This can be a heavy subject but I’m not going to take that route. I’m merely going to share with you that you may well intuitively know, but studies are backing up. And that is, a great treatment for depression. Whether it’s the best treatment, I don’t know. I think that with depression (and I am no expert – nor even novice with it), it could be a whole raft of issues from lack of purpose or meaning, overwhelm, diet, grieving, weather/season, or even anomalies in the brain (often people don’t think to look at the physical brain when it comes to ‘brain’ conditions but I highly recommend you check out the work of Dr Daniel Amen for more on the interesting type of work he does in that area).
And you may be reading this thinking that “Hey, Hari, I’m not depressed!”
Well, the good news is, that I suspect it will help you too – even if you just feel a little sad from time to time or totally happy. The treatment I believe will boost you too.
There was a study published in the Psychosomatic Medicine journal that took 156 people with major depressive disorder (MDD) and had them split into three groups.
- Anti-depressant medication
- Anti-depressant medication and exercise
- Just Exercise
After 4 months of these protocols, they all had roughly the same success rate. 60 % (exercise group), 66% (medication group) and 69% (both) were found to no longer meet the criteria for MDD.
Interestingly though, at the 10 month mark, which was 6 months after the treatment had finished as it was a 4 month treatment protocol, only 8% of patients in the exercise group who had recovered from MDD relapsed back to depression. Whereas in the medication group it was 38% and in the group that did both medication and exercise it was 31%. You can look at the study yourself here: http://www.hibody.co.uk/Exercise%20treatment%20for%20major%20depression.pdf
There have been other studies all pointing in the same direction.
When it comes to depression. Exercise seems to reign supreme. Well – at least against medication in the cases tested.
Food for thought?
Even if you aren’t depressed, I don’t think I have to work too hard to sell you on the fact that exercise would be great for your mood.
Especially as we’re all currently (in the northern hemisphere anyway) going through winter and working away, barely seeing daylight.
Get out and move!
What do you think? Let me know below!
