Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
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Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#2The role of brain health in mental illness is commonly discounted, but so consistently found in studies. I got roasted here for recommending psychiatrist Mary Edes' book on improving mental health with dietary changes, but the benefits of the approach are clear.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/27/1227062...
I've resolved most of my diabetes type 2 with diet, and nobody should be surprised that this came with improved mental clarity and emotional stability.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#3The role of brain health in mental illness is commonly discounted, but so consistently found in studies. I got roasted here for recommending psychiatrist Mary Edes' book on improving mental health with dietary changes, but the benefits of the approach are clear. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/27/1227062... I've resolved most of my diabetes type 2 with diet, and nobody should be surprised that this…
Your gut microbiome plays a huge part in brain health and mental illness. That's likely why improving your diet improved your mental clarity and emotional stability.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#4For those of you with better understanding, did they establish causality? Does exercise fend of mental disorders, or do people with mental disorders find it harder to exercise consistently? The first could be a novel finding, but the latter seems obvious. Forcing yourself to exercise routinely requires discipline, and many mental disorders carry along with them executive dysfunction that make discipline harder to come by.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#5less anxious / depressed kids get to do more sports in the first place. kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#6The role of brain health in mental illness is commonly discounted, but so consistently found in studies. I got roasted here for recommending psychiatrist Mary Edes' book on improving mental health with dietary changes, but the benefits of the approach are clear. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/27/1227062... I've resolved most of my diabetes type 2 with diet, and nobody should be surprised that this…
Your gut microbiome plays a huge part in brain health and mental illness. That's likely why improving your diet improved your mental clarity and emotional stability.
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Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#7less anxious / depressed kids get to do more sports in the first place. kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced.
I've also experienced that I feel better when I exercise more, when I get passed the initial "barrier to entry".
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#8shouldn't the title be "Physical weakness/unhealthiness and the risk of mental disorders"?
based on the abstract, Physical weakness/unhealthiness is positively correlate to mental disorders. not the opposite.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#9Not doubting the importance of physical activity, but poor mental health makes it significantly harder to maintain fitness as a child.
Often, school sports have minimum GPA requirements. A poor home life increases chances of mental illness and decreases chances that someone will drive you to practice. Will you even maintain the team sport if your teammates never accept you, given whatever mental condition that gives you anxiety or quirks? When can you even consider being active when much of the rest of your life is in shambles? You’re also less likely to have the ability to pay for it, given the correlations between low household income and poor mental health.
Poor mental health just makes everything harder to do, and you see that impact every aspect of life in aggregate.
The paper isn’t public so “controlling for confounders” is all you get, but I doubt they went through all the effort to have deep, revealing conversations about the home life or other nuanced cofounders of each participant.
Re: Physical fitness and risk of mental disorders in children and adolescents
#10less anxious / depressed kids get to do more sports in the first place. kids without "the right attitude" or a lack of innate ability are routinely excluded from sports, as im sure many of us here have experienced.
Perhaps that can be resolved by getting the children started in sports while they are very young?
But you may be right because I have experienced this while watching the other kids in my son's sports classes.
My son started going to a gym called "Kidstrong" when he was 3.5 years old. It was basically a bunch of kids following instructions and performing basic calisthenic exercises and beginner gymnastics moves.
However, we had to stop going because there was a kid in the class who simply couldn't get his act together. Maybe he was special needs or maybe that's just the way he was allowed to behave at home. But the coaches spent so much time trying to get that one kid to follow basic instructions that it ended up detracting from the time that my child and the other kids got with the coaches. It came to the point where my wife and I (along with a number of other parents) realized that we were paying $25 per 45 minute session for our children to sit and watch the coaches spend 20 minutes trying to corral this one kid who couldn't behave.
So we put my son into BJJ instead. And we're experiencing something very similar. There are two other kids in his class that simply can't follow instructions or chose not too. Fortunately this is a locally owned gym so we spoke to the owner about our concerns and he spoke to the kids' parents. The kids have been behaving better lately, but they still serve as a huge distraction.