Even if your gym, rec center, pool or dance class is unavailable, it's still possible, not to mention important, to get your body up and moving. Doing activities that raise your heart rate, challenge your muscles, and move your body beyond its normal range of motion (challenging your mobility, coordination, and balance) not only helps you stay fit but can also boost your mood, lower stress levels, and even prevent future bouts of depression.
Even simple aerobic exercises walking, housework, or playing with your kids or pets can encourage your body to release endorphins.
It's true—even simple aerobic exercises like walking, housework, or playing with your kids or pets can encourage your body to release endorphins. Endorphins are a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system that trigger a number of almost magical physiological functions. Those wondrous functions include reducing pain and stress, warding off anxiety and feelings of depression, boosting self-esteem, and even improving sleep.
With direct benefits like that, it’s not hard to imagine how exercise can help manage depression. And luckily, thanks to the scientists at The American Psychiatric Association, we don’t have to imagine—we have research.
Exercise and the prevention of depression
A recent study on exercise and the prevention of depression aimed to determine whether or not exercise provides protection against new-onset depression. It also aimed to pinpoint the intensity and amount of exercise required to gain that protection, and how exactly the protection might work.
To do this the researchers examined 33,908 adults, selected on the basis of having no symptoms of common mental disorders or limiting physical health conditions. The researchers followed them for 11 years. They collected measures of exercise, depression, and anxiety, along with a range of potential confounding and mediating factors.
Regular exercise of any intensity does indeed provide protection against future depression.
What they concluded was that regular exercise of any intensity does indeed provide protection against future depression. Even relatively modest changes in levels of exercise may have “important public mental health benefits and prevent a surprisingly high number of new cases of depression.”
The study suggests that 12 percent of future cases of depression could have been prevented if the participants had engaged in at least one hour of physical activity each week. Interestingly, the majority of the protective effects occurred at low levels of exertion and were observed regardless of intensity.
