People with depression often feel constantly tired and exhausted, even though they used to be very active, many stop exercising altogether when experiencing depression. It is important to remember that inactivity feeds your tiredness and together, they start a spiral that is hard to break.
During longer periods of activity, your body craves more and more rest, but what it really needs is to get moving!
The high-stress levels caused by depression and anxiety wear and tear on your brain and body, and exercise helps to reverse a lot of these effects. For example, the stress hormone cortisol automatically drops as a result of exercise, providing necessary stress relief to activate your immune system and recover from the effective depression field stress.
Humans used to be forages that walked for miles to collect food. Today, people demand more from their minds, but less from their bodies, which creates an unhealthy imbalance. Exercise restores this balance by allowing our minds to rest and our bodies to release tension, creating an almost endless range of positive side effects, including:
- Improved mood
- Concentration
- Learning
Exercise leads to increased availability of the same serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline neurotransmitters used in medication prescribed to battle depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorders such as ADHD. In contrast to many of these medications, exercise only has positive side effects.
Actually, exercise is repeatedly found to be as effective as antidepressants to battle mild to moderate depression. In follow-up studies, the long-term effective exercise exceeded those of antidepressants and a study even showed exercise alone to be as effective as psychotherapy.
School programs have had great success in helping kids with learning and detention difficulties perform better at school through programs that increase their physical activity throughout the day. For many children exercises had a better effect than the often prescribed Ritalin, which is a dopamine stimulant.
It is very important that you get started with exercise, even though it might be the last thing you feel like doing right now. The first time you exercise, you might not experience all the positive effects, but rest assured they will come when you get into the groove of it! If you experience pain in the shoulders or other body parts, it is important to know that even light exercise has anti-inflammatory effects, which can help reduce inflammation and pain.
You can get the positive effects of exercise already from:
- Walking
- Lightly jogging
- Swimming
- Dancing
- Yoga
- Riding a bike
A study found that walking for 45 minutes at 60% to 70% of your maximum heart rate, significantly reduces symptoms of depression. (Your maximum heart rate is calculated by taking 222 minus your age.)
Get started today! But remember it is important to start at a low pace and increase at a comfortable level to avoid hurting yourself!