Exercise and Mental Health.

If you are used to running regularly throughout the year, and resting for several days, you will surely have noticed that you find yourself more irritable or depressed. Do not doubt that it is due to that lack of exercise

People who exercise regularly begin to feel depressed and fatigued within a week of forced inactivity, according to a study. The study participants who were in the best shape experienced the greatest loss of fitness when they stopped exercising and also showed the most negative mood symptoms.

It was also noted that it is not certain that the results will be the same in people who do not exercise regularly.

While sedentary people are more likely to be depressed, a large number of studies suggest that symptoms of depression, such as fatigue, tension, and irritability, can appear in a fit person who stops exercising.

To clarify how stopping physical activity can affect mood, researchers studied 40 men and women who regularly exercised for 30 minutes at least three times a week.

Half were told to stop exercising for two weeks, while the rest were told to stick with their routine.

At the first and second weeks, specialists evaluated participants for somatic (bodily) symptoms of depression, such as fatigue, poor appetite, trouble sleeping, and low energy.

Meanwhile, they also took into account mental symptoms, such as irritability, sadness and high self-criticism.

After the first week, the researchers found that participants who had discontinued physical activity reported more fatigue and other somatic symptoms than those who had continued to exercise.

By the second week, those who had been temporarily inactive also showed more mental symptoms. While there was no statistically significant loss of fitness, the authors found that the fittest participants, based on their VO2max (an indicator of the body's ability to use oxygen), suffered the greatest loss of fitness.

Meanwhile, those who showed the greatest loss of physical fitness were those who suffered the greatest mood disturbance.

Researchers theorize that exercise helps maintain mood by shifting the balance of the body's nervous system, from the sympathetic, which triggers the "fight or flight response," to the parasympathetic system, which calms the body.

PHYSICAL EXERCISE AND ENDORPHINS

Physical exercise provides an endorphinic rush. Everyone has ever experienced that feeling of being "floating", of being "placed" when an exercise greater than normal has been carried out. The athlete needs his daily dose of endorphins, he is "hooked". If we acquire the habit of playing sports, the body will ask us to play sports. We will miss physical exercise when we stop practicing it.

For all this, due to the rise in endorphins that it produces, sport is highly recommended in all diseases related to the "psyche" (eg distress, anxiety, depression, psychosomatic pathology ...), in chronic organic pathology , in cancer and to combat all potentially disease-inducing risk factors. Chronic exercise and mental health

Physical fitness is positively related to mental health and well-being.
Physical exercise is related to the reduction of emotions related to stress, such as the state of anxiety.
Anxiety and depression are common symptoms of failure to cope with mental stress, and physical exercise has been linked to a decrease in the level - from mild to moderate - of depression and anxiety.
Long-term physical exercise is generally associated with reductions in traits such as neuroticism and anxiety.
In general, severe depression requires professional treatment, which may include medication, electroconvulsive therapy and / or psychotherapy, with physical exercises as a complement.
Appropriate physical exercises result in reductions in various indices of stress, such as neuromuscular tension, resting heart rate, and some stress-related hormones.
Current clinical opinion holds that physical exercise has beneficial emotional effects on all ages and genders.
Physically healthy people who need psychotropic medication can exercise without fear if they exercise under close medical supervision.