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Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

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Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#141

Post by parpfish »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #68
cheald wrote: post #2

This is a finding that keeps coming up, and I've certainly found it true in my life, but there's a significant chicken-and-egg problem in that depression frequently precludes the motivation to exercise, and if you don't already have a deeply-disciplined routine to overcome the lack of motivation, people won't do it. Exhortation to develop those good habits in the good times, I suppose.

Motivation is fleeting but routine persists. When there is something that you want to do regularly (exercise, doing the final boring part of some sideproject, cleaning the house...) you remove willpower from the equation and set a day and a time. For example, everyday from 18 to 19 I work on my sideprojects, or saturdays from 16 to 18 is house cleaning time. There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that…

An easier routine for me to manage house cleaning is to set up a calendar with one little chore each day.

List out what needs to be done every week, every month, every season, and set them up to repeat.

Every day you do your little two minute task (clean the bathroom mirrors; vacuum a single room), so you get a little win. And they’re each so small that it never feels like you need to switch into a long “cleaning binge” that you need to dread.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#142

Post by pedalpete »

There is a tri-lateral(?) relationship between exercise, sleep, diet, and how the three impact mental health.

A waste product of exercise is Adenosine. Adenosine build-up leads to increased sleep pressure, and improved Neural Function of Sleep, not just "being unconscious".

This is where things get a bit interesting when we look at depression. For many people, depression results in decreased Neural Function of Sleep (specifically slow-wave activity) even though sleep time often increases.

However there is also some evidence that restricting slow-wave activity can act as a "reset" button. The researchers I have spoken to about this are either in the "too dangerous to do the research" camp, or "distrupting slow-waves for a very short period, then increase slow-wave activity".

Of course, sleep and exercise would only be a single pathway to improving depression outcomes. Exercise alone, and the dopamine, oxygenation, and many other outcomes are also likely to come into play.

Comparing this to pharmaceutical or behavioural therapies, I can see why they'd be as effective. You're treating the entire system, not just trying to change a single chemical in the brain, specifically when we aren't even measuring the chemical before or after treatment.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#143

Post by carlosjobim »

skywhopper wrote: post #126
browningstreet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you eat poorly, those foods will not satiate and the "hunger" (it's not the hunger of a body starved of calories) persists. Eat for sustenance and the hunger you may feel will be different. I also know that if I overeat, I have a strong urge to keep feeding (more chips, more pizza, more chipsahoy). Whereas when I eat a proper meal, I'm fine when the eating of that meal ends.

I hope you realize that what works for you and your body doesn’t work for everyone. Your experience is not universal. Your body chemistry and genetics are not universal.

When it comes to the most basic instincts, it is universal and genetic. We do not differ in that.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#144

Post by WalterBright »

CrossVR wrote: post #53
LorenPechtel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.

This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.

Curiously, if I'm busy I don't get hungry. I don't eat before going out dirt biking, and don't feel hungry at all until after the riding is done and the bikes loaded on the trailer and turning on to the road home.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#145

Post by MikeNotThePope »

isk517 wrote: post #132

Exercise is great, just make sure to take sometime to evaluate where you are at mentally. I was running about 40 miles and doing 5 hours of lifting per week to try and stay a head of my depression, and when I finally burnt out everything came crashing down all at once.

Exercise is great for addressing feelings related to being physically inactive. It won’t address other mental health issues, such as learning to control your emotions & fostering healthy relationships.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#146

Post by refulgentis »

Jtsummers wrote: post #84
LorenPechtel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting moving *is* exercise. No way could I do a gym and these days most things in a gym would be just begging for joint pain. But the wilderness is a great gym (assuming you know what you're doing safety-wise, I see too many idiots out there.)

> Getting moving *is* exercise. There's a difference between what something is and what something is perceived as. For whatever reasons they may have, many people have a strong negative emotional reaction to the idea of exercising, ask them to go for a two mile walk around the neighborhood with you and they'll balk. But then you take them to a city like Rome and they'll walk 20 miles in a day without even realizing i…

(context: gp poster) It's extremely funny to contemplate what my resumé would say about my intelligence vs. it taking 11 years of really worrying about my mental state consistently, occasionally trying to precisely define "exercise" via my mental health professionals and get in the weight room, when I knew the whole time about that phenomenon. i.e. I'd play pickup basketball for 3 hours post-high school but wouldn't run for 10 minutes. (not saying you're wrong, the opposite, it is the fundamental core lesson. intellectual error was forgetting to expand "exercise" to include walking to places I wanted to be)

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#147

Post by broof »

cheald wrote: post #2

This is a finding that keeps coming up, and I've certainly found it true in my life, but there's a significant chicken-and-egg problem in that depression frequently precludes the motivation to exercise, and if you don't already have a deeply-disciplined routine to overcome the lack of motivation, people won't do it. Exhortation to develop those good habits in the good times, I suppose.

Also the bad times can be a great time to build good habits. I’ve tried and failed to develop an exercise routine many times, but it wasn’t until I was laid off for 6 months that it finally stuck. I had a friend who went to the gym every day in the middle of the day so I didn’t really have a reason not to go. 6 months was long enough for the habit to stick and fast forward years later and I still have the habit. It’s been so good that I regularly think about how good it was that I had the opportunity to be laid off.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#148

Post by parpfish »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #69
boplicity wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on where to allocate this very limited resources, especially in situations where people are otherwise struggling. All of which is to say -- these exhortations can play a useful role. :)

It's also worth noting that willpower in general is constantly being whittled down by how stressful and, for lack of better term, fucking annoying modern life is. I'm reminded of a quote from my favorite article from Ed Zitron: > In plain terms, everybody is being fucked with constantly in tiny little ways by most apps and services, and I believe that billions of people being fucked with at once in all of these ways…

I just got a new phone which meant I had to read-login and set up every app and account.

It was an intense deluge of SMS codes, flipping back and forth to the Authenticator, dismissing welcome popup modals, security email notifications.

I was frazzled by the multitasking and can only imagine how hard it would have been for some senior citizen that was badgered into updating their device.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#149

Post by kayodelycaon »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #48
boplicity wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on where to allocate this very limited resources, especially in situations where people are otherwise struggling. All of which is to say -- these exhortations can play a useful role. :)

Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.

I seriously dispute this. I spent weeks not being able to eat enough. I hardly lost weight despite being close to the optimal calorie range to do so.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#150

Post by D-Machine »

gehsty wrote: post #19

If it helps anyone I take antidepressants and have had a positive experience with them. Depression can be caused by a chemical imbalance and no amount of exercise or talking about it will fix it. One of the most frustrating things when your really low is people giving advice like do exercise to feel better - please don’t do this.

"Chemical imbalance" theories of depression (e.g. "serotonin hypothesis") have been scientifically discredited for well over a decade now.

EDIT: For a recent overview, see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

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