Exercise better at lasting depression relief….

Today's Post: Thursday, 7-30-2009

1. We’ve already posted that brief lunchtime walks, even in gloomy and overcast or rainy weather, tend to prevent SAD or wintertime depression brought about by low exposure to sunlight.

And we’ve posted, if such walks are unsafe or you’ve no time for them, taking at least 2,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day, which is extremely desirable to protect your health for other reasons as well, has much the same effect.

2. We’ve also posted that getting enough omega 3 oils with purified fish oil supplements and DHA supplements, &/or eating wild caught fish and seafood, except for not eating those you are allergic to or that are too high in mercury, when combined with eating a lot less omega 6 oils by eliminating refined grain foods, and using extra virgin olive oil instead of high omega 6 oils like soy, corn, and canola has many benefits to your health from helping lower triglyceride levels and inflammation to protect your heart.

Doing this also stops depression for many people; and there is evidence it prevents it in many people as well. (The incidence of depression in places where people eat this way is quite low.)

3. We’ve also posted that optimistic thinking tends to prevent or turn off depression that the reverse kind of thinking often causes depression or prolongs it. (See Martin Seligman, PhD’s book, Learned Optimism.)

Such thinking results in:

a) you trying to improve and change things while expecting you’ll find a way to be effective and noticing what’s going well in your life and expecting it to continue; and

b) you being very scientific and analytical when things go wrong and realizing that they have limited and specific causes that can often be overcome.

These natural, nondrug methods do work, work reliably, often work quickly, and have other health benefits besides. They also tend to keep working when you keep using them. So you can not only get rid of depression using them, you can often keep it from coming back or being as severe if it does.

Meanwhile antidepressant drugs often either tend not to be effective, tend to take up to several weeks to work when they do, have unpredictable side effects, and can produce nasty side effects or withdrawal effects if you stop taking them.

So, we’ve been also interested in and posting about how exercise tends to turn off depression as we did last Tuesday, day before yesterday, in our post just before this one.

Then, after I did that post, I found that Tuesday’s Total Health Breakthroughs email had a story showing that people who did get depression relief from drugs had a relapse rate considerably greater than those who got depression relief from exercise.

I’ll post that article here and then add some comments.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com ."

“Cutting Edge Fitness:

Exercise -- The New Happy Hour

By Missy Hawthorne, RN, CSCS

It’s five PM and your work day is finally coming to an end! The stress of the day is still with you as you get into your car and start home. The highway is at a standstill and so there is no break from the stress. As the road begins to open up, you realize, a drink is starting to sound pretty good.

How do you handle stress? Does the stress of your day make you want a beer, wine, or cocktail to relax? Or perhaps your doctor has prescribed an antidepressant? Or if you are a smoker, maybe you just can’t wait for that first cigarette when you leave work. I don’t have to tell you that smoking isn’t good for you and we need to keep our alcohol intake at moderate levels.

So what can you do to more effectively shake off the stress of the day? Exercise. Not only is exercise a good stress reliever, it has even been found to be effective against the depression that can come as a result.

Researchers have found that exercise can work at least as well against mild to moderate depression as any other treatment, including drug therapy. Previous studies have suggested that exercise programs can take weeks to improve depression, stress and/or anxiety, but a new study showed that even a single workout can provide immediate benefits in boosting the mood of the severely depressed.1

A study at Duke University was one of the first to test a four-month aerobic program in people with moderate to severe depression. Sedentary men and women over the age of 50 were asked to participate in aerobic activity for 30 minutes three times per week.

They were compared to two control groups that were similarly depressed. One group was treated with Zoloft and the other group with Zoloft and exercise combined. Patients in all three groups had equally significant reductions in symptoms of depression (60-65%).

Surprisingly, combining drug and exercise therapy had no added benefit, but it did improve the speed of response.

While drug therapy was effective eventually, exercise therapy really excelled in the long term. Six months after treatment, only 8% of the exercise group relapsed compared to 30% in the drug therapy group.2

Exercise seems to improve the body’s ability to handle stress more easily, enabling you to tolerate life’s challenging demands more easily. Animal studies show it does this by acting on the neurotransmitters of the brain that govern the stress response.

Neurotransmitters in the brain such as norepinephrine are altered by exercise and produce changes similar to those of antidepressants. In so doing, exercise enables us to better tolerate stressful situations and to be calmer. The studies found exercise also changes peoples’ perceptions of themselves, providing an elevated self-esteem, a sense of personal mastery, a positive self-regard and reduced negative thinking.

In addition to aerobic activity, several studies show that resistance training is just as effective against depression. So the evidence is clear, exercise is a good prescription for stress!

The next time you need to blow off the day, elevate your mood and de-stress. Instead of hitting happy hour, hit the gym!

References

1. Warner, J. Exercise May Lift The Cloud of Depression. www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise. 2006.
2. Marano, H.E. Move to Boost Mood. www.psychologytoday.com/articles.

[Ed. Note: Melissa Hawthorne, RN, BSN, CSCS is the owner of Priority Fitness Personal Training and Wellness. She is a Master Trainer for the Resist-a-ball Company, ISCA Personal Training, Kick-boxing, and Beamfit. Melissa serves as a fitness consultant for the LaValle Metabolic Institute. ….]”

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As we noted in our last post, vigorous exercise can work faster to turn down depression than less intense exercise.

Less time than half an hour at a time can be effective. Even one to fifteen minutes has worked for many people.

So, you may well get better results by getting some vigorous exercise each day even if it’s just for a few minutes than you would getting three 30 minute sessions of less intense exercise each week. Doing both kinds may work even better if you have time for it.

In conclusion, we think that anyone needing depression relief should use these other nondrug methods right away, even BEFORE seeing your doctor for depression. (One exception is that for some people who have not yet been exercising, they may have a separate medical condition that would require them to ramp up exercise intensity more gradually, get to a lower peak intensity, and work out for shorter periods plus get longer rests between sets. For such people getting a check up from doctor before doing more vigorous exercise may be a good idea.

Another exception is that someone taking an anticoagulant drug may need to be quite careful and work with their doctor before adding omega 3 oils or eating a lot of fish containing it. Doing both the omega 3’s and the drug without reducing the dose of the anticoagulant can be unsafe. By working with your doctor, you may be able to safely step down the anticoagulant while you gradually add the omega 3 oils.)

If your depression is severe or it’s not helped much at first with these other methods and is bad enough to be really hard to take or is preventing you from living your life at all well, it may make sense to see a doctor about adding an antidepressant drug for a two month test in addition to using these methods.

The good news is that this article suggests that by using these nondrug methods too, particularly including exercise, the drug will be somewhat more likely to work and will begin to help you sooner than would otherwise be the case.

But to keep the gains you make, you’ll do best to use these nondrug methods while you take the drug and continue them even if you later stop the drug.