By Mitch Rice
Do you find yourself living a sedentary lifestyle? Maybe you’re working from home or are just feeling tired, having no strength to perform any activities. Either way, neglecting physical activity can significantly impact your mental well-being.
This article will explore the effects of exercise on mental health and see why it’s essential to stay physically active. You will learn about the benefits of regular exercise; some of them are obvious, while others not so much.
But before we dive into such details, let’s start by seeing why a healthy mind needs a healthy body!
Physical And Mental Health Connection
An individual’s mental health depends on much more than just psychological factors. Mental fortitude and clarity are closely tied to physical competence and stability. Because of this, people have to maintain a healthy balance of physical and mental activity, as one compliments the other.
Stress is certainly not just a psychological phenomenon. It has drastic physical consequences, too. Often, a person’s weak physical condition will be reflected in their mental life, and vice versa.
Now, dealing with everything that today’s world demands of you can be taxing. People easily slip into anxious or depressive episodes. If they ignore what’s happening, these episodes turn into long-term disorders.
Stress is a natural reaction that people have to certain situations. It’s a reaction to actual, potential, or perceived danger.
That last part is crucial here because a lot of stress comes from not dealing with perceived danger properly.
Stress has noticeable effects on the body as a whole. Your body reacts by tensing up and contracting muscles, and those muscles will remain tense as long as a stressor is present or until there’s a change of perception about the said stressor.
That is an entirely normal reaction to real or perceived threats in the environment. But, prolonged tension in the muscles could cause many problems. The pressure in a particular muscle group can spread to the rest of the body and cause various reactions and musculoskeletal disorders.
Consequences of Prolonged Negative Stimuli
Being under pressure and feeling overwhelmed are regular occurrences; these feelings are natural reactions to specific facts of life.
However, they become problematic when they become an everyday occurrence and the new “normal” for the body.
Dealing with unresolved negative emotions or stress for extended periods could lead to headaches, a lack of focus, insomnia, and excessive weight loss – or excessive weight gain – to name a few.
What Is Chronic Stress?
Chronic stress is being overwhelmed, tired, and under pressure for long periods. It goes beyond regular stressful episodes and can have numerous consequences on your health.
Some common signs of chronic stress include:
- Insomnia
- Changes in appetite
- Exhaustion
- Lack of emotional strength
- Inability to focus
- Pain in certain areas
Properly treating chronic stress primarily involves psychological help. More precisely, it requires learning adequate methods of dealing with stress and working with it. However, chronic stress, when left untreated, may end up needing psychiatric help, as well.
When assessing whether a patient is suffering from chronic stress or not, a mental health professional will consider several factors, including behavioral, physical, and emotional aspects.
The patient might be suffering from chronic stress if they’ve had several of the symptoms listed above for several weeks.
How Exercise Helps Relieve Stress
Stress and exercise have an established inverse relationship, although the degree varies from person to person.
Physicians recommend regular exercise because it’s a physical activity, and any physical activity is welcome when improving mental health. Some folks can’t do much besides taking regular walks, yielding positive results.
On the other hand, being inactive for extended periods could cause numerous mental health issues. For example, it can lead to anxiety and depression, increasingly common issues people face today.
The Initial Hurdle
So, exercising is very beneficial to us; we’ve established that. But why is it so hard to start?
It’s normal to run into a wall when starting a new exercise plan. If challenging physical activity isn’t a part of your routine, it’s a massive step outside your comfort zone.
That’s what mostly comes down to your comfort zone.
It’s hard when starting. There’s no reason to deny that. But over time, it becomes an activity that people genuinely enjoy. Physical activity becomes a part of your routine when your comfort zone expands. You might find yourself looking forward to it.
Granted, that may sound silly or flat-out impossible to some readers at the moment. That is especially true for people with deep depression, often linked to passive, sedentary behaviors, making it even more difficult for individuals to leave their comfort zone.
Exercise Changes Your Responses to Negative Stimuli
As previously stated, perceived threats are equally as important as real threats.
Stress is a reaction, coming in two phases. The first is your body’s automatic reaction to something; you can’t fully control this; it’s involuntary. The second is how you react to it. You can choose whether you’ll let yourself spiral into panic or remain calm.
The exact process can be ascribed to any negative experience.
Exercising puts your body under physical stress and voluntarily at that. Doing such activities regularly means getting used to the stress over time. You will know that you can overcome it and work through it.
Therefore, it becomes much easier to handle negative emotions once they occur in everyday life. This feeling of confidence despite being stressed, sad, or afraid is a trait anyone can achieve.
Exercising Helps You Sleep Better
Sleep plays a significant part in your overall mental health. Maintaining a regular, stable circadian rhythm has been proven to help with mental health issues and improve your mood.
Conversely, sleep deficiency also brings bad moods and various chronic health problems.
Exercising regularly will naturally tire out your body. This exhaustion usually leads people who exercise to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier instead of staying up late. Regularly, this routine helps reestablish a normal circadian rhythm or, in other words, a stable sleep schedule.
Diet and Mood Regulation
Regular exercise boosts not only endorphins but your serotonin and dopamine levels, too. Endorphins help alleviate the pain from strenuous physical activity, whereas serotonin and dopamine are directed more towards mood regulation.
More precisely, serotonin is primarily responsible for the feelings of happiness and calmness, while dopamine is considered part of our brain’s “reward systems.” The satisfaction you feel when you achieve a goal or do something significant is caused by higher dopamine levels.
Regardless of their different functions, all these chemicals provide positive feelings in your body and act as a positive feedback loop that keeps your body in check.
Establish A Routine
At this point, it’s evident that there are some intangible results of regular exercise. Having a daily routine has a positive effect on your mental health.
Of course, having a routine could also mean doing nothing and living a sedentary lifestyle. On the other hand, regular exercise puts you in a state of mind that’s more oriented towards being proactive in other aspects of your life. Daily life becomes more manageable with a stable sleep schedule, a good diet, and regular exercise.
Data and information are provided for informational purposes only, and are not intended for investment or other purposes.
