Exercise & Mental Health

Raise your hand if you hate exercising. Raise it again if you think you should start, maybe not today, but definitely tomorrow. I bet there were many hands raised on both counts. However, if I asked how many people exercise regularly and on a consistent basis, the number of hands raised would be relatively few. This is the sad reality in today’s world, when sitting in front of a screen for hours with our backs arched and our eyes strained, fervently clicking at keys on a keyboard, is commonplace, whereas taking half an hour out of our daily routine to get some much needed physical exercise, is regarded to be something awe-inspiring when it shouldn’t be.

My own journey on this path started in May, a month after lockdown was imposed on the country. Being dissatisfied with the way I looked and felt, I remembered my old health psychology textbook where the author had carefully outlined the benefits of exercise on physical and mental health. Besides being a preventive measure for countless lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and the like, regular exercise has serious and often-long-lasting impact on your mental health. You may not feel the benefits immediately in your 20s, but it will have a sizeable impact on your health later on in life. This is one of the primary reasons that young people do not feel the need to exercise because it has no visible immediate benefits. However, as I was to find out over the last 7 months, it can change you in ways you cannot even imagine and actually make you a better adjusted human being overall. So here are 5 lessons about mental health that can be learnt from cultivating the habit of regular exercise. P.S. the pleasure of developing visible abs is just a bonus!

Exercise reduces stress

One of the major benefits of exercise is that it acts as a stress-buster. Harvard Health Publishing, in this article, talks about how it is a common experience among endurance athletes that in clinical trials, they exhibit lower levels of stress as compared to controls. This shows that vigorous physical exercise, apart from boosting your physical abilities and alleviating physical ailments, can also be used as a way to relax and rejuvenate the spirit. Vigorous exercise reduces the stress hormones from the adrenal gland, namely adrenaline and cortisol, and boosts the production of endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers and are the so-called “good drugs”. It is responsible for the “runner’s high” that is experienced as a pleasurable feeling right after an exhausting workout, a boost in mood that lasts for several hours afterwards.

Exercise makes you smarter

A study conducted in the United States between 2011 and 2015 and involving 1.2 million adults has found that working out not only boosts mood and alleviates the symptoms of stress but actually contributes to improving the way an individual processes and uses information. In other words, it makes you smarter. Exercise does this in several ways. Exercise improves memory by reducing insulin resistance and inflammation. In addition, it produces protein, dopamine, and epinephrine, all of which help brain cells grow and survive. Exercise further improves focus and motivation. Exercise improves your energy and attention by increasing oxygen to the brain and by teaching you to focus. The third facet of being a smarter person is the increase in productivity that accompanies exercise. Regular exercise requires planning and accountability, which enhances your productivity.

Exercise improves sleep

Physical exercise improves sleep in two ways. It enhances the quality of sleep as well increases the duration of it. Since exercise induces tiredness and de-stresses the brain, it resets the circadian rhythm and acts as a facilitator for good sleep. Also important is the fact that exercise increases body temperature and this may also help in falling asleep easily. Sleep researchers and therapists, however, warn against exercising too close to bedtime, since it may actually boost energy in the short-term and inhibit sleep. Early morning and early evening seem to be the best times of day to work out in that regard.

Exercise enhances confidence and self-esteem

We are social beings, and presenting ourselves in the best light possible to the outside world is an important aspect of our social needs. Exercise contributes majorly in that regard in two important ways. First, by having us stick to a routine and make healthy, conscious choices about diet, discipline and sleep, exercise gives us a sense of control over our own choices and in turn, our life outcomes. This translates directly to a sense of accomplishment, which is instrumental to building self-esteem. Secondly, consistent exercising leads to visible improvements in physique, paving the path for increased confidence and a positive body image. This is a massive indicator of mental health, since body image issues are a major threat to adaptive functioning in human society.

Exercise can alleviate mental disorders

The World Health Organization emphasizes the role of exercise-based interventions in treating and/or preventing mental disorders like clinical depression, schizophrenia and dementia. It has been seen that exercise works as well as cognitive-behavioural and other therapies in treating mild depression. Severe depression that is usually unresponsive to medication does tend to subside with exercise-based interventions. Schizophrenia is another serious disorder that finds its antidote in physical exercise. WHO says that the negative symptoms of schizophrenia such as alogia, avolition, etc. are usually untreatable using anti-psychotic drugs but do respond well to physical exercise. Furthermore, physical activity can protect individuals from cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases, possibly reducing the risk for dementia by up to 10%. One million cases of Alzheimer’s can be reduced globally by just a 25% decrease in physical inactivity. In order to find the detailed study from WHO, click here.

Conclusion

The benefits of exercise are myriad and manifold. These are just five of them. Our ancestors have lived for millions of years in an environment that demanded physical labour and did not forgive sloth. We, as the inheritors of their genes, are built to be active. However, given the modern lifestyle we have adopted, we have strayed far from our natural physical state. This has caused us much grief already in terms of degraded physical and mental health, and it will continue to do so, if we keep saying we will start tomorrow and let today pass us by.