’t have to be in advanced years to benefit from frequent travel. Keating has also seen it impact how her adult children face challenges and deal with stress.

“Travel helps you to be more relaxed when you’re adapting to something new,” Keating says. “When you go to a place with a new culture and a language you don’t speak, it can feel hard at first. Then, after a day or two you’re like, ‘Oh, I take this metro and follow this red line and go to the blue line, and I know how to say hello, and this is where I like to eat.’ You remind yourself you can learn new things and adapt, and that gives you confidence.” Today, she says, her kids—all of whom traveled with her when they were younger—are good at taking adversity in stride. That’s a tool they’ll use for the rest of their lives to minimize stress, and it could pay big dividends in terms of wellness.

It’s not just about stress, either. A small 2018 study by Craig Anderson, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow, shows that experiencing awe can help . Other research, including a that followed more than 6,700 older adults, indicates that travel could also ameliorate cognitive decline. Mental stimulation—including learning new languages and visiting museums—has been shown to help by up to 47 percent.

It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that challenging yourself to navigate a new place or learn new customs would have some of the same benefits.

“Travel is sort of like riding your mountain bike on a technical trail,” says Stephanie Pearson, 54, a professional travel writer who’s been globetrotting for more than 30 years. “You have to be in a similar flow space to navigate foreign languages, customs, and travel logistics. So I really think it does something cognitively to your brain. It also helps you reset and focus and see the world in a different way.”

Pearson adds that she’s felt a similar level of focus and challenge on trips near home as to far-flung places like Bhutan and New Zealand. As long as there’s an element of awe, discovery, and getting out of your comfort zone, she says, your mind and body stand to benefit.

“You don’t have to fling yourself across the world to have an awesome adventure. You can drive to a nearby park or city that you’ve never visited and have a rewarding experience,” Pearson says. “The benefit lies in having that curiosity.”

Corey Buhay is a freelance writer and editor based in Boulder, Colorado. She is a member of the U.S. Ice Climbing Team, which takes her to Korea, Switzerland, Czech, and Slovakia each winter. She dreams of one day being able to travel when the weather is actually warm. Her recent stories for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű range from mountaineering bromance, with “After 50 Years of Friendship, These Alpinists Just Bagged (Another) Unclimbed Peak,” to trail-running records in “Forget Pumpkin Spice Lattes, It’s FKT Season,” to loss in the mountains, with “Years After My Mentor Died in the Backcountry, I Retraced His Final Footsteps.”

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Before 2006, the San Bruno County Jail had an outside exercise yard bigger than a football field. That year, the city of San Francisco unveiled a new jail on the same 242 acres of land, this one without any secure outdoor space.ÌęNow, exercise takes place in an indoor gym or in a cell—which means that people incarcerated there may not see the sun at all. In 2019, a group of former inmates who spent up to eleven years awaiting a trial date in the jail sued the city and its law enforcement. The individuals in custody reported getting less than a minute of sunlight a day during their time at San Bruno. The lawsuit, which went to court in 2023, alleged that denying these people access to the outdoors amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

In an October ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim wrote that the city of San Francisco acted with “reckless indifference” to those people’s health and wellbeing by denying them time outside. Kim ruled that individuals who serve more than a year have a right to I’ve never been to the San Bruno County jail, but I have been incarcerated, and I can imagine how cruel it must feel to be stuck inside all day, every day.

I served 22 and a half years in prison, three of those in the Los Angeles County Jail system, often going days without sunlight. I served eight months in administrative segregation, more commonly known as solitary confinement. I still remember what it felt like to be in “the hole”: flesh encased in metal, the stale air, the stiff muscles, pacing two steps in either direction to combat stir-craziness. With nothing to do, mere minutes warped into what felt like hours. Outdoor yard was the only relief available.

I would walk, shackled, for 400 feet to an area with outdoor cages. Once inside my cage, a correction officer removed the cuffs, and yard time began. An outdoor cage servingÌęas respite from an indoor cage might sound like madness, but it was a bigger space that provided an opportunity to talk with other people and providedÌęfresh air and sunshine. It helped me make it home alive.

Montrail Brackens spent 11 years in the San Bruno county jail without direct access to sunlight. While there, he developed abnormal blood pressure, blood in his stool, obesity, a vitamin D deficiency, painful headaches, and diabetes. Lack of access to direct sunlight can lead to these and myriad other health complications, testified during federal court proceedings. These include ulcerative colitis and bowel problems, nearsightedness, increased risk of certain kinds of cancer and diabetes, and inflammation in the body which can adversely affect the immune system and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

The San Bruno County Jail’s argument in court centered on the fact that it does not have a secure , but the court responded that state regulations require the jail to have one. Therefore, the fault lies with the decision not to include an outdoor exercise area with their latest renovation of the jail. “Defendants created a situation in which they cannot securely allow inmates to go outside, and they cannot hide behind that reason when the denial creates harm,” Magistrate Kim wrote.

It is a small win. “Compared to nothing every day
15 minutes is great,” said Yolanda Huang, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, according to . But I question whether it is enough. In practice, the outside time will feel like it’s ending as soon as it begins.

Furthermore, based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, I wonder whether Magistrate Kim’s ruling will stand. In November, the court dismissed a case brought by a man named Michael Johnson, who had been kept in solitary confinement without outdoor access for three years, leaving his cell just once a week for a short shower. He asserted that this was cruel and unusual punishment, and tried to get his situation in front of the Supreme Court after losing a Seventh Circuit trial. In declining to review the case, the court let the existing ruling stand.

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayer and Elena Kagan, ,Ìę“During that time, Johnson spent nearly every hour of his existence in a windowless, perpetually lit cell about the size of a parking space. His cell was poorly ventilated, resulting in unbearable heat and noxious odors. The space was also unsanitary, often caked with human waste.” With no space to exercise or breathe fresh air, his mental health and physical health suffered, and he eventually became suicidal. He would smear feces all over his body, hoping to provoke the guards to kill him, according to Justice Brown. Johnson, who filed the suit on his own and was denied a lawyer, was faulted for not building a proper record for the higher court to review.

