Exercise right week 2018
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What’s your motivation to move? This week (21st-27th of May) is exercise right week.
It is well known that there are many benefits of exercise on health, but how about mental health? Research is becoming increasingly more popular in to the area and has found consistently that exercise has a positive effect on mental health. Exercise has been shown to have positive effects on anxiety, stress and depression.
How exactly?
This is through a number of mechanisms, both physiological and psychological.
Physiologically, when you exercise, your body releases endorphins and serotonin, also known as ‘natural mood boosters’.
Psychologically, there are a number of hypothesises which suggest how exercise benefits mental health, including the distraction hypothesis, which suggest that the mental ‘time-out’ when exercising allows for elevated moods, and the self-efficacy hypothesis, which suggests that as exercise is often deemed an important task, once complete it will give a sense of self-efficacy and therefore have positive effects on mood.
Also, exercise is known the benefit self-esteem and improve sleep, which can have positive effects on mental health. Of course, along with benefits on mental health, exercise also improved cardiovascular fitness, reduces blood pressure and helps prevent chronic diseases.
What kind of exercise is right?
A number of studies have researched what type of exercise is the most effective in improving mental health. However, results have shown that no particular type is the most effective. Both aerobic exercise (swimming, running, walking), strength training other activities such as yoga have all seen improvements in mental health compared to control groups who did not participate in activity. This suggests that picking the type of exercise you enjoy the most will be the most beneficial. An accredited exercise physiologist can help you with expert advice in helping you to get moving.
You can find out more about our exercise physiology services here.
Book an appointment at Coast Sport by calling (02) 4356 2588 or book online via the button below.
References
Mikkelsen, K., Stojanovska, L., Polenakovic, M., Bosevski, M., & Apostolopoulos. (2017). Exercise and mental health, Maturitas, 106, 48-56
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