Emotional Health

How Exercise Can Boost Your Mood

Exercise can help condition the body into making better and stronger. But can exercise do the same thing with our moods? Can exercise make people feel good in the process? Many scientists believe it can.

Exercise has been known to help boost up your mood in a variety of ways. The benefits of exercise not only is limited to physical conditioning but also extends to boosting a person's mood. It may not be able to solve a person's emotional problems in itself, but a collection of different studies that started way back in the 80's and until the present seem to indicate that a regular exercise routine may help in boosting the moods of people, especially those suffering from mild to moderate depression.

Exercise and Mood

Exercise seems to have an effect on the human mind. Experts have known for a long time now that regular exercise helps boost the effects of endorphins. These are the neurochemicals that are produced in the brain that may help reduce pain. Endorphins are also known to induce feelings of euphoria and elation, which some people term as a "high". Exercise may also help stimulate the effects of norepineprine, another neurotransmitter that may have a direct effect in a person's mood.

Exercise for Depression Relief

Regular exercise can have an effect on mood and anxiety the same way that anti-depressants seem to have. One telling study about the effect of exercise on mood was done in which a group of people suffering from depression were given an exercise program to follow and another given doses of equal benefit of the common antidepressant drug Zoloft. Each group underwent four months of their prescribed treatment with scientists constantly monitoring their progress.

The participants in the study were again tested eight months after the treatments were stopped. Results showed that the exercise group were doing better than the group that took Zoloft. The exercise program seem to have affect brain chemistry in the same way that antidepressant medications do and even better.

The beneficial effects of exercise seem to last longer than the effects derived from the anti-depressant drugs. This study might further give a hint to those people who plan to reduce their dependence to antidepressant drugs for their depression. It seems that regular exercise might be a safe and beneficial alternative.