Reading about this case brings tears to my eyes. Often, the choice to side with the oppressor rather than the blatantly oppressed is based on the flawed theory that prison officials must be allowed to run their jails however they see fit to keep the public safe. The Supreme Court favored prison officials over justice, allowing obvious injustices to continue.

That false notion turns a blind eye to the fact that the people wearing the prison uniforms are not just “inmates.” They are human beings, endowed with a sacred dignity. No human should live in a cage in the first place. At the very least, they deserve an hour outside a day.Ìę When a prison system treats people like animals, it breeds animals, and we are all worse off for it.

Crime is a symptom of societal ills. The judicial system punishes the symptom and ignores its root cause. I believe we must fight for humane conditions in prisons, but battles like this distract from the true goal: we must fix the systems that create crime in the first place. If we address the root causes, we won’t need prisons at all.

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Since 2020, Yassine Diboun has made it a point each year to black out one square on his calendar with a Sharpie.

It’s a gesture to signify that on this day, typically set around the winter solstice, this 45-year-old ultrarunner and coach from Portland, Oregon, won’t run during the day, as he does most every other day of the year. Instead, he’ll watch a movie with his daughter, Farah, or cook a meal with his wife, Erica, eagerly waiting for night to fall. Because that is when the action starts.

Diboun has become a fixture in Portland’s trail running scene, a and one of the most electric and positive forces in the U.S. ultrarunning scene today. He is also an athlete in active substance addiction recovery since 2004.

And here, at the confluence of endurance and recovery, is where Diboun enacts an annual tradition in Portland called . From sundown to sunup, Diboun runs through the evening, covering a route that connects city streets with trails in Forest Park while accompanied by dozens of other runners.

On December 9, Diboun will start his fourth-annual Move Through Darkness run. It may exceed 70 miles. It may not. That’s not really the point, though in some sense it is, for the more miles he runs, the more pledge-per-mile dollars he gains to funnel into future recovery programs, the very support structures that saved his own life two decades prior.

A Personal Mission

In 2009, Diboun and his wife moved to Portland, where he pursued a career in coaching. One of the first things Diboun did upon arrival was to connect with the recovery community, which led him to , the largest recovery support center in the United States.

Diboun’s personal history of substance addiction is circuitous and complicated—documented extensively in , , interviews, and others—but what’s most important to know is that it led him down a path that wasn’t his own. Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and the 12-step program threw him a lifeline and he white-knuckled it to shore, reinforced by commitments to a plant-based diet and a healthy dose of body movement. (That’s code for running a ton of miles.)

Such discipline brought him to the highest levels of ultrarunning. He’s a four-time finisher of the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run (once in the top 10), a three-time finisher of the H.U.R.T. 100, in Hawaii, and he represented the U.S. at the IAU Trail World Championships in 2015. These accolades sit beside countless ultra wins and podiums.

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His success story prompted Brent Canode, executive director of the Alano Club or Portland, to reach out to Diboun in 2018 with a proposition. Diboun had, by then, teamed up with mountain athlete Willie McBride, to start in 2012. The business offers group functional fitness programs, youth programs, and personal guidance to get people outdoors and on trails.

Under Canode’s leadership, the Alano Club just launched (TRG)—a CrossFit-style facility offering courses for those in recovery, and Canode saw running as a natural extension of this program. He asked Diboun to spearhead a new running portion of the gym. For Canode, though models like the 12-step program were widely available and proven effective, he found the diversity of options for community lacking beyond that.

“What we learned was that a lot of folks don’t attend 12-step programs,” Canode says. “They haven’t found a connection anywhere else, and that’s a matter of life or death for a person in recovery.”

Together, the two started regular informal runs called the Recovery Trail Running Series, which evolved into a more formalized wing of the gym: Run TRG. This program quickly took off, offering evening group runs, outings that would often end in post-run dinners and fun gatherings. The groups grew bigger each week.

“We cultivated this community for anybody in or seeking recovery from substance addiction, and it really picked up some good momentum,” Diboun says.

When the pandemic shut everything down in March 2020, including The Recovery Gym and its new Run program, regulars instantly lost the group’s connection. Many relapsed and started using substances again. A few turned to suicide, including a prospective coaching client for Diboun who had met with him just one week prior.

“I know from personal experience that life can get too overwhelming at times and you get too stressed or overwhelmed and you can’t see anything,” Diboun says. “You can’t see any hope, so you just live recklessly, helplessly. In extreme cases, life can feel not worth living anymore.”

A Resilient Collaboration

While running one evening by headlamp, Diboun thought about the fragility of hope, the pandemic, the recent suicides, and the ever-increasing need for community. The combination of isolation and mental health decline, paired with an uptick in running popularity during the pandemic (Run TRG, once relaunched, tripled in size), created an opportunity for Diboun to leverage his visibility as both a decorated ultrarunner and someone vocal about his addiction history.

An idea was born: Move Through Darkness.

For one night, sundown to sunrise, he would organize a run to crisscross the city, connecting various trail systems and raising visibility of the mental health challenges entangled with isolation and addiction. It would take place around the winter solstice, the longest night of the year.

The initiative would serve three main purposes: First, it would be a personal pilgrimage for Diboun, a reminder of his own ongoing relationship with sobriety. Second, it would offer another way for those in recovery to come closer during difficult times. And third, the event would raise financial support for the which serves more than 10,000 people in recovery each year through mutual support groups like A.A., peer mentoring services, art programs, harm reduction services, and fitness-based initiatives like The Recovery Gym and Peak Recovery, Alano’s newest program, which provides free courses in split boarding, rock climbing, and mountaineering. Over the last eight years Alano has won four national awards for innovation in the behavioral health field.

Inaugural Success

December 2020 was the first-ever Move Through Darkness event. About 30 runners participated throughout the night, joining Diboun in various sections of his sinuous route. Given that the invitation was to run upwards of 100K through the night in some of the worst weather of the year, the turnout was impressive. The group eventually made their way to Portland’s Duniway Track to complete a few hours of loops, encouraged onward by music.

