How audio-learning can improve health

Picture someone who’s studying, what do you see?

Mostly likely, you pictured someone sitting behind a desk or table. No matter the exact place; in a lecture-hall, seminars, or classrooms, studying seems almost inherently connected to being seated. It has become so normal, that we don’t even think about other ways. However, a growing body of literature shows that being seated for long times is detrimental for our health. It increases the risk for obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and many health-related issues (Harvard Health, 2019). 

So, what if we could change this view? What if the next time you think of someone studying, you picture someone taking a walk, sitting outside enjoying the sun, or doing chores? Audio-learning easily allows people to move while they study. All you need is your headphones, and you’re able to study while walking, cycling, or even while going to the gym. In fact, many people have stated that they engage in physical activities while audio-learning (Chin et al., 2017; Wolpaw et al., 2022). In this article, we will look at what happens if we would combine studying with exercise.

Physical health

We won’t go in too much depth on the topic of physical health, as it is generally already well-known that physical activity has many health-benefits: it reduces the risk of many diseases, such as diabetes and various types of cancer, and improves various other aspects of health (World Health Organization [WHO], 2022).

Shockingly though, more than 25% percent of adults, and over 80% of adolescents are insufficiently physically active according to the WHO (2022).

Thus, transforming learning from a static activity to perform while being seated, into an activity to combine with exercises such as walking or cycling, could have numerous benefits for physical health. 

Mental health

Next to physical health, being able to learn while being physically active also has an influence on our mental health. According to the WHO (2022), physical activity has many positive effects on overall well-being, and it reduces our symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Even during studying, taking a simple walk has shown to improve well-being (Erwin et al., 2021; Weight et al., 2021). In two different studies, students engaged in a programme called ‘the walking classroom’, where they were allowed to listen to educational podcasts while walking, instead of being seated in the classroom. The conclusion was clear:

“Students reported feeling happy, healthy, educated, smart, and excited while walking and learning. Afterwards, students discussed feeling strong, relaxed, energized, happy, and alert. On days students were not able to do a walk, they reported feeling mad, bored, sad, sleepy, and tired” Erwin et al., (2021).

In a quantitative study, these results were further shown: walking while studying significantly increased all outcomes with regard to positive emotions, and reduced almost all outcomes regarding negative emotions (Weight et al., 2021), as shown in the graphs below.

(The walking classroom, 2022)

(The walking classroom, 2022)

Effects on learning

With all of these positive effects on physical and mental health, one relevant question still remains: How effective is it to exercise during studying?

As people are generally not great at multitasking, we might expect the efficiency of learning to drop while engaging in physical activity. However, research has shown exactly the opposite: exercising during studying leads to better outcomes than studying while being seated.

Two studies tested the effect of cycling while learning a set of new words. In those studies, it was shown that the people who studied during cycling, remembered significantly more words than groups who studied without exercising – or who studied after exercising – combined (Schmidt-Kassow et al., 2013; Zabriskie & Heath, 2019)

The same has been shown for walking. In the walking classroom experiments discussed earlier, students did not only report feeling smarter after walking (Erwin et al., 2021), but they actually became smarter, as they scored significantly higher on tests when compared to studying while being seated (Weight et al., 2021), as shown in the graph below.

(The walking classroom, 2022)

Conclusion

Studying nowadays requires us to be seated, as learning from our books and laptops is often the standard. This doesn’t allow us to move while studying, which is problematic because research has shown that sitting too much is detrimental for our health.

A healthy solution could be audio-learning. Audio-learning allows for the ability to study while walking and other forms of exercise, which in turn has many great benefits for our physical and mental health. Research has already shown that people who have audio-learning available, tend to be physically active during studying. Importantly, research also shows that studying while being physically active might be even more effective than studying while being seated, as we tend to remember things better when we learned them while exercising.

Anywyse, December 7, 2022