Study: 10 Minutes of Slow Jogging Boosts Brain Health, but 11 Minutes May Cause Perforated Colon, So Be Careful
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A new study has found that just 10 minutes of jogging can significantly improve brain health, Dumb Runner has learned—but 11 minutes of the same activity can lead to a perforated colon.
Those findings present “something of a mixed bag” for the general public, the study’s authors acknowledged.
“We absolutely encourage anyone and everyone to get up off the couch and do some light jogging,” said Nigella Tufnel, Ph.D., the study’s lead author, “because you can reap tremendous benefits from that activity in only 10 minutes.”
“Just, you know, do keep it to 10 minutes, for your colon’s sake.”
For the study, which appears in this week’s issue of “The New England Journal of Good News/Bad News,” researchers followed 840 healthy subjects between the ages of 18 and 79 for three months. Half were assigned to perform 10 minutes of easy jogging twice a week; the other half were told to do the same activity for 20 minutes. Both groups underwent cognitive evaluations before and after each session.
Researchers were surprised by what they found.
“Almost universally, the 10-minute group saw sizable gains in things like mood and executive function,” Tufnel said. “The 20-minute group did, as well, but with an additional side effect that we hadn’t foreseen.”
That side effect, she said, was a perforated colon—a hole in the gastrointestinal tract that can cause stool to leak into your abdomen. Such a perforation “requires immediate medical care,” according to the Cleveland Clinic, and can cause things like internal bleeding, permanent damage to the GI tract, and even sepsis. In all, 33 of the 420 subjects in the 20-minute group suffered a perforated colon.
Oddly, according to Tufnel, each of those 33 subjects experienced the perforation at or very shortly after the 11-minute mark. All were treated and are recovering, she noted.
“We can’t explain it,” she said. “We can only tell people out there that, yes, they should do some light jogging. Just be very careful not to go to 11.”
“I cannot stress that enough.”
