Exercise

Posted on Exercise, Mental health

Exercise is more effective than medicines in managing mental health

Exercise more effective than medicines to manage mental health
Exercise more effective than medicines to manage mental health


University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications.

Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the review is the most comprehensive to date, encompassing 97 reviews, 1039 trials and 128,119 participants. It shows that physical activity is extremely beneficial for improving symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress.

Specifically, the review showed that exercise interventions that were 12 weeks or shorter were most the effective at reducing mental health symptoms, highlighting the speed at which physical activity can make a change.

The largest benefits were seen among people with depression, pregnant and postpartum women, healthy individuals, and people diagnosed with HIV or kidney disease.

According to the World Health Organization, one in every eight people worldwide (970 million people) live with a mental disorder. Poor mental health costs the world economy approximately $2.5 trillion each year, a cost projected to rise to $6 trillion by 2030. In Australia, an estimated one in five people (aged 16–85) have experienced a mental disorder in the past 12 months. 

Lead UniSA researcher, Dr Ben Singh, says physical activity must be prioritised to better manage the growing cases of mental health conditions.

“Physical activity is known to help improve mental health. Yet despite the evidence, it has not been widely adopted as a first-choice treatment,” Dr Singh says.

“Our review shows that physical activity interventions can significantly reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in all clinical populations, with some groups showing even greater signs of improvement.

“Higher intensity exercise had greater improvements for depression and anxiety, while longer durations had smaller effects when compared to short and mid-duration bursts.

“We also found that all types of physical activity and exercise were beneficial, including aerobic exercise such as walking, resistance training, Pilates, and yoga.

“Importantly, the research shows that it doesn’t take much for exercise to make a positive change to your mental health.”

Senior researcher, UniSA’s Prof Carol Maher, says the study is the first to evaluate the effects of all types of physical activity on depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in all adult populations.

“Examining these studies as a whole is an effective way to for clinicians to easily understand the body of evidence that supports physical activity in managing mental health disorders.

“We hope this review will underscore the need for physical activity, including structured exercise interventions, as a mainstay approach for managing depression and anxiety.”

Posted on Exercise

Using running to escape everyday stresses may lead to exercise dependence instead of mental wellbeing

Scientists find that using running to escape from negative experiences rather than to escape to positive ones may lead to exercise dependence among runners
Scientists find that using running to escape from negative experiences rather than to escape to positive ones may lead to exercise dependence among runners

Recreational running offers a lot of physical and mental health benefits – but some people can develop exercise dependence, a form of addiction to physical activity which can cause health issues. Shockingly, signs of exercise dependence are common even in recreational runners. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology investigated whether the concept of escapism can help us understand the relationship between running, wellbeing, and exercise dependence.

“Escapism is an everyday phenomenon among humans, but little is known regarding its motivational underpinnings, how it affects experiences, and the psychological outcomes from it,” said Dr Frode Stenseng of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, lead author of the paper.

Running to explore or to evade?

“Escapism is often defined as ‘an activity, a form of entertainment, etc. that helps you avoid or forget unpleasant or boring things’. In other words, many of our everyday activities may be interpreted as escapism,” said Stenseng. “The psychological reward from escapism is reduced self-awareness, less rumination, and a relief from one’s most pressing, or stressing, thoughts and emotions.”

Escapism can restore perspective, or it can act as a distraction from problems that need to be tackled. Escapism which is adaptive, seeking out positive experiences, is referred to as self-expansion. Meanwhile maladaptive escapism, avoiding negative experiences, is called self-suppression. Effectively, running as exploration or as evasion.

“These two forms of escapism are stemming from two different mindsets, to promote a positive mood, or prevent a negative mood,” said Stenseng.

Escapist activities used for self-expansion have more positive effects but also more long-term benefits. Self-suppression, by contrast, tends to suppress positive feelings as well as negative ones and lead to avoidance.

Self-suppression associated with exercise dependence

The team recruited 227 recreational runners, half men and half women, with widely varying running practices. They were asked to fill out questionnaires which investigated three different aspects of escapism and exercise dependence: an escapism scale which measured preference for self-expansion or self-suppression, an exercise dependence scale, and a satisfaction with life scale designed to measure the participants’ subjective wellbeing.

The scientists found that there was very little overlap between runners who favored self-expansion and runners who preferred self-suppression modes of escapism. Self-expansion was positively related with wellbeing, while self-suppression was negatively related to wellbeing. Self-suppression and self-expansion were both linked to exercise dependence, but self-suppression was much more strongly linked to it. Neither escapism mode was linked to age, gender, or amount of time a person spent running, but both affected the relationship between wellbeing and exercise dependence. Whether or not a person fulfilled criteria for exercise dependence, a preference for self-expansion would still be linked to a more positive sense of their own wellbeing.

