Why Watching Sports is Good for Our Health

Researchers scanned people's brains while they watched various sports.

If you’ve spent a lot of time watching the NBA playoffs or Major League Baseball, give yourself a pat on the back for taking such good care of yourself. A new study in Japan found that watching sports boosts our mental health and generally makes us happier human beings. Researchers scanned people’s brains while they watched various sports and found it activated the “reward circuits” in their brain, which are linked to feelings of happiness. They also found that people who regularly watch a lot of sports have more gray matter in those areas, which suggests it might even change your brain structure over time.