The effect of exercise on mental health

Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality.

It has been shown (CDC 2020) that about 5% of adults would suffer from a form of mental health condition. Such idea is also common for children. This is not important but essential as mentions the National Alliance on Mental Health (2020) since they precised that by starting at an early age, the mental health conditions would persist at adulthood.

What do we mean by exercizing ?

Exercising doesn’t only rely upon fitness and HIIT session. Any sport can fit into that category of interesting activity. For example, in 2004 Monika Guszkowska has shown that jogging, swimming, cycling, walking gardening or dancing reduce anxiety and depression. She also precised that it tends to increase the psychologic reactivity to stress.

This is key when we deal with those issues on a daily basis.

Help through the day

Exercising can help you to go through your day, either by doing it in the morning or after your day of work. IT enables to release some pressure after a stressful day.

In 2006, Ashish Sharma & Al have confirmed the cost-effective aspect of exercise in order to improve health, and the overall quality of life.

It has been proved that “physical activity can protect against feelings of distress, enhance psychological well-being, protect against symptoms of anxiety and development of anxiety disorders, protect against depressive symptoms and development of major depressive disorder, and delay the effects of dementia and the cognitive decline associated with aging.”

Marco Aurélio, in 2005, adds that there were beneficial effects of physical activity “on mental health include distraction, self-efficacy, and social interaction.”

Counter-stress

Insomnia, headache or any other physical discomfort can increase the level of stress. By exercising you can break this non-virtuous circle. The release of endorphins and the satisfaction after the training session helps to relieve tensions from the body. It will helps you to deal with negative context occuring and to draw away from it.

The integration of such activities would help treating psychological disorders and could achieve better results as precised Pascoe & Parker in 2019).

Marc Ashley Harris study

In 2018, Harris showed in below chart that the people involved in physical exercise, overtime, seemed to report higher “mental wellbeing scores”. See the chart below.

Health benefits

We find numerous good effects from regular exercise that should be emphasized and reinforced by every mental health professional to their patients include the following:

- Improved sleep

- Increased interest in sex

- Better endurance

- Stress relief

- Improvement in mood

- Increased energy and stamina

- Reduced tiredness that can increase mental alertness

- Weight loss

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The first step before being advice of doing any sport would be to be evaluated by any medical institute in order to prevent any physical disabilities. The idea by exercising more is to improve its body composition and not to be injured after the first session.