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Take Control of Your Health
Mercola: Is Exercise the Best "Drug" for Depression?
by Joseph Mercola, D.O.
Dr. Joseph Mercola
of Mercola.com
Psychologist Jasper Smits is working on an unorthodox treatment for anxiety and mood disorders. The treatment is free and has no side effects. What is it? Exercise.
Research has shown again and again that patients who follow aerobic exercise regimens see improvement in their depression—improvements comparable to that of those treated with medication. Exercise not only relieves depressive symptoms but also appears to prevent them from recurring.
Studies on exercise as a treatment for depression are showing that there is a strong correlation between improved mood and aerobic capacity. So there’s a growing acceptance that the mind-body connection is very real, and that maintaining good physical health can significantly lower your risk of suffering from depressive symptoms and even developing depression in the first place.
Regular, appropriately intense exercise is a must for most people suffering from depression and, unlike antidepressants, will not cause any negative side effects.
Since no one is going to be making billions of dollars encouraging you to exercise, it has not received the amount of funding for studies that antidepressant drugs have received.
However, when the studies are performed, exercise continually comes out on top, demonstrating benefits above and beyond what antidepressant drugs can achieve. Increasing evidence is showing that exercise leads to improvements in depression that rival or surpass those from antidepressant drugs.
One study conducted by Duke University in the late 1990s divided depressed patients into three treatment groups: exercise only, exercise plus antidepressant, and antidepressant drug only.
After six weeks, the drug-only group was doing slightly better than the other two groups. However, after 10 months of follow-up, it was the exercise-only group that had the highest remission and stay-well rate.
Researchers have found that exercise regulates serotonin and norepinephrine, two key neurotransmitters in your brain. And in just a few weeks, exercise “switches on” genes that increase your brain levels of galanin, a neurotransmitter that helps lessen your body’s stress response.
Like many of you, I have been personally affected by depression, as someone very near and dear to me suffered from it, and actually made several unsuccessful suicide attempts many years ago that were truly devastating.
This illness can have a truly tragic effect on a person’s life, so I urge you to seek out a knowledgeable natural healthcare practitioner who can help you on your healing journey.