One of those runners that first year was Mike Grant, 47, from Portland. Grant has been in long-term recovery with substance addiction and understands the initial hurdles of getting out there. During the event, Grant completed his first ultra-distance run by covering 50 miles. He hasn’t missed a Move Through Darkness run since.

This year, he’ll be joining again, in large because of Diboun.

“You hang out with Yassine for any length of time, and the next thing you know you’re running further than you ever have before,” Grant says. “He’s one of those people you just feel better when you’re around.”

The Move Through Darkness route is roughly the same every year, but it always starts and ends at the Alano Club, located in Portland’s Northwest neighborhood. This first year, his daughter, Farah, ran with him from Duniway to the Alano Club, which was a particularly special moment to share.

The fundraising component is a pledge-per-mile model, where you can pay a certain dollar amount for every mile Diboun will cover. All funds go to support the Alano Club, specifically the Recovery Toolkit Series. Other recovery-focused gyms are increasingly available nationwide, but The Recovery Gym is the only CrossFit affiliate in the U.S. designed from the ground up, exclusively for individuals in recovery.

Each week, TRG offers six to eight classes free of charge to anyone in recovery. Every coach holds credentials in both CrossFit instruction and peer mentoring for substance use and mental health disorders. An original inspiration for Run TRG was the , a nonprofit established in 2015 to provide running community reinforcement for those affected by addiction and substance addiction.

The Mental Health Crisis

, 29 percent of U.S. adults have been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives—the highest rate since such data was measured. Suicides in the U.S. reached all-time highs in 2022, —about 135 people per day lost to self-inflicted death. In 2022, 20.4 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with substance abuse disorder (SUD).

Oregon, specifically, is rated number one in the country for illicit drug use. In 2020, Oregon had the , while ranking last in treatment options.

Canode says that, after 40 years of researching addiction and effective recovery, the single most important aspect of recovery success is authentic connection to a like-minded community. That’s why both Canode and Diboun are building an all-hands-on-deck approach to recovery through running, to strengthen connections through movement.

“In recovery, we know how to grind,” he says. “We are naturally great endurance athletes. We also know how to consistently move through darkness, which is especially true in the beginning of someone’s recovery journey. It’s often not rainbows and unicorns and lots of positivity. It’s a grind. It’s grueling.”

Annalou Vincent, 42, a senior production manager at Nike, is one of the many people who have reached out to Diboun from all over the Portland community.

“Finding Yassine and Run TRG saved my life,” she says. After starting a running practice in her thirties, she started feeling better and decided to question decisions like drinking alcohol. She eventually dropped booze and became a regular at the Run TRG. Vincent has worked closely with Yassine to develop and promote Run TRG, and has joined Diboun for various legs of Move Through Darkness over the years.

“I can’t imagine my life or my sobriety without running and this program, says Vincent. “Over the years I’ve seen it change the lives of many others. Move Through Darkness is an extension of that. This program and others like it are saving lives.”

Gratitude Is a Verb

Willie McBride, Diboun’s business partner, supports Move Through Darkness each year and has witnessed its evolution and impact.

“I think people really connect with this project because they understand those dark parts of life, and how challenging they can be. Darkness comes in all different forms,” he says. “But also the very tangible act of running all night, literally putting their body out there—coming together as a group sheds light right into that darkness.”

Diboun is reminded daily of his life’s work, to remain sober and offer his endurance as a gift to others, even when it gets difficult.

“I’m coming up on 20 years sober, but I’m not cured of this,” he says. “This is something I need to keep doing and stay on the frontlines.”

With record rainfall aiming for Oregon in December, this Saturday night calls for a 58 percent chance of rain showers, with the last light at 5 P.M. and the first light around 7 A.M. That’s potentially 14 soggy hours of night running. But this forecast doesn’t cause Diboun any concern. He’s used to it, used to running for hours in the dark, used to being drenched. He’s faced that long tunnel and knows that there’s always light at the end, as long as you keep trudging forward, and best when together.

“You keep passing it on,” he says. “You keep giving it away, in order to keep it. Gratitude is a verb.”

The post Running Through the Night to Confront the Darkness of Substance Addiction appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In my book, there are two types of people: those who do turkey trots, and those who vehemently do not.Ìę

Turkey trots, annual races (generally 5K to 10K) that most commonly take place in the United States on Thanksgiving morning, have been a well-kept tradition since 1896. The very first trot was held in Buffalo, New York, and only six runners participated in the five miles along downtown Buffalo’s dirt roads. Since then, the tradition has skyrocketed in popularity. from 2022 reported that 756,894 people ran or walked in 730 turkey trots across the country.Ìę

Trotting a Fine Line with Food Anxiety

Much like any race, there are plenty of good reasons why people run on Thanksgiving morning. But one not-so-good reason? Running a turkey trot because you feel like you need to “justify” the Thanksgiving feast you’ll eat later. A of 2,000 Americans found that 88 percent feel anxious around the holidays, with 85 percent reporting that they overeat to the point of being uncomfortable.Ìę

Thus, the idea of “punishing” yourself with a run before you enjoy pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and mom’s famous jello pudding can seem like a good way to balance the scales. However, not only is this not effective nutritionally-speaking, but it’s damaging to your mental and emotional health. Mental endurance and life coach says that, though this way of coping with Thanksgiving is harmful, she’s not surprised people do so.Ìę

“It’s all centered around these narratives about diet culture in our marketing,” she says. “Half of the time the holidays are shown to us as a time to indulge and cook all these delicious things, and the other half is marketed to us as a time to watch our weight and be thinking about races coming up in 2024.”

The Problem with “Earning” Your Meal

Just as it has been that using food as a reward in a child’s adolescence often leads to overeating, unhealthy relationships to food, and lost hunger cues, adults can also feel the negative implications of “earning” your food with exercise.Ìę

“Food is a basic human need, not a reward,” says professor of sport and exercise psychology, . “In general, people feel better about their bodies and eating when they consider food to be necessary fuel rather than a reward.”Ìę

Even avid runners may use the turkey trot as an excuse to eat more than usual—that’s the “reward.” You might not even sign up with the intention of using it to burn calories before your feast, but subconsciously, you might already feel guilty about what’s to come and are trying to get ahead of it by overcorrecting.Ìę

“If exercise is viewed as a means to an end or as something one must do to earn food, feelings of guilt, pressure, or even punishment begin to be associated with exercise,” says Arthur-Cameselle.Ìę

If runners have this mindset, they should really question if this is the relationship they want to have with food and exercise.Ìę

“When you are willing to question the narratives fed to you and decide whether or not they serve you and your goals, it gives you ownership of the mental space you want to be in around the holidays,” Foerster says.

