Latest Posts

A woman is running in a park.

Why exercise plays a crucial role in Covid recovery

For many peo­ple the Coro­na pan­dem­ic is hit­ting clos­er to home. In the last weeks I have come across a lot of Insta­gram posts by run­ners who have con­tract­ed with the virus or who are instruct­ed to quar­an­tine them­selves. And while most peo­ple who catch the dis­ease expe­ri­ence mild symp­toms, many report feel­ing short of breath and slug­gish for weeks after­ward. But you all know what run­ners are like: they want to return to track or trail, and that soon­er rather than later.

I have found sev­er­al arti­cles pro­vid­ing tipps for your come­back after infec­tion. First, the good news: the two go togeth­er, «exer­cise plays a cru­cial role in recov­ery,» as Manuela Callari writes in a piece for The Guardian: «Sleep and rest help your immune sys­tem to fight the dis­ease but it is crit­i­cal to start mov­ing again to avoid fur­ther weak­en­ing of your body about sev­en days after the major symp­toms have disappeared.»

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Woman eating french fries.

The Palatability Theory

There are clear and unan­i­mous fig­ures that obe­si­ty has increased over time, espe­cial­ly in rich nations like the Unit­ed States. On aver­age peo­ple today weigh more and have high­er body fat per­cent­ages than their recent ances­tors at sim­i­lar ages. But why is that the case?

One wide­spread assump­tion is the palata­bil­i­ty the­o­ry. It posits that the pri­ma­ry cause is an increase in reward sig­nals in the mod­ern envi­ron­ment from processed food, medi­at­ed by the moti­va­tion sys­tem in the brain, caus­ing us to overeat.

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People sitting in a coffee bar.

Protective Effects against Asthma

I was just hav­ing my first cup of cof­fee in the morn­ing, when an arti­cle on sprudge.com popped up in my feed read­er. As an asth­mat­ic and cof­fee enthu­si­ast it nat­u­ral­ly caught my attention.

It reports about a study by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from Korea’s Hal­lym Uni­ver­si­ty, Hanyang Uni­ver­si­ty, and Kang­dong Sacred Heart Hos­pi­tal, with research find­ing that mod­er­ate cof­fee con­sump­tion can low­er the fre­quen­cy of symp­toms asso­ci­at­ed with asthma.

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A Momumental Journey

The «Lon Las Cym­ru ultra» is a 250 mile non-stop race from Holy­head to Cardiff Bay down the cen­tre of Wales cross­ing sev­er­al moun­tain ranges. It‘s pos­si­bly the longest non-stop road ultra in the UK. This film is the sto­ry about Gor­don Hugh­es and Vic Owens as they attempt to run this race in under 88 hours in Octo­ber 2021. It is, as one of the com­ments said, a momu­men­tal jour­ney by some mon­u­men­tal people.

Nurmi, right, and Joie Ray, left, with U.S. President Calvin Coolidge during Nurmi's 1925 U.S. tour.

Records as Toys

It’s no secret that I have a crush on Fin­land and there­fore devour every arti­cle I can find about this coun­try. When, in addi­tion, jour­nal­ists write about Fin­land and run­ning, I am hooked.

So let me rec­om­mend a piece writ­ten by Liam Boy­lan-Pett for the Løpe Mag­a­zine about an inim­itable run­ner from the north, Paa­vo Nur­mi, and his U.S. tour in 1924 and 1925. Boy­lan-Pett recon­structs his jour­ney and all the races he ran. Like this one in the Madi­son Square Gar­den in New York.

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