Watching sports makes you happier thanks to feel-good hormones, scientists say

WATCHING sport makes you happier, scientists have found.

They think that being a viewer releases feel-good hormones in the brain, even for those who don’t watch regularly.

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Sports with large crowds, such as football and rugby, bring the most joy and live sport “promotes a sense of community and belonging”.

Professor Shintaro Sato, from Waseda University in Japan, also revealed that the long-term effect is that “brain structures change so that people can feel greater well-being more easily”.

Their study of more than 20,000 people found that sports fans rated their mental health higher than those who didn’t watch.

MRI scans then revealed that the brain’s “reward center” became overactive while people watched sports clips.

This showed that gambling was a chemical trigger for feelings of joy.

Prof Sato noticed that the structure of the adepts’ brain began to change over time, so there were more electrical signals in areas linked to positive emotions.

Writing in Sports Management Review, he said: “Increased brain activity in reward circuits can be interpreted as feelings of happiness or pleasure.

“These results give an important idea that watching popular sports can improve well-being.

“The relationship can also be intensified by watching sport daily and implies that the longer people watch sport in their daily lives, the more prominent the impact on their well-being can be.

“Additionally, brain structures can gradually change so that people can experience greater well-being more easily.”