Although exercise dependence corrodes the potential wellbeing gains from exercise, it seems that perceiving lower wellbeing may be both a cause and an outcome of exercise dependency: the dependency might be driven by lower wellbeing as well as promoting it.

Similarly, experiencing positive self-expansion might be a psychological motive that promotes exercise dependence.

“More studies using longitudinal research designs are necessary to unravel more of the motivational dynamics and outcomes in escapism,” said Stenseng. “But these findings may enlighten people in understanding their own motivation, and be used for therapeutical reasons for individuals striving with a maladaptive engagement in their activity.”

Posted on Exercise

Rx for prolonged sitting: A five-minute stroll every half hour


Mounting evidence suggests prolonged sitting—a staple of modern-day life—is hazardous to your health, even if you exercise regularly. Based on these findings, doctors advise all adults to sit less and move more.

But how often do we need to get up from our chairs? And for how long? 

Few studies have compared multiple options to determine the answer most office workers want: What is the least amount of activity needed to counteract the health impact of a workday filled with sitting?

A study by Columbia University exercise physiologists has an answer: just five minutes of walking every half hour during prolonged sitting can offset some of the most harmful effects.

The study, led by Keith Diaz, PhD, associate professor of behavioural medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, was published online in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Unlike other studies that test one or two activity options, Diaz’s study tested five different exercise “snacks”: one minute of walking after every 30 minutes of sitting, one minute after 60 minutes; five minutes every 30; five minutes every 60; and no walking. 

“If we hadn’t compared multiple options and varied the frequency and duration of the exercise, we would have only been able to provide people with our best guesses of the optimal routine,” Diaz says.

Each of the 11 adults who participated in the study came to Diaz’s laboratory. Participants sat in an ergonomic chair for eight hours, rising only for their prescribed exercise snack of treadmill walking or a bathroom break. Researchers kept an eye on each participant to ensure they did not over- or under-exercise and periodically measured their blood pressure and blood sugar (key indicators of cardiovascular health). Participants were allowed to work on a laptop, read, and use their phones during the sessions and were provided standardized meals.

The optimal amount of movement, the researchers found, was five minutes of walking every 30 minutes. This was the only amount that significantly lowered blood sugar and blood pressure. In addition, this walking regimen dramatically affected how the participants responded to large meals, reducing blood sugar spikes by 58% compared with sitting all day.

Taking a walking break every 30 minutes for one minute also provided modest benefits for blood sugar levels throughout the day, while walking every 60 minutes (either for one minute or five minutes) provided no benefit.

All walking significantly reduced blood pressure by 4 to 5 mmHg compared with sitting all day. “This is a sizeable decrease, comparable to the reduction you would expect from exercising daily for six months,” says Diaz.

The researchers also periodically measured participants’ mood, fatigue, and cognitive performance levels during the testing. All walking regimens, except walking one minute every hour, led to significant decreases in fatigue and significant improvements in mood. None of the walking regimens influenced cognition.

“The effects on mood and fatigue are important,” Diaz says. “People tend to repeat behaviours that make them feel good and enjoyable.”

The Columbia researchers are currently testing 25 different doses of walking on health outcomes and testing a wider variety of people: Participants in the current study were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and most did not have diabetes or high blood pressure. 

“What we know now is that for optimal health, you need to move regularly at work, in addition to a daily exercise routine,” says Diaz. “While that may sound impractical, our findings show that even small amounts of walking spread through the workday can significantly lower your risk of heart disease and other chronic illnesses.”

Posted on Diabetes, Exercise

Researchers shed light on how exercise preserves physical fitness during ageing

Autism and exercise

Proven to protect against a wide array of diseases, exercise may be the most powerful anti-aging intervention known to science. However, while physical activity can improve health during aging, its beneficial effects inevitably decline. The cellular mechanisms underlying the relationship among exercise, fitness and aging remain poorly understood.  

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center investigated the role of one cellular mechanism in improving physical fitness by exercise training and identified one anti-aging intervention that delayed the declines that occur with aging in the model organism. Together, the scientists’ findings open the door to new strategies for promoting muscle function during aging.  

“Exercise has been widely employed to improve quality of life and to protect against degenerative diseases, and in humans, a long-term exercise regimen reduces overall mortality,” said co-corresponding author T. Keith Blackwell, MD, PhD, a senior investigator and section head of Islet Cell and Regenerative Biology at Joslin. “Our data identify an essential mediator of exercise responsiveness and an entry point for interventions to maintain muscle function during aging.” 

That essential mediator is the cycle of fragmentation and repair of the mitochondria, the specialized structures, or organelles, inside every cell responsible for producing energy. Mitochondrial function is critical to health, and disruption of mitochondrial dynamics  the cycle of repairing dysfunctional mitochondria and restoring the connectivity among the energy-producing organelles — has been linked to the development and progression of chronic, age-related diseases, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.  

