Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

2341 readers

251 users here now

Health: physical and mental, individual and public.

Discussions, issues, resources, news, everything.

See the pinned post for a long list of other communities dedicated to health or specific diagnoses. The list is continuously updated.

Nothing here shall be taken as medical or any other kind of professional advice.

Commercial advertising is considered spam and not allowed. If you're not sure, contact mods to ask beforehand.

Linked videos without original description context by OP to initiate healthy, constructive discussions will be removed.

Regular rules of lemmy.world apply. Be civil.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Awa@lemmy.world

WhoRoger@lemmy.world

RoyalEngineering@lemmy.world

159

Exercise should be ‘core treatment’ for depression – study (www.standard.co.uk)

submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/health@lemmy.world

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Exercise should be a “core treatment” for people with depression, academics have said, after a new study suggested that some forms of exercise were just as good as therapy and even better than anti-depressants.

Walking, jogging, yoga and strength training appeared to be more effective than other types of exercises, according to a major new analysis.

And the more vigorous the exercise, the better, according to a research team led by academics in Australia.

But even low intensity exercises such as walking and yoga had meaningful benefit.

The effect of exercise appeared superior to antidepressants, according to the study which has been published in The BMJ.

But when exercise was combined with antidepressants, this improved the effect of the drugs.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Lumelore@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I hate when people tell depressed people to "just go work out." When I was struggling with depression, I could hardly get out of bed and put on a fresh change of clothes, and somehow, they thought that I'm going to go outside and go for a walk! They really need to start with something more realistic like telling them to finally go and brush their teeth, because that is a lot more doable for them, and that still feels good too.

I do recognize that exercise does help. I'm in a lot better place now and I exercise daily, but if you're asking a depressed person to do that, you might as well be talking to a rock. Also sometimes people are just really depressed, and even if they do exercise, it hardly helps, since exercise probably isn't fixing the root issue.

[–] lapping6596@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

During my deepest depression I would go to the gym to lift weights because it was an invisible way to punish myself.

[–] Lumelore@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 9 months ago

I'm curious, did that make you feel better or worse? I used to punish myself by slicing up my forearm and it did make me feel happy even though it was a terrible way to go about doing that.