Everyone knows that exercises are great for the body. They help to keep the body in shape physically and promote general wellness.
Now, we know we said general wellness, but most of us do not know that this includes our mental health. Exercise can help improve sleep, act as a mood booster, and even help a person deal with stress, anxiety, and even depression.
Taking care of one’s mental health is very important to preventing mental disorders. While mental disorders are several, some are more common than others. Read this post to learn more about these common mental disorders. Exercises can help you manage your mood and stress levels and keep you less susceptible to these disorders.
In this article, we will be looking at some benefits our mental health stands to gain when we exercise regularly.
The Advantages of Exercise to our Mental Health
Sure, being physically active has several benefits when it comes to our physical wellness. You can get your dream body from working out; get that trim waistline or the abdominal muscles that would make a movie star jealous. You can even prolong your lifetime just by working out. However, all these are not always what motivate most people that love physical activities.
Most of the time, people who take exercising seriously do it because they get a great sense of general well-being from it. When people exercise regularly, they tend to feel a burst of energy all through their day, and at night they sleep better. Their memories become sharper and they feel better about their lives plus themselves in general, they tend to be more relaxed as well.
Exercise is also a strong medicine for some common mental conditions. Exercising regularly can greatly impact people suffering from ADHD, anxiety, and depression. This is because as we have said it aids sleep, improves memory, and boosts a person’s general mood.
Reaping these benefits does not mean you have to become a workout fanatic. Even very modest exercises can create a significant difference. Your fitness level or age does not matter when it comes to using physical activities as a tool for maintaining wellness in the mind or even dealing with some mental health conditions.
How Exercise Can Help People with Mental Disorders
With all that being said, let us now discuss how exercise can help people with some common mental health conditions.
1. Depression
According to some studies, physical activities can be used effectively as an antidepressant to treat mild/moderate depression. Antidepressants are known to have certain side effects; hence, this is great news for people suffering from this condition. The link between exercise and mental health was reaffirmed by research carried out by the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health.
This study discovered that 15 minutes run per day or a daily hour walk can significantly reduce the chances of a person developing depression by twenty-six percent. Apart from this, exercise can also prevent a person from relapsing.
The reason exercise is so great for fighting depression is because it influences a lot of positive changes in a person’s brain. It improves neural growth, reduces inflammation, and releases endorphins which are chemicals found in the brain that are responsible for making a person feel good. Also, when you engage in a new activity, your general well-being gets significantly better and your calmness is promoted.
Finally, working out can be a sort of distraction. It can help a person to stop focusing on the negative ideas that usually feed their depression.
2. Anxiety
Exercising your body can be the perfect anti-anxiety medicine you need. When you work out, stress and tension would be relieved. Your body would release some endorphins that will make you feel good and ensure your general wellness is enhanced.
One thing to do while you exercise is to ensure you do not zone out. Rather pay as much attention as you can so you can get more benefits. For instance, you can pay attention to how you are breathing, how you feel when your feet hit the ground or even the way the wind feels on your face.
When you add this element of mindfulness, you would stop the constant worrying going through your mind all through the time you exercise.
3. ADHD
People suffering from ADHD usually have a hard time paying attention or controlling their behavior. You can visit https://www.webmd.com/ to learn more about this condition.
So, they most often need help to stay focused. Exercise can be the perfect medicine for this as it can help improve motivation, mood, memory, and concentration. Physical activities usually boost the levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine in the brain. This is typically the way ADHD medications work as well.
Conclusion
Exercises can help us maintain general wellness and this includes our mental health as well. People that want to maintain their mental health can use it as a tool for this. Likewise, those with mental health conditions can also exercise to deal with their conditions. You also do not have to become a workout fanatic to enjoy the benefits exercise offers, you simply need to be consistent with the modest amount you do.