So if you feel like you might be running for the wrong reasons, is it better to avoid a turkey trot altogether? Not necessarily.Ìę

Know Your Why

“It depends on the person, but most of the time, it’s worth the effort to manage your perspective and mindset so you’re not missing out on an experience,” Foerster says. “If you avoid it this year, you’re not really coming up against the problem of your mindset—you’re just avoiding it.”

She suggests coming up with better reasons to run the turkey trot, like having it be a tradition to do with your family members or using it as time for yourself before all the holiday hecticness.Ìę

“My overall suggestion is to run the turkey trot if you enjoy running, if you like the social aspect of the race, or if you notice positive mental benefits like improved mood after you’re done,” Arthur-Cameselle says. “If you don’t enjoy any of those aspects or gain that type of experience from running, find a different form or exercise or sport that makes you feel how you want to feel. If exercise feels like play, you are more likely to stick with it.”Ìę

Though changing your mindset around the turkey trot is healthy, it might not help your unhealthy relationship with Thanksgiving dinner. For that, Foerster recommends mindfulness.Ìę

“All that stress, guilt, and shame you might feel around a holiday meal actually have a more negative effect than the food would,” she says. “So you might as well eat the food and actually enjoy it and be present, and then move on. Sort of like failing a workout. You experience it that day, and you’re not going to carry it with you moving forward. Your goals aren’t ruined because of it.”

You heard her, folks. Run Thanksgiving morning because you’re hot for the trot, not because you feel bad about eating a lot.

The post You Don’t Need to Earn Your Thanksgiving Feast with Exercise appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

This article was originally published on .

If you’re finding yourself feeling mentally foggy and unable to concentrate, you could be suffering from brain fog.

Brain fog brings onÌęÌęmemory issues, a lack of mental clarity and difficulty focusing. You might feel like you’re literally in a fog; you can also feel sluggish and exhausted. It’s kind of like having brain fatigue, making it difficult to get through the day even if you’re feeling otherwise healthy.

There are a number of potential causes for brain fog – and ways you can find relief.

What Causes Brain Fog?

Brain fog typically doesn’t appear as a standalone health concern. It’s a symptom that’s linked to a few different underlying causes.

A number ofÌęÌęcan result in brain fog. Hormonal changes, like those that happen during pregnancy or menopause, can cause it. Certain medications, such as blood pressure medications or chemotherapy drugs, can bring it on. A number of medical conditions are also known to cause brain fog. It’s particularly common in conditions that are tied to inflammation and blood glucose levels, like hypothyroidism, autoimmune diseases and diabetes.

Ìęcan also cause brain fog. Even if you believe you’ve overcome a particular virus or viral illness, the effects can linger within your body, causing aftereffects as your immune system still works to clear out any suspected viral proteins.

Brain fog can even be brought on by chronic stress and a lack of sleep. Mental fatigue is a side effect of stress, and as your brain becomes exhausted, the symptoms of brain fog can start to appear.

Perhaps the most unexpected underlying cause is your diet. If you aren’t getting enoughÌę, you may begin to experience the symptoms of brain fog. Vitamin B12 helps ensure healthy blood and nerve function, so unusually low levels of this particular vitamin can make your thinking feel fuzzy and cause fatigue.

How Food Can Help Combat Brain Fog and its Symptoms

Whether your brain fog is brought on by a vitamin deficiency or another health concern, there areÌę you can eat that may alleviate its effect on your daily life. Try adding these foods into your diet, and you may find some relief.

Eat Brain-Friendly Foods

Certain foods are rich in nutrients that feed your brain – or help your brain operate smoothly.

Omega-3 fatty acids, for example, are fantastic for both your brain and your nervous system. Two particular omega-3s, EPA and DHA, Ìęto play a role in maintaining brain health throughout your life. They’re found in brain cell membranes, and they work to keep those cells healthy and communicating properly. Without enough omega-3s in your diet, you could experienceÌę and a smaller brain size overall.

Flavonoids are another important brain nutrient. These plant-derived compoundsÌę, reducing damage-causing free radicals and calming inflammation. Flavonoids can also have a protective effect on your brain, potentially blocking plaque buildup and increasing blood flow.

Foods with these nutrients can enhance your overall brain health, which may have a positive effect on brain fog symptoms. Try these foods, which are rich in flavonoids or omega-3s:

• Dark chocolate
• Fatty fish
• Shellfish
• Chia seedes
• Walnuts
• Citrus fruits
• Berries
• Leafy greens

Incorporate Energy Boosting Foods into Every Meal

Fatigue often accompanies brain fog, leaving you feeling both sluggish and sleepy. Instead of relying solely on caffeine to keep your energy levels up throughout the day, try eating foods that can combat these symptoms.

Dark leafy greens, for example, offer more than flavonoids. They can also combat fatigue thanks to their high levels of vitamin D, vitamin C, iron and nitrates.Ìę that even a single serving of leafy green veggies daily can slow the rate of cognitive decline. All of the vitamins and minerals in these powerful plants can also combat brain fog culprits like iron and vitamin deficiencies. All kinds of dark leafy greens, like spinach, collard greens, kale and chard, are great choices.

Avocados are another energy-boosting food. Packed withÌę, avocados can deliver lasting energy that helps you feel more awake all day long. Other nutrients, like magnesium and potassium, encourage blood flow to keep your brain running optimally. In addition to your energy levels, avocados also containÌę. This is a carotenoid that’s present throughout brain tissue, and it helps overall brain function and can play a role in clear thinking.

Try Foods Rich in Choline

Choline may not be a nutrient you look out for regularly, but it’s fantastic for brain fog. All of choline’s benefits are centered within the brain – it helps key biochemical chain reactions, plays a role in basic brain functions and affects brain cells directly.

