The Importance of Exercise and Your Mental Health
For many years scientists believed the mind and body were not one, each worked individually and did not communicate. With many mistakes, much curiosity, and many experiments our knowledge of our sciences has evolved. Now we are more aware of our mind and body connection, how they work together, and how to keep both healthy for optimal health.
How Exercise Impacts Your Brain
“Aerobic exercises, including jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening, and dancing, have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression.3 These improvements in mood are proposed to be caused by exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain and by an influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and, thus, on the physiologic reactivity to stress.3
This physiologic influence is probably mediated by the communication of the HPA axis with several regions of the brain, including the limbic system, which controls motivation and mood; the amygdala, which generates fear in response to stress; and the hippocampus, which plays an important part in memory formation as well as in mood and motivation.”(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/)
This article is a great example of how exercise can impact the brain, it states:
Any type of exercise is a form of moving the body! From an intentional workout to gardening, you are moving which is creating an increase in blood circulation directly to the brain and places like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (a major system for controlling stress reactions and regulating many body processes). This increase in blood circulation causes the HPA axis to communicate with other parts of the brain, including the limbic system (control motivation and mood), amygdala (fight or flight response to fear/stress), and hippocampus (helps memory and mood).
Exercise improves mental health through the reduction of anxiety, depression, and negative spirit and improved self-appreciation and cognitive function. 2 Training to reduce symptoms like low self-esteem and retreat in society have also been shown. 3 Exercise in patients with schizophrenia is particularly important because those patients are already vulnerable to obesity, and because they are associated with atypical antipsychotics with additional weight gain risks.
For these health benefits, thirty minutes of exercise of moderate intensity, such as fast walking for three days per week. In addition, these 30 minutes do not have to continue, and three 10 minutes’ walk is as useful as a 30-minute walk. Regular exercise health benefits could improve sleep, increased sexual interest, better stamina, relief of stress, mood, energy, and reduce fatigue, weight loss, cholesterol reduction, and cardiovascular fitness.
