Your strange workout side effects explained
STRETCHING TURNED OUT TO BE THE MENTAL BALM PRUDENCE WADE DIDN’T KNOW SHE NEEDED IN THESE ANXIOUS TIMES
FROM profuse sweating to turning redder than a post box, some side effects of exercise are widely known.
But when our body engages in strenuous physical activity, it can also react in some other ways...
Your ears pop
WE’VE heard of ears popping on planes, but gym bunnies may have noticed that strenuous exercise can have a similar effect. If you are straining to lift a too-heavy weight, for instance – and it’s worse if you hold your breath – pressure can build up within your ears and then release in the form of a pop.
To help prevent this happening, don’t lift too heavy and don’t hold your breath.
Your legs start itching DURING a workout, blood-flow to the working muscles increases and blood vessels expand to accommodate that – and this expansion can trigger surrounding nerves, resulting in an itching sensation.
Exercising regularly can often reduce the likelihood that you will experience itching, because your body won’t need to adjust so much.
You get a runny nose
THIS may be down to allergic rhinitis – an inflammation of the inside of the nose caused by an allergen, such as pollen or dust. As you breathe deeper and faster during exercise, you pull in increased amounts of air carrying these allergens – cue a runny nose.
Another potential cause is nonallergic rhinitis. In this case, the inflammation of the nose can be caused by swollen blood vessels, which block the nasal passages and stimulate the mucus glands.
Running can make you need the loo YES, running can give you diarrhoea. Most common among long distance running, it tends to come during or immediately after exercise.
The cause is not precisely understood, but jostling your innards, hormonal changes and changes in blood flow to the gut may all play a part.
What is clear is that food passes more quickly through the digestive tract, leaving it looser and likely to pass more frequently.
It boosts your brainpower
YOU might feel temporarily sharper, smarter, and better at retaining information after exercise – and there’s evidence you might be quite right about that.
A 2014 study by the University of British Columbia, for example, found regular aerobic exercise appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.
So there’s no divide between brain and brawn it seems, and one demonstrably helps the other!
Of course, if you are worried about how your body is responding to exercise or plan to start a new regime you should always check with your doctor first, and it’s important to always workout safely.
I’M not very good at slowing down my brain. Any attempt to meditate ends up with me thinking about what I’m having for dinner, I’m never without music or a podcast playing in the background, and it’s not unheard of for me to wake in the middle of the night thinking about what I need to do at work the next day.
Even though my mind is constantly whirring, I’m extremely lucky to not suffer from any serious mental health issues. Sure, I get low-level anxiety every so often, but it’s never anything major.
However, like so many others, this anxiety became a little more present when the pandemic started. A month or so into lockdown I started using a stretching app on the suggestion of my sister – and it ended up being the saviour I didn’t know I needed. The app guides you through long-hold stretches for 20 minutes a day, with a 45 minute session once a week.
As we were deep into the first lockdown, I didn’t have any trouble fitting the sessions into my day. I use a programme called
Prudence Wade ROMWOD (romwod.
holds a stretch com), and every day the instructor takes you through a series of poses held for one to five minutes each. As someone who exercises five or six times a week, I knew I needed to invest a bit more time in stretching to protect my joints and prevent injury – but it ended up being more of a mental release than I anticipated.
Initially, staying in a pigeon or lizard pose for four minutes felt tricky. In all honesty, it’s still difficult – your first reaction is to panic, and the sharp feeling can be quite overwhelming. However, I soon learned to embrace the challenge, particularly with the more uncomfortable poses held for longer periods of time.
It also took a bit of time to get used to the programme I was using – with a tagline ‘Swole & Flexy’, extremely buff athletes demonstrating the moves and the instructor occasionally veering into motivational speaker territory, it feels very American and, sometimes, a teensy bit cringeworthy – but I can’t deny the results.
The positions might be tough but your body feels immediately better after any routine, plus it’s a dedicated time to slow down and not think about the leak in the bathroom/when you’re going to call your nan/whether you should put a load of washing on.
It’s definitely a mental challenge – we’re so used to pushing ourselves and doing the most, whereas these kind of yin yoga style stretches require relaxing into the pose without forcing anything. This is to get into the fascia – the connective tissue around the muscle – which isn’t really targeted during the regular cool-down you might do at the gym. Trying to ‘relax’ into uncomfortable positions like saddle pose (where you sit on your feet with your knees wide and try to lie back, to target the quads) isn’t easy, but it’s the constant challenge that I love – although it took me a while to realise some days will be easier than others, and that’s OK.
It makes sense for stretching to be a psychological balm. According to the mental health charity Mind, 60% of adults said their mental health got worse during lockdown, and psychotherapist and body language expert Nick Davies says: “As a result, our bodies will be full of unused adrenaline and cortisol from our ‘stress response’ (AKA ‘fight or flight response’) and a few of us are likely to be experiencing ‘learned helplessness’, which is a precursor to depression.”
With our bodies in fight or flight mode, Nick says we need to somehow channel this energy.
“Physical movement like stretching (and star jumps) can be the best exercise to quickly rid ourselves of the excess adrenaline and cortisol, allowing our bodies to return to homeostasis, knowing we’ve expressed the physical response,” he explains.
Plus, a lot of stretching routines engage mindful use of the breath. Studies suggest deep breathing can help boost mental health, and the NHS even recommends techniques to help combat stress and anxiety. I found it helpful to focus my mind solely on counting inhales and exhales – and reminding myself to go back to the breath whenever my brain starts buzzing.
While I use a specific programme – mainly because I like the ease of logging on every day with the routine waiting for me – any kind of stretching could work, whether doing your own routine or using Youtube videos. I particularly like the yin yogastyle of poses held for a long time, because it really encourages you to mentally slow down, plus it feels good for me physically.
It’s something I didn’t know I needed, but I’m glad it came into my life in the midst of our first lockdown.
I’ve found it easy to carve out time for stretching every day – and I’ve come to rely on the brief moment of stillness and peace it affords me.
Always check with your doctor or physiotherapist before starting a new exercise regime, especially if you have a history of injury, illness or joint problems.
The positions might be tough but your body feels immediately better