Exercise can be very beneficial for our mental health.
But, HOW you exercise might lead to different results, at least according to a new research
paper.
So, let's see how we can improve our mental health in the best way possible with exercise.
There's no doubt that mental health requires a great deal of our attention.
After all, our mental health can have profound impacts on relevant fitness factors, like
motivation, performance, sleep and nutrition.
On the bright side, it has become abundantly clear that physical activity can indeed improve
mental health, notably improving symptoms of two highly prevalent mental health disorders
in depression and anxiety.
But if we want to achieve the best outcomes in this matter, then adjusting certain attributes
of our exercise can make a difference, at least according to this 2023 systematic review.
After conducting a thorough search of the scientific literature, the researchers found
97 relevant studies for this topic, spanning 1,039 unique randomized controlled trials
with a total of nearly 130,000 participants.
Overall, quite a big set of data, so let's see what they discovered.
First, as mentioned, physical activity has a clear moderate effect on improving mental
health, which we can easily visualize with this forest plot on depressive symptoms.
Every point left of this vertical dashed line indicates a study showing favorable outcomes
with physical activity, which is quite a lot.
And in this figure, we see just about the same, this time for anxiety.
The findings also show that any adult population can improve their mental health with physical
activity, and interestingly, both adults diagnosed with depression and adults deemed generally
healthy saw some of the best outcomes.
But, let's get to the good stuff, and that's the physical activity itself.
What exactly works best?
Surprisingly, the TYPE of activity you do, whether it's lifting weights, cardio, dancing,
yoga, and so on, doesn't seem to matter.
Instead, what does seem to matter is the dose of exercise, like the intensity and duration.
In this case, the data shows that the following provided the largest benefits:
Exercising at moderate to high intensities.
Exercising 150 minutes or fewer per week.
And exercising only 12 or fewer weeks in total.
Now, the researchers can't say exactly why these achieved the best outcomes but they
do have a few guesses.
For moderate to high intensities, the better improvements might be explained by the increased
release of hormones like serotonin during rigorous physical activity, resulting in improvements
in mood.
For the 150 or fewer minutes of activity per week, it is a somewhat surprisingly low figure,
but also makes sense in terms of adherence.
Simply put, working out longer is just more physically and psychologically exhausting,
making it tougher to stick to than shorter bursts.
And, there's the length of the entire exercise intervention.
In the data, it was observed that exercising for 12 weeks or fewer was most beneficial,
and benefits diminish the longer you exercise.
A simple guess as to why is the novelty of exercise.
In the beginning, going to the gym can be exciting, especially once you start making
good progress a few weeks in.
But that novelty of exercise eventually wears off, especially if your progress slows down,
and the initial psychological effects you experience begin to wane, and you start feeling
less motivated to exercise.
But of course, for our general health, long-term exercise is important, so we definitely want
people to keep exercising.
There's no clear way to tackle this, but first, it's important to understand that, even though
the benefits diminish, mental health benefits were still obserevd in long-term interventions.
But if we want to keep things interesting, I personally would try switching things up.
For example, if you're bored of doing cardio all the time, then switching to lifting weights
for a few months might make things interesting again.
And maybe, like so many people have, including myself, you'll fall in love with it and never
get tired of it.
But, if you do, you can try something else again later.
But there we have it, the answer to HOW you can get the most out of your exercise for
mental health, at least according to this research.
Now, to be absolutely clear, you do not NEED to meet these parameters.
Sure, these parameters did observe the largest benefits, but all other parameters still observed
benefits as well.
Plus, this is only one study, although a big one.
But, it also means you personally may very well benefit more from a different set of
parameters.
That said, if you do have the capacity, it might be worth just trying these out and see
how it goes.
Maybe start off easy with 150 weekly exercise minutes, and then work in the others down
the line.
Wherever you may be in your life, I do wish you the very best in not just your fitness
endeavors, but everything else.
And, I hope this video provided you at least some help with that.
That said, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a helpful thumbs up and share it with
your exercise-loving friends.
Link to the full study is in the description.
As always, thank you for watching and don't forget to get your protein!