According toÌę, choline helps the brain create acetylcholine, a protein that plays a role in memory and overall cognitive ability. Eating a lot of choline visibly affects your brain’s health too; MRI scans show that choline-rich diets are connected to healthier brain tissue. Making sure you get enough choline could help counteract the effects of brain fog overall.

It’s a good idea to aim for between 425 and 550 milligrams of choline per day. Try adding choline-rich foods like the following into your diet:

• Eggs
• Milk
• Fish, specifically salmon, cod, or tilapia
• Peanuts
• Cauliflower
• Chicken

Other Lifestyle Changes

In addition to adjusting your diet, it’s also important to recognize that other lifestyle changes can also help you deal with brain fog. Overall, sticking to healthy habits can ensure you’re doing everything you can to keep your brain in its best possible shape.

Exercise is also beneficial for brain health. Regular exercise can lead to all kinds ofÌę, including a decrease in atrophy and increases in blood vessels and synapses. Even if you aren’t feeling well enough to tackle an aerobic workout, low-intensity mind-body exercises like resistance training or yoga are great ways to get moving.

It’s also important to make sure you’re getting enough sleep. Cutting your rest short each night can make brain fog worse, adding to the fatigue, fuzziness and general lack of concentration.

The post Banish Brain Fog: Fine-Tune Your Diet to Find Relief appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

It may seem obvious that running is good for mental health. A quick Google search on the topic returns hundreds of pages of personal anecdotes and compelling science. But the truth is far more nuanced than that. In fact, the interconnectedness between running and mental health is fairly complicated.

Mental health isn’t an on-off switch that you only need to worry about once it’s been flipped. Mental health, like physical health, is better conceptualized as existing on a spectrum with a dial moving you back and forth between the thriving and unwell ends of the continuum. Any number of factors inside and outside of your control can turn the dial in either direction, and where a runner finds themselves on the spectrum at any given moment can have big implications for their running.

‘Take Time for Yourself, Get Out There, Stay Consistent’

, two-time Mountain Worlds Champion, reminds us, “80 percent of your training and success is mental, especially if you are in ultras. If you aren’t going in with a good mental state then you aren’t going to perform well. The times I have been in my best mental state is when I have performed best. It is worth it.” When a runner’s mental health is thriving, their performance benefits, too.

At the same time, athletes who find themselves moving toward the unwell end of the mental health spectrum may see negative impacts to training, performance, and recovery. Many common mental health conditions include physical symptoms such as low energy, loss of motivation, and sleep disruptions. Any of these can directly impact training.

This can be especially true with depression, where doing anything, even things that are known to elicit joy, feels like a daunting task. A runner may know, intellectually, that a run helps them feel better, but getting out there and doing it feels impossible.

Darcy Piceu, an ultrarunner with ten Hardrock 100 finishes who is also a licensed professional counselor, encourages runners who face low motivation to not get overwhelmed by overambitious training targets. Instead, she recommends they shoot for something small and manageable. “Aim for twenty minutes,” she says. “You don’t have to do your planned workout. Even if you end up walking. Take time for yourself, get out there, stay consistent.”

Impacts of Running on Mental Health

Running is often considered an activity that moves individuals along the spectrum toward thriving, and that makes sense. There’s and an abundance of accounts supporting the between running and mental health.Ìę

While the science about the mood boosting effects of endorphins or the stress-mitigating impacts of endocannabinoids and norepinephrine is convincing, most runners don’t need to read research to know that running can be a tool to support their mental health. Runners naturally turn to exercise as a place to process emotions, think through problems, temporarily avoid overthinking, or just feel better. Moderate exercise is linked to , and decreases in symptoms of , and .Ìę

According to the , one in five adults in the United States experience mental illness. Runners are not immune to this statistic. While running can help reduce symptoms and risk, runners are just as susceptible to the genetics, hormones, traumas, and losses that can both cause and exacerbate mental health conditions. Running supports mental health in the same way that eating well can support physical health, but consistent running can’t itself prevent mental illness any more than eating well can prevent a broken arm.ÌęÌę

In fact, it’s possible that running can move someone toward the unwell end of the spectrum. While running can alleviate symptoms of some common mental health conditions, it may exacerbate others. “If someone has a history of panic disorder or eating disorders or dependency, running can actually make things worse,” Piceu reminds us.Ìę

Even runners without a history of mental illness can experience physiological and psychological impacts from running or their relationship with it. Running is stress on the body, and anything that is stress on the body is also stress on the brain. The longer and harder the runs, the more the stress. A bit of stress is a good thing—in fact, stress is necessary for athletic development—but if that stress isn’t met with adequate food and rest, runners can find themselves facing mental health challenges unique to athletes.

Conditions such as (OTS) and (RED-S) have mental health impacts as a result of an imbalance between training stress and rest or fueling. The same factors that put a runner at risk for a physical injury—overtraining, under-fueling, inadequate resting—also put them at risk for a mental health injury.

Running can even impact us well after a run is over. Though not clinically defined, there are abundant anecdotes of “post-race blues.” Piceu has experienced this marked change in mood following a big event, and has heard countless stories of others with similar experiences. “When you exhaust yourself at that level, it’s impossible not to impact you,” she says. “Physiologically. Hormonally. Psychologically. There’s a crash that comes after the high and it hits in multiple ways.”

In addition to the physical toll running takes on the body, a runner is also at risk for psychological stress related to the sport. Challenges such as , , , , and have been linked to negative mental health in athletes. Any one of these topics can lead to unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for runners at every level of the sport.Ìę

Start with Self-Awareness

These complicated impacts and relationships can change over the course of a single training block or an entire running career. To make thoughtful and intentional decisions about training, a runner needs to develop self-awareness that allows them to honestly assess where they are on the mental health spectrum at any current point, and whether running is moving them in one direction or another.

