For many healthy young adults, exercise is a vigorous affair intended to increase fitness, muscular strength, or athletic performance. For the rest of us, exercise is a means of maintaining health, preventing disease, or alleviating stress. We might also see it as a way to lose or maintain weight – although for many folks, this outcome may come more slowly than we would like. The wonderful thing about exercise is that benefits can accrue at a number of “levels”: fitness benefits, health benefits, and psychological benefits. Some of these benefits take time to realize (for example, increasing strength), while other benefits will be apparent after only 20-30 minutes of moderate activity (for example, improving mood or decreasing anxiety). Although we want to strive for health and fitness benefits, the best approach may be to embrace the psychological (more immediate) benefits of exercise and use these as motivators to continue exercising…so eventually, you’ll also gain those longer-term benefits.
Psychological benefits of exercise are many and quick!
Research indicates that exercise can lower anxiety, decrease depression (even at clinical levels), improve mood and increase one’s quality of life. Positive effects are seen across age, gender, and ability level. These effects can be seen after one session (30 minutes) of moderate level exercise, and typically last about 24 hours. What’s more, consistent exercise (3 or more times per week for 30 minutes per session) will result in higher “baseline” (or starting point) levels of positive emotions and lower negative emotions, and even reduce trait anxiety. How this happens is not entirely clear – although some people are convinced it is a result of changes in brain chemistry (release of endorphins and the like), the evidence is far from conclusive. Although there is no denying the influence of biology, psychological factors likely play a considerable role. Factors such as enhanced feelings of control, distraction from the hassles of daily life, and opportunities for feelings of competence and mastery clearly contribute to these benefits. But that brings up an important point – why are we more willing to accept biological or genetic explanations for a host of outcomes (from the causes of obesity and heart disease to the effect of exercise on quality of life) than psychological or sociological factors? This brings me back to that student’s question.
How can exercise be relaxing and energizing?!?
If we attempt to answer this question based solely on physical criteria, it is difficult to explain how someone can be both relaxed and energized at the same time. However, if we take a mind/body perspective on this, then the answer is far more accessible. In fact, it is possible to relax your mind and energize your body (or the opposite, for that matter) through activity. We are complex beings, perhaps nothing more complex than our brains and brain function. Thus, as we exercise, for whatever reason, we are able to put aside the stressors of the day and feel more relaxed mentally, while at the same time increase blood flow and oxygen delivery to our body and feel more energized. This is one reason why we should complete our exercise a few hours before we retire to bed – we want our bodies to catch up with our minds, so we enjoy the additional benefit of enhanced sleep from our physical activity.
The take-home message:
Embracing a mind/body perspective requires you to buy into a view of the world that is more complex and more “grey”. But that’s the reality – it is too simplistic (and too easy) to blame or explain extremely complex behaviors (like exercise or eating) on a gene. Even if there is a gene for activity (or inactivity), that gene can still be suppressed or activated by environmental, social, and personal factors. We do have a great deal of control over our behavior – we can choose to be more active and we can choose to feel better about ourselves. Luckily, exercise is a great way to feel better…in both mind and body!
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This article was contributed by Diane Whaley and Blake Rushin of the University of Virginia. Copyright 2007.
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