Did you know that exercise can improve your mood? It’s true! Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, we are going to delve into how exercise can benefit the mind. Studies have shown that exercise improves the level of endorphins in your system, which helps with improve overall well-being, but a couple of recent studies focused on how exercise affects symptoms of depression. Let’s find out how!
How does it work?
Exercising releases the feel-good chemicals called endorphins—the chemicals responsible for the “runner’s high” people commonly talk about. It also causes the release of proteins called neurotrophic or growth factors that cause nerve cells to grow and make new connections. This, in turn, makes you feel better. Scientists have found that people who suffer from depression have a smaller hippocampus. One way to help is to grow new nerve cell connections. So, nerve cell growth in the hippocampus spurred by exercise improves nerve cell connections and helps relieve depression. Cool, right?
Exercise can also serve as a distraction and give purpose to the day. It can also aid in socialization. Your exercise routine can bring you in contact with other exercise-focused individuals, giving you a sense of community and belonging. It also improves memory, helps you get better sleep, and boosts your overall mood. Physical activity immediately boosts the brain’s dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin levels. All of these neurotransmitters affect focus and attention, which means those with ADHD can find some help from exercise.
We’ll look at some studies that show how this works for depression, specifically.
Exercise before difficult tasks or therapy could help
A recent pilot study looked at how exercise improves symptoms on those experiencing major depressive episodes. These researchers took a group of people with depression and had half do moderate exercise for 30 minutes and the other half just sat for 30 minutes. The group who participated in moderate exercise reported less depression symptoms for up to 75 minutes following their exercise. This could last longer, but it would require another study that had participants report for longer than 75 minutes. However, this does bode well for combining exercise and difficult, emotionally demanding tasks, or therapy, according to the researchers. They theorize that by combining exercise with therapy, a patient could get more benefits from therapy. This is a unique way that exercise may help with depression.
Even a little bit of exercise helps
A meta-analysis of multiple studies showed that the amount of exercise does not have to be much to ease symptoms of depression. Adults were studied, and those who did activities equivalent to 1.25 hours of brisk walking per week had an 18% lower risk of depression compared to those who did not exercise. Another study showed that those who exercised had 43% fewer poor mental health days. Even a little bit of exercise helped! People who went from no exercise to even just a little got the most benefit, but all who exercised saw benefits over those who did not. Types of exercise included anything from biking to chores around the house. Like to garden? try that. Some studies worked with just 10 minutes a day, and that showed that even a little bit of exercise helps with depression.
What should you be doing for general health?
Now, just to be clear, for overall health, those in the know (CDC, AHA, etc) advise you to get at least 2.5 hours of moderate cardio and 2 days of strength training in per week. Alternatively, you can do 1.25 hours of vigorous cardio and the same amount of strength training, and this will help you to be generally fit. But notice that the studies on exercise and depression used less than that and still found that participants were positively affected by their exercise. By starting small, exercise can help depression, and you can work toward improving your overall fitness.
How can you use exercise to help with your mental health?
So how do you start? Beginning a new exercise routine may sound daunting, but don’t let it be. Start small! Don’t have more than 5 minutes to work out? Start with 5 minutes. You can take 5 minutes here and there throughout the day and they really add up! Keep adding a bit here and there until you can make a schedule that includes a designated exercise time. Not sure what to do? Walking is a fantastic workout, and it’s something that you can do most anywhere, with a friend or alone, and you don’t need any special equipment to start. You’d be surprised by how much even just a little bit of walking does for your health. Have a bike? Take an easy ride! Want to do more? Start with some bodyweight exercises! Need more help? Contact us!
Get outside to reap more benefits
So we’ve discussed how exercise helps with depression, but what about being outdoors? Something else I often talk about with clients is the host of benefits you get from working out in an outdoor setting. From our Personal Training page: Studies have shown that exercising outdoors can raise the levels of feelings of satisfaction and wellness, greater than sweating it out in the gym. The Japanese have a name for the act of reconnecting with nature to destress: forest bathing. They have found it important to spend time in nature to relax and relieve stress, so why not connect with nature during a nice hike or run? Why not take your bodyweight circuit outside? By taking your workout outside.
There is also the benefit of working out in a more unstable environment. When the terrain is unpredictable, your body has to adapt more quickly and is really put to the test. Another thing most people don’t often think about is wind resistance. It can really help you work harder, especially when running into the wind!
Another benefit is getting some of that Vitamin D that’s oh so good for you (just remember the sunscreen!). Vitamin D has been found to be important for both physical and mental health, so exercising outside is a good way to get that!
It has been found that people who exercise outside tend to exercise for longer than they do inside. So that’s a cool benefit right there. If you’re enjoying yourself more, and the side effect is working out more, then you’ll get more benefits from that workout.
Exercise does help with depression
So, moral of the story? Get up and move! Your mental and emotional health will thank you.
If you want to read more about where I found these articles and details of the studies, you can find the references below:
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-living/the-mental-health-benefits-of-exercise.htm
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/14/health/exercise-depression-study-wellness/index.html