Need a New Year’s Resolution? Try Exercise!

By Ahmed Raza Khan, MD, MPH

Follow@AhmedRazaKhanMD

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Physician at Stanford University
School of Medicine



Most people know that exercise is beneficial for cardiac health and is prescribed by physicians for the prevention and alleviation of various medical complications. But what if I told you exercise can also significantly benefit your mental health in more ways than one? Let’s take a look at some of the ways exercise can improve mental health and how to incorporate this into your new year’s resolution list!

Exercise and Depression Prevention:More than 350 million people in the world suffer from depression and it is the leading
cause of disability worldwide.  Exercise
has often been considered as a supplemental tool in treating depression, but
recent evidence points to exercise playing a role in the prevention of future
depressive episodes. These recent findings show that even low levels of
physical activity (e.g., walking less than 150 minutes a week) can prevent
future depression. There has been significant research in the last few years
that links cardiovascular health’s role in the origin of depression. This would
certainly be a plausible explanation for why exercise may prevent depression.



Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention:Alzheimer’s
disease is a chronic, degenerative disease of the brain that affects over
25 million people in the world. This illness leads to a progressive mental
decline, steering its victims to dependence on caregivers and, eventually,
death. Amyloid plaques are abnormal clusters of protein fragments that are
found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and are thought to
play a major role in its progression. Recent studies have found that people who
exercised at or above the levels recommended by the American Heart Association
had significantly lower numbers of amyloid plaques than those who exercised
less. This was the case for even those who carried the APOE-e4 gene
variant, which is an established risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. When
people with the APOE-e4 gene variant were compared, those with higher levels of
exercise had lower levels of amyloid plaques.



Improving Cognitive Functioning:Exercise has been shown
to increase cognitive functioning in rats. As rats get older, their memory
tends to diminish and this appears to be due to a drop of nerve synapses in the
hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. But after 12 weeks of voluntary
running, both memory and hippocampus nerve synapses were restored in these
rats.



Consistency in Exercise:Recent neuroscientific
studies have shown that the cognitive benefit of exercise may have a window of
time. In fact, rats that improved their cognitive functioning by exercise, had
this improvement dissipate in 3-6 weeks of inactivity. This is similar to what
is seen with muscle mass or heart rate when exercise is withdrawn. This
evidence intimates that exercise is beneficial for the brain and should be
performed consistently.



The American Heart Association is a great
resource for planning the amount and type of exercise one needs. They recommend
at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity at least 5 days a
week for a total of 150 minutes or at least 25 minutes of vigorous aerobic
activity 3 days a week for a total of 75 minutes. An easy target to remember:
30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

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