Here’s to an active body for a healthy mind
This age-old but simple advice holds much truth: “Exercise to improve your wellbeing”. With many of us living with work-from-home circumstances, we mostly spend our days in the same room eating, sleeping and working. If we do not make a constant effort towards maintaining our mental and physical health, it is easy to end up pulling all-nighters, eating poorly and ‘rotting’ into a couch potato. Such a sedentary lifestyle is a recipe for several cardiovascular complications and declining mental health in the future.
Simple exercise activities can prevent the aforementioned conditions from happening. Below are some scientific explanations on the mental health benefits of physical activity that hopefully get you moving after this quick read!
Firstly, exercise improves your mood. As suggested by a European Life Sciences Journal, exercise increases blood circulation in the brain. This influences the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is a set of organs in the body responsible for functions such as stress responses and mood. All these improve the body’s physiological reactivity to stress. Hence, exercise greatly enhances our mood and reduces our levels of stress immensely. A string of benefits come along with it as well, such as reduced anxiety and depression.
Exercising regulates your sleep. As humans, we spend almost a third of our lives in dreamland, proving how crucial sleep is for our survival. For instance, sleep deprivation has detrimental repercussions on your psychological state and mental health. Insufficient sleep, especially REM sleep, prevents the brain from processing emotional information properly, hence negatively influencing mood and emotional reactivity. To improve sleep, exercise. According to an article by Harvard Health, regular aerobic activity facilitates sleep, increases time spent in deep sleep, thereby improving quality of sleep. With this, our mental health will drastically improve as well.
Lastly, exercising can be a social activity that alleviates symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal. By grabbing a friend to the gym or going for hikes together, it affords individuals opportunities to interact with others. Based on a study from the University of Minnesota, it is reported that young adults who socialise while exercising have better mental health than those who did not. Furthermore, the same study suggested that the social aspect of exercising is responsible for some of the mental benefits.
So, how do you get started on exercising?
Here are some tips and tricks based on my personal experience of being a lazy oaf during these quarantine days.
Start small and start slow. Trust me, you do not want to plan a daily 2-hour gym workout when you’re getting started. It is easy to fall off the bandwagon, even if you pump some money into a gym membership. Begin with an activity that is manageable with a frequency that is slightly challenging but which you’re able to commit to. For example, I always start with daily 20 minute walks after breaking out of a couch-potato funk.
Figure out your favourite activity. This is so, so important! What works for others may not work for you. Last year, I had a horrible month of dreading High-Intensity Interval Trainings (HIIT) when I was following an exercise regimen promoted by a YouTuber. Finding your favourite sport may be a long process of elimination, but it is definitely worthwhile. You will find that exercise is something you look forward to instead of a punishment- which it should not be!
Find an exercise buddy. This definitely has its perks. While exercise can be alone-time for some, spending it with friends is another approach to get you going. When I was staying in my university’s hostel, I definitely looked forward to those evening runs with friends and suppertime together after.
Make exercising a habit. This one’s easy to say but difficult to follow through. Honestly, I myself have not mastered this yet! While this is a work in progress, I can say for sure that if you treat exercise as similar to washing your face every morning, getting yourself moving will be easy-breezy. By incorporating exercise into your daily routine, it will become an emotional outlet for you after a long day cooped up indoors too.
Last but not least, make exercise an activity you have fun with and look forward to. Due to its scientifically proven benefits on mental health, exercise is considered essential in my opinion. If so, it should be something you truly enjoy. From pole dancing to kick-boxing, the possibilities are endless!
There you go. Hopefully, this blog post convinces you to consider exercise as a method to improve your mental health, and equips you with some advice to get you started!
References:
Sharma, A., Madaan, V., & Petty, F. D. (2006). Exercise for mental health. Primary care companion to the Journal of clinical psychiatry, 8(2), 106. https://doi.org/10.4088/pcc.v08n0208a
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/sleep-and-mental-health
https://podcasts.ufhealth.org/exercising-and-socializing-can-lead-to-better-mental-health/
Aminoff MJ, Boller F, Swaab DF. We spend about one-third of our life either sleeping or attempting to do so. Handb Clin Neurol. 2011;98:vii. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-444-52006-7.00047-2. PMID: 21056174. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21056174/
Guszkowska M. [Effects of exercise on anxiety, depression and mood]. Psychiatria Polska. 2004 Jul-Aug;38(4):611-620. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15518309/