Why is Exercise Recommended for Mental Health?

If you have ever experienced mental health struggles, some people or even experts on this field would recommend you to exercise regularly to help improve your mood. If you search up “how to improve your mental health” in Google or YouTube, you would also find professionals saying the same thing. Why though? Why exercise? Why can’t it be something else less tedious? A lot of people have the tendency to overlook physical activity as a natural medication to help improve their mental health symptoms.

According to Raglin (1990), 20 to 40 minutes of aerobic exercise leads to improvements in anxiety levels that persist for a couple of hours (acute exercise studies). In long term exercise studies on its effects on mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression, exercise has been shown to produce similar psychological outcomes to psychotherapy. For healthy individuals, exercise can be a good preventive mechanism for mental illness while for those suffering from mental health issues, this can be an effective treatment.

Studies by Mikkelsen et al. (2017) and Sharma et al. (2006) further detail the impacts of exercise on the brain. Exercise was demonstrated to have a positive effect on the body’s physiological and biochemical components; including endorphin release (substances that elevate feelings of well-being and euphoria) and balancing of other neurotransmitters that help achieve better mood, which are consequences of exercise-induced elevation in blood supply to the brain and by the influence of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a crucial hormonal response system to stress (Stephens & Wand, 2012). The communication of this HPA axis with different areas of the brain including the limbic system which controls mood and motivation, the amygdala which evokes fear in response to stress and the hippocampus which regulates memory, mood and motivation, aids in the enhancement of mental state. Serotonin, a substance contributing to feelings of well-being and happiness, is also released during exercise (Healthdirect Australia, 2020). Especially with aerobic exercise such as running, jogging, walking and swimming, exercise has been proven to lower anxiety and depression. Exercise also promotes self-esteem and reduces social withdrawal, serving as another contributing factor to this effect on mental illness.

Additionally, people suffering from schizophrenia, a mental disorder that makes one lose touch with reality, usually characterised by symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganised speech and/or behaviours and absence of normal cognition (Bloom, n.d.), may benefit from regular physical activity as they are already at a risk for weight gain and obesity due to antipsychotic treatments.

Furthermore, it is key to note that in patients suffering from major depressive disorder, the hippocampus size decreases, reaching a 25% shrink in those with this condition for 5 months (BBC Northern Ireland, 2013). Exercise has been revealed to reverse this, expanding the hippocampal volume, especially the anterior hippocampus, by around 2% in a one-year training programme (Erickson et al., 2011). Since this structure is involved in memory processing, risks in developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, brain disorders associated with memory loss and other cognitive impairments, are also decreased through routine exercise (Healthdirect Australia, 2020).

However, knowing the benefits of exercise for mental health and mental disorders, exercising can also have detrimental impacts as well. It is pivotal to not overtrain (exercise too much), as overtraining results in exacerbated mood and possibly aggravating depression (Raglin, 1990). Moreover, you must adopt a training programme that does not stress you out—if training every day burdens you and elevates stress levels, reduce the frequency of training per week, for example. Trial and error alongside adjustments are very much required. You must be able to individually measure and reflect on what you feel is suitable for yourself. Do not force yourself to train past your capabilities.

In summary, exercise has a plethora of benefits to mental health and mental/brain disorders. When done routinely, it can give comparable advantages to conventional psychotherapy. However, overtraining results in adverse effects that deteriorates mental conditions. Be careful to not exercise over your limits. It takes practice for your body to get used to regular exercise and its outcomes in relations to mental health. Hopefully, sooner or later, you will achieve an improved, healthier state of mind.

References

BBC Northern Ireland. (2013, May 8). Inside the brain of someone suffering with depression [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rxeFgKIS9s

Bloom, P. (n.d.). Episode 67: Schizophrenia [MOOC lecture]. In Bloom, P., Introduction to psychology. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-psychology/lecture/KEDAX/schizophrenia

Erickson, K. I., Voss, M., Prakash, R., & Basak, C. (2011, February). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 3017-3022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1015950108

Healthdirect Australia. (2020, November). Exercise and mental health. https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/exercise-and-mental-health

Mikkelsen, K., Stojanovska, L., Polenakovic, M., Bosevski, M., & Apostolopoulos, V. (2017, December). Exercise and mental health. Maturitas, 106, 48-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2017.09.003

Raglin, J. S. (1990, June). Exercise and mental health. Sports Medicine, 9, 323-329. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-199009060-00001

Sharma, A., Madaan, V., & Petty, F. D. (2006). Exercise for mental health. The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 8(2), 106. https://doi.org/10.4088%2Fpcc.v08n0208a

Stephens, M. A. C. & Wand, G. (2012). Stress and the HPA axis. Alcohol Research, 34(4), 468–483. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3860380/