To develop this self-awareness, Piceu encourages us to start from a place of curiosity. “Be genuinely curious about your relationship with running,” she advises. “Ask hard questions. Pay attention to what your body feels before, during, and after runs. Does it just feel good in the moment, or does it still feel good later? You have to be curious.”Ìę

With a lens of curiosity, there is an absence of judgment. There is no right or wrong answer; instead, it is just neutral information to inform the next step. Piceu speaks from both professional and personal experience. “When I finally got really curious about my own relationship with running, I realized it didn’t have the power to do for me what I thought it could.”Ìę

Murphy shared a similar experience. “I always heard that running was good for mental health. People say ‘I run for my mental health.’ It never occurred to me that the opposite could be true. But I learned it’s easy to go in the other direction and for it to become unhealthy,” she says.Ìę

Now Murphy pays close attention to the way running makes her feel and uses that self-awareness to make training choices. If she starts to run out of obligation instead of desire, Murphy makes an intentional change. “If I feel a shift, I take a step back,” she says. “Maybe I cross-train. Maybe I take a rest day. I don’t want to run out of compulsion, I just want to run for the joy of running.”

There are lots of tools athletes can use to foster self-awareness, and most of them have the additional benefit of improving mental health. Piceu encourages all runners to engage in a stillness practice, like meditation or mindfulness. In addition to stillness, Murphy highlights the benefits of awareness and processing that come with simply putting thoughts into words.Ìę

“I go to therapy. I write things down, make lists, write in my journal, stay present with myself—it all helps.” Murphy finds this practice so helpful that she developed her own that is filled with tracking tools and journal prompts to help other runners cultivate their own self awareness.

The Role of a Coach in Mental Health

Murphy benefits from a history of coaches who prioritize mental health, including her current coach. She shares the insights she gains from her own self-awareness practices with him, which directly informs her training strategy. “My training log isn’t just about my stats. We talk about my mental health and how I’m feeling about life in general. He asks about it, especially around harder times, or if I have a race coming up, or if I haven’t mentioned it in a while.”

While it may not be intuitive for coaches and athletes to talk about mental health, it’s not possible to separate the athlete from their mental health. An athlete’s ability to engage with training, manage training stress, and recover are all linked to their mental health.Ìę

Dr. Lara Pence, psychologist and founder of the , a collaborative professional development group for coaches, reminds us that coaches should be familiar with mental health. “Humans have feelings, belief systems, and thought patterns that impact their capacity to follow through with training, adapt to training, and benefit from training,” she says. “So while a coach may feel like an athlete’s mental health is not their job, the minute they start asking their athlete to do anything they are signing up for supporting mental health along the way.”

A coach has a lot of power to create a culture within their team and build relationships with their athletes. He or she can destigmatize mental health and makes it a comfortable topic of conversation. Pence encourages coaches to set the stage early in the process. “Make sure that your [athlete] onboarding asks some basic questions like: ‘Have you ever struggled with depression, substance abuse, or eating disorders?’ Ask if they are seeing a therapist and let them know that if the therapist ever wants to touch base with them, that’s OK. Help create that wraparound approach.” Right away, the coach should demonstrate that mental health is a part of training, not separate from it.Ìę

Pence reminds us that talking about feelings and caring about an athlete’s mental health is different from diagnosing and providing therapy. “Don’t be afraid of feelings. Not every depressed mood is depression. Not every anxious response is anxiety disorder. It’s OK to have conversations,” she says. Pence encourages coaches to have a strong referral list of trusted mental health professionals on hand, but also advises them to resist the urge to immediately refer out. “Sometimes, all an athlete needs is validation.”Ìę

Expanding the Conversation

In 2019, the non-profit (BTTT) was founded to help provide access to mental health services and reduce the stigma around accessing services in the trail running community. Co-founder Tommy Byrne has observed stigma to be a primary barrier to runners accessing needed services. “In a culture where grit and grinding is glorified, it can feel like weakness to ask for help or admit you can’t do something on your own,” he says.Ìę

This is exacerbated by the belief that running alone is sufficient to meet mental health needs and is always a positive for mental health. “When we overemphasize the benefits of running, we promote the idea that running is the same thing as seeing a therapist or taking medication,” Byrne argues. “The reality is that professional support is beneficial. You can’t just rely on movement and community alone. Those things are helpful, and they should be a part of the puzzle, but it is OK to need more.”Ìę

Byrne recommends incorporating a variety of tools and strategies for your mental health, even when you’re feeling good. “Whether it’s mindfulness, therapy, medication, a network of people outside of running—find what works for you. Spending time on your mental health is never a waste of time. It’s the easiest way to improve your running.”

We all have the power to influence the trail running community to be one that supports and celebrates caring for mental health. Normalize having easier days and harder days. Normalize needing therapy or medication. Normalize facing challenges and having doubts. Normalize feeling signs of burnout or post-race blues. Normalize needing more than running to take care of your mental health. You’re not alone.Ìę

The post The Easiest Way to Improve Your Running? Focus on Mental Health. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

For endurance athlete Dillon Quitugua, ultramarathons are a way to empower fellow Pacific Islanders and also work through the pain of the abuse he’d suffered as a child. Growing up in Hawaii and Guam, he’d been regularly beaten by his father and was diagnosed with PTSD as a teenager. When he began running after college, it enabled him to process what he was feeling. But as he pushed himself to take on longer distances, the physical and emotional toll of the effort caused him to relive the trauma of his past. And yet, for Dillon, the only choice was to keep going—until he reached a place of love and forgiveness.

If you’re suffering from abuse or you know someone who is, help is available. Call or text the at 800-422-4453. Or reach the the by calling 1-800-799-SAFE or texting START to 88788.

The post “I Needed to Keep Running to Heal Myself” appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

It’s high noon in Santa Clarita when I bury my face into the side of a cow, who is lying on the ground. His fur is rich brown, the color of fertile soil, and it’s silkier than I expected. I nuzzle my cheek against the animal and breathe deep. He smells sweet, like fresh hay, and musky. When I open my arms wide and grip the cow in an embrace, he shifts slightly, then eases into the weight of my body. He’s holding me as much as I’m holding him.

This is cow hugging therapy, one of several animal-assisted therapies offered by the , an animal sanctuary with locations in Southern California, Tennessee, and Missouri.

