You already know that exercise is good for your body but do you also know that it is effective in dealing with stress, anxiety depression, and many more?
Yes, mental and physical health is fundamentally linked.
There are multiple associations between mental and chronic physical condition that affects the quality of your life!
People with poor mental health are at risk of developing chronic physical conditions
and People with chronic physical conditions may experience poor mental health.
Let me explain this relation between mental and physical health by a small example of our daily life.
It so happens that if you are upset or stressed you often feel that you don't want to go out for gyming today or doing any physical activity.
Similarly, if you are very particular about workout in your daily routine, and you happen to miss it due to some reason then you tend to feel very low and unexcited for the rest of your day.
This happens very often and we don't find any particular concern in this. But in the long run with continuous unhealthy physical or mental episodes there are high chances of you experiencing serious mental or physical issues like depression, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc
Do u Remember your doctor saying "don't take stress if you want to control your diabetes?"
So how does any kind of exercise help you to keep mentally fit?
Research has proven that there are multiple psychological benefits of exercise.
Study shows that exercise can treat mild to moderate #depression as effective as anti-depressant medication, that too without any side effects. The study also says that exercising 15 minutes a day reduces the risk of major depression by 26%.
So, exercise promotes all kinds of changes in the brain allowing you to break the cycle of negative thoughts that feeds depression and give you the feeling of calmness and well-being.
Evidence shows that exercise is effective in improving Depressive symptoms. Aerobic exercise, resistance, and strength training have been found beneficial in improving an individual’s condition. Many studies have examined the efficacy of exercise to reduce symptoms of depression, and the overwhelming majority of these studies have described a positive benefit associated with exercise involvement.
Exercise is a natural and effective anti-anxiety treatment, it relieves tension and stress, boosts physical and mental energy and enhances well-being through the release of #endorphins. Now, what are endorphins? endorphin is a hormone that relaxes your muscles, reduces the feeling of pain, relieves tension making you stress-free, and gives you a feeling of happiness.
Physical activity releases endogenous opioids. Physical activity positively impacts common mental disorders and depressive symptoms through the increased release of beta-endorphins following exercise. Endorphins are connected to a positive mood and an overall greater sense of well-being.
Exercising regularly is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce the symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
It also reduces the symptoms of Trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder by helping your nervous system become unstuck and begin to move out of the immobilization stress response. Outdoor activities like hiking, sailing, mountaineering, biking, etc have also been shown to reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Regular exercise has other mental and emotional benefits like #improvedconcentration, people often experience sharper #memoryandthinking, higher #selfesteem, more #mentalandphysicalenergy, stronger #resilience, stronger #immunesystem, #positivebehaviorapproach, and most importantly #bettersleep which is priceless.
Now let’s go through some of these benefits of physical activity on our mental health in brief.
It helps you build your Social Support. Physical activity exercise can encourage social interaction by being in situations with like-minded people. It can help bring about social support which in turn can improve individual’s confidence and sense of achievement.
It enhances your overall #Mood, the levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin which affects mood are shown to increase in the body after the exercise. This rise in serotonin is suggested to help prevent the development of some physical or mental disorders.
Physical activity is shown to improve levels of #Selfesteem and #selfefficacy. Regular exercise helps build confidence by improving your body image. While exercising you're likely to strengthen and tone your body, and seeing these results can greatly improve your self-esteem and help you feel better about the way you look.
There are studies supporting that exercising for at least 10 minutes a day can help you boost self-esteem and confidence which can help you achieve desired goals in your life. And also chance of you getting serious mental disorders are reduced.
So if you going through any kind of despair or psychological issues, rather than focusing on destructive or negative thoughts, you could go out and do some cycling, running, walking or swimming so that endorphins are released in your body that will make you think positively and you may suddenly realize that there's bucket of list that is yet to be explore in your life.
So keep exercising, stay mentally fit and keep the hope alive.