Exercising is most important for fighting depression
If you’ve ever been in depression, or even if you’re currently swamped by one, you probably would agree that Prozac or any other anti-depression medicine alone offers no much of a relief. You need much more than medication to uplift your morale and to beat out those swindling phases of low.
Exercise has always been believed to help immensely with minimizing the mood swings and keeping the mind fresh and stress free. And when we say exercising, we are not referring to some painful grueling sessions at the gym. Any kind of exercising like biking, yoga, aerobics, gymnastics, running, swimming or athletics will do.
Many medical universities have conducted researches and concluded that regular exercise must feature in every depression treatment. If fact some researches even point out that exercising offers more relief in depression than most of the behavioral therapies used during psychotherapy sessions.
How does Exercising help with depression?
Exercising can easily alleviate the usual symptoms like anxiety, anger, stress and mood spells. Vigorous exercising causes your heart to beat faster and all your internal organs to get active, and in the process your body begins producing hormones that can counterattack the hormones that are responsible for your depressive state. Also the bursting of sweat on your skin stimulates your skin to such a level that your brain produces some chemicals, which are mostly produced by the brain when you experience heightened pleasure.
The overall effect of exercising is quite comparable to what an anti-depressant drug does to you. However, please remember that even if you become regular with exercises, and you begin to feel some real positive difference in your overall condition, you still can’t afford to give up or reduce your Anti-depression medicines until your psychiatrist gives you a green signal.
The important part
The two keys to fighting depression with exercises are to be regular with your exercises and exercising as vigorously as your body and health allows you to. Activities like taking a stroll in the park or walking up and down the aisles of a departmental store shouldn’t be counted as exercise. What you really need is a 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a day.
As for the timing of the workout, evening is the best time since most depression patients find their symptoms to be more intense during evenings. However, if you experience more symptoms of depression during morning hours, then you can always schedule your exercises for morning.