I realize this sounds like a joke. ( It was udderly ridiculous how many punny text messages my friends sent about this.) But I arrived at cow hugging from a sincere place—it might seem like a strange place to arrive for therapy, but after spending the past few years in a wrestling match with my own wellbeing, I was willing to try anything.

It started when I awoke in the middle of the night, my skin clammy and slick with cold sweat. My left arm was numb. My chest felt tight, as if someone was squeezing me in a bear hug I didn’t want. Since I have a family history of heart disease, I drove myself directly to the ER, where I was admitted for having a possible cardiac event. Two days, many scans, and a massive hospital bill later, doctors couldn’t find a single thing wrong with my heart.

But if that wasn’t a heart attack, why was my heart beating so wildly? I wondered. Why did I want to pop out of my skin?

Nobody at the hospital ever broached the topic of mental health. It was my friends—those who have grappled with panic attacks themselves—who suggested that anxiety might be the root of my problem.

I’ve probably always struggled with some level of anxiety, but I can say with certainty that the pandemic—and the related loss and grief—exacerbated it. So ever since I ended up at the ER, I’ve done my best to manage with meditation, yoga, journaling, medication, and talking to my doctor, but there’s still a low, anxious thrum that vibrates through me. That’s what I’m trying to squelch.

Now I press my chest against a cow named Mercy. He’s massive, which should be intimidating, but his sturdiness offers stability and comfort. He immediately licks my hand and nuzzles his snout on my hip. I think he chews on my sweatshirt a little.

As I hug Mercy, my right ear presses against his side, and I can hear his heartbeat, which is slower than my own. Generally, my resting heart rate is around 70 bpm, but a cow’s heart rate ranges from 48 to 84. After a moment, my pulse slows to meet Mercy’s. The muscle inside my chest beats rhythmic, steady, I’d even say relaxed.

For the first time in recent memory, I am calm.

Saving Animals, Saving People

My guide to cow hugging is Ellie Laks, the founder of the Gentle Barn, which she opened in 1999. (She’s married to co-founder Jay Weiner, who serves as president of the nonprofit.)

The six-acre property is located about 40 minutes outside of Los Angeles, surrounded by picturesque mountains and rolling green foothills dotted with farms. The Gentle Barn is home to an array of rehabilitated animals, like horses, goats, pigs, and turkeys, and it’s open to the public on Sundays, though reservations are necessary.

Before my hugging session began, Laks walked me through the spacious cow enclosure and introduced me to each animal. I had already met Mercy, who was rescued from a veal crate at a Texas cattle ranch. But there’s also Athena, a shy, black bovine with fuzzy ears, a rescue from a backyard butchery that was eventually shut down by animal control. Nudging an oversized playground ball around the yard was Faith, a dairy cow who went blind due to untreated conjunctivitis that she contracted before coming to live at the Gentle Barn. When Faith first arrived, she couldn’t walk in a straight line, she only turned around in circles.

“This has always been the heart of what we do,” Laks says. “We save the animals, and then the animals save us.”

Animals actually trigger a chemical reaction in humans, says psychologist Veronica Hlivnenko, a holistic health counselor at InPulse. “Tactile interaction with animals induces the production of oxytocin—the chemical that promotes soothing effects, thanks to its anxiolytic properties and ability to reduce the body’s cortisol response to stress,” she says. “Oxytocin acts like a neurotransmitter, meaning that when you‘re petting an animal, it messengers the brain to decrease the release of cortisol, alleviating the symptoms of stress and anxiety, promoting calmness and relaxation, and inducing a sense of safety and comfort.”

Oxytocin is also known as the “hugging” or “cuddling” hormone, and our brain associates it with things like a loving touch and meaningful relationships. The production of this chemical inspires long-lasting positive emotional responses, which boosts our pleasure, joy, and sense of reward. All of this leads to greater levels of happiness and contentment.

As part of its mission, the Gentle Barn works with organizations for inner-city or at-risk youth, and children with special needs. That’s why a significant part of the animal-assisted therapy program is rooted in sharing the animals’ stories of abuse, neglect, abandonment, loneliness, and recovery.

“To know that these animals also carry their own stories of resilience, it makes people feel less alone,” Laks says. “You know that if this animal can survive horrific conditions and thrive, so can you.

“Many of these kids aren’t going to sit on a couch and talk to someone about their feelings, their experiences, or their trauma. But something magical happens when an animal holds you with their warmth and nurturing. It’s like a big mom hug.”

Holy Cow

After cuddling Mercy, I spend time with Holy Cow, who arrived at the Gentle Barn as a sickly dairy calf with significant spinal injuries. Now rehabilitated through chiropractic and veterinary treatments, this affectionate cow serves as the matriarch for the makeshift clan.

Cradling Holy Cow in the warmth of the afternoon sun, my constant thrum of worry seems to dissipate, like soap bubbles popping. I don’t totally understand why this is working for me or why it feels like the most peaceful meditation I’ve ever done, but Laks has a few ideas.

“Cow hugging therapy has been especially instrumental in coping with grief,” Laks says. “Traditional therapy works by talking about your feelings. But there’s nothing to talk about with grief that allows it to be processed. It’s simply pain. So it’s helpful to be in a place where no words are needed, where you’re just open and emotionally connecting to another being.”

This is another way that animals help us, Hlivnenko says. They foster mindfulness and improve our own sense of meaningfulness. “The calming and soothing effect of petting an animal can bring your mind into a meditative state, promoting contemplation, consciousness, and reflection,” she says. “Besides, animals encourage us to be our authentic selves, thus deepening our self-awareness and appreciation.”

In the wake of COVID, Laks opened the Gentle Barn’s animal-assisted therapies to make them more accessible to adults and the general public. That means these programs are no longer exclusively for underserved youth; anyone seeking a session can make a donation and spend time with the animals.

“As a society, I believe we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of our grief and trauma from what we’ve just gone through. We don’t have the words yet,” she said. “But connecting with these gentle giants, it helps.”

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It’s Tuesday. No, it’s not only Tuesday. It’s critical velocity day. My coach has assigned me two warm-up miles and six 600 meters in 3:13-3:21 intervals, with a 90 second jog between each one. I head out to smash the workout. I’m confident. I’m excited. Then, I start. It’s blistering hot. Sweat is dragging all my face sunscreen down my forehead into my eyes. Water sloshes in my stomach. I’m so thirsty but I can’t drink anymore or I’ll puke. I start to slow. Miss my paces. What is happening? My head spins and I get this horrible gut-wrenching feeling as I pull through the last interval. My coach is going to be disappointed. My Strava record is going to be humiliating. Because I absolutely, undoubtedly failed this run.

Thinking of yourself or your run as a failure can be debilitating and keep you down for days. For a while, I thought I needed to stifle this feeling. But as it turns out, I should be making nice with failure rather than fighting it.Ìę

The ‘F’ Word: Failing a WorkoutÌę

So what exactly does it mean to fail a run? It looks different for everyone, but to many people in the running community, it means missing the splits you or your coach has set for yourself. You can fail in training and fail in a race – both are equally debilitating for a runner. However, running coach and founder of , Cory Smith, says this doesn’t always mean running too slow.Ìę

“A lot of people think the faster you run, the better,” he says. “But if you’re trying to hit a certain zone or train a certain adaptation and you run too fast, then you’re training something different than your coach wanted you to train, that can be a failure, too.”

In fact, Smith doesn’t believe going slower than your faces should be defined as the typical, negative definition of failure.Ìę

“Failure is data collection,” he says. “It’s learning information. If I fail a workout, it doesn’t make me a failure as a person or an athlete, it’s just an opportunity to look at the data and figure out how to grow from it.”

Oftentimes you’ll hear runners call it the “F word” or scold others for talking about failure, but mental endurance coach, , wants people to use the word. She echoes the same thing as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” (That’s the only Harry Potter reference, I swear.) Foerester believes shying away from the word or thought of failure gives it more power.Ìę

“We have an opportunity, with our language, to normalize failure,” she says. “If we can redefine it, we change our relationship with it.”

What both Foerster and Smith stress the most is that one bad workout doesn’t make or break you. Smith compares it to basing your retirement fund on one day when the market went down, even though we know it goes up and down all the time.Ìę

“The most powerful thought around failure is that one workout never makes or breaks a race or athlete,” Foerester says. “We’re in a constant state of learning, if we open ourselves up to be.”

Beating yourself up over a workout can often bleed into your next run, creating a sort of downward spiral effect.Ìę

“It puts you into a negative mindset, and then the next workout you’re going to put more pressure on yourself to do well to convince yourself that last workout was just a fluke,” Smith says. “This leads to anxiety, which can hurt your workout performance.”

One reports that a negative emotional state can hinder athletic performance. Speed, specifically, was proven to be affected by emotional state. This study examined the correlation between sadness and depression and reduced running speeds, head movements, and arm swinging.Ìę

In other words, failure can be heavy, if you let it.Ìę

ÌęAn Upsetting UTMB: Failing a RaceÌę

Like we said, failure looks different for everyone. So far, we’ve been talking about failing during training sessions – which can be referred to as process failure. An outcome failure, however, is not meeting an end-result or goal which the training was put forth for. Like a race.

For , it looks like an uncharacteristic 116th place in the 100k CC. Bracy is an elite trail runner, placing first in the 2023 Behind the Rocks Ultra Race and third in the 2023 Speedgoat 50K. She has a consistent track record across the board and even has her masters in Sport and Performance Psychology.Ìę

“I had a pretty poor performance,” she says, reflecting. “Objectively, one of the worst I’ve ever had in trail running, and certainly not the race I trained for.”Ìę

Bracy says she can’t pinpoint a rhyme or reason why, but that it just wasn’t clicking that day. At a certain point, she realized the race wasn’t going the way she thought and reframed her mindset. Failure, in her definition, is only when you give up – and she chose not to.Ìę

“I think that’s the beauty of ultras – they’re so long that you’re going through the mental process then and there,” she says. “I had thoughts of stopping, but I went through the mentality of ‘That’s not what you do this,’ and gave my best effort to focus on just finishing instead of making a certain time.”

This is what Smith identifies as performance standards versus outcome goals.Ìę

“Outcome goals are the splits you or your coach sets or the final finishing time,” he says. “The performance standards aren’t outcomes, but how much effort you put into whatever that task is.”Ìę

Meaning, Bracy started out at UTMB with an outcome goal of a particular time, and mid-race, reframed her foals to a performance standard to do her absolute best.Ìę

“I think when it really boiled down to it, the goal of a race was to put yourself in a challenging situation and see how you can handle it,” she says. “I was still able to do my best that day – it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, but it was still my best.”

But she wasn’t happy with her placement in the 100k CC.Ìę

But in early September, Bracy took on the 100k CCC and placed in what she thought was an uncharacteristic 116th with a time of 14:48:21.Ìę

Ìę“Failure Is the Currency to Our Dreams”

Foerster goes a step further and says that failure is not only okay, but it’s actually beneficial to experience.Ìę

“Anytime we can meet emotional discomfort where we have to deal with heavy emotions like disappointment, we teach ourselves how to navigate that more effectively,” Foerster says. “So that when we meet another uncomfortable moment in a race, we know we can meet it and process through it.”

In a conducted by Ayelet Fishbach, Behavioral Science professor at University of Chicago, and Kaitlin Woolley, associate professor at the SC Johnson Cornell College of Business, it was proven that discomfort could lead to personal growth. By applying cognitive reappraisal, study participants assigned a new meaning to discomfort before they experienced it so it served as motivation rather than a reason to stop their goals. And, in the case of this study, participants who were forced into discomfort while doing a task reported a greater sense of achievement.ÌęÌę

Much like running itself can be uncomfortable, forcing yourself to address the emotions that come with failure can be an unfamiliar, disagreeable experience. But doing so allows you to feel, process, and recognize that you can change your relationship with failure every time you meet it.Ìę

“Discomfort is the currency to our dreams,” Foerster says. “If we’re willing to meet it, all our potential is on the other side.”Ìę

So fail, and fail hard. Address the feeling head-on and don’t let it define you, but just one out of many more runs to come.Ìę

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