“As we perceive that our muscles undergo a pattern of fatigue and restoration after an exercise session, they are undergoing this mitochondrial dynamic cycle,” said Blackwell, who is also acting section head of Immunobiology at Joslin. “In this process, muscles manage the aftermath of the metabolic demand of exercise and restore their functional capability.” 

Blackwell and colleagues — including co-corresponding author Julio Cesar Batista Ferreira, PhD, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Sao Paulo — investigated the role of mitochondrial dynamics during exercise in the model organism C. elegans, a simple, well-studied microscopic worm species frequently used in metabolic and aging research. 

Recording wild type C. elegans worms as they swam or crawled, the investigators observed a typical age-related decline in physical fitness over the animals’ 15 days of adulthood. The scientists also showed a significant and progressive shift toward fragmented and/or disorganized mitochondria in the aging animals. For example, they observed in young worms on day 1 of adulthood, a single bout of exercise induced fatigue after one hour. The 60-minute session also caused an increase in mitochondrial fragmentation in the animals’ muscle cells, but a period of 24 hours was sufficient to restore both performance and mitochondrial function.  

In older (day 5 and day 10) worms, the animals’ performance did not return to baseline within 24 hours. Likewise, the older animals’ mitochondria underwent a cycle of fragmentation and repair, but the network reorganization that occurred was reduced compared to that of the younger animals. 

“We determined that a single exercise session induces a cycle of fatigue and physical fitness recovery that is paralleled by a cycle of the mitochondrial network rebuilding,” said first author Juliane Cruz Campos, a postdoctoral fellow at Joslin Diabetes Center. “Aging dampened the extent to which this occurred and induced a parallel decline in physical fitness. That suggested that mitochondrial dynamics might be important for maintaining physical fitness and possibly for physical fitness to be enhanced by a bout of exercise.”  

In a second set of experiments, the scientists allowed wild type worms to swim for one hour per day for 10 consecutive days, starting at the onset of adulthood. The team found that — as in people — the long-term training program significantly improved the animals’ middle-aged fitness at day 10, and mitigated the impairment of mitochondrial dynamics typically seen during aging.  

Finally, the researchers tested known, lifespan-extending interventions for their ability to improve exercise capacity during aging. Worms with increased AMPK — a molecule that is a key regulator of energy during exercise which also promotes remodeling of mitochondrial morphology and metabolism — exhibited improved physical fitness. They also demonstrated maintenance of, but not enhancement of, exercise performance during aging. Worms engineered to lack AMPK exhibited reduced physical fitness during aging as well as impairment of the recovery cycle. They also did not receive the age-delaying benefits of exercise over the course of the lifespan.  

“An important goal of the aging field is to identify interventions that not only extend lifespan but also enhance health and quality of life,” said Blackwell, who is also a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. “In aging humans a decline in muscle function and exercise tolerance is a major concern that leads to substantial morbidity. Our data point towards potentially fruitful intervention points for forestalling this decline — most likely along with other aspects of aging. It will be of great interest to determine how mitochondrial network plasticity influences physical fitness along with longevity and aging-associated diseases in humans.” 

Posted on Cardiovascular disease, Diabetes, Exercise

Heart health tip for older adults in 2023: Step it up a bit

Ongoing research shows significant cardiovascular benefits at 6,000 daily walking steps at any pace

Lead author

Amanda Paluch is an assistant professor of kinesiology in the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health SciencesCREDIT John Solem/UMass Amherst

The evidence-based health benefits of walking continue to accumulate, according to ongoing research by a University of Massachusetts Amherst physical activity epidemiologist, who leads an international consortium known as the Steps for Health Collaborative. 

Findings from the latest study led by Amanda Paluch, assistant professor of kinesiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, show that older adults who walked between 6,000 and 9,000 steps per day had a 40-50% reduced risk of a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke, compared to those who walked 2,000 steps per day. 

“We found for adults over 60, there was a strikingly lower risk of a cardiovascular event or disease over an average follow-up of six years,” says Paluch, whose team’s research was published this week in the journal Circulation. “When accumulating more steps per day, there was a progressively lower risk.”

Earlier this year, research by Paluch and the Steps for Health Collaborative showed that more movement, even below the highly touted but unscientific “10,000 steps per day,” was associated with longevity benefits. The meta-analysis of 15 studies involving nearly 50,000 people from four continents found that walking between 6,000 and 8,000 steps per day was linked with a lower risk of death from all causes among older adults.

Following those findings, Paluch and team wanted to tackle the less-charted territory of steps per day and cardiovascular disease. The results were similar, in terms of the most beneficial range of steps. 

While there appears to be a continual additional benefit for those who walk more than 6,000 steps, Paluch says, encouraging the least-active older adults to take more steps is perhaps the most important public health message.

“The people who are the least active have the most to gain,” she says. “For those who are at 2,000 or 3,000 steps a day, doing a little bit more can mean a lot for their heart health. If you’re at 6,000 steps, getting to 7,000 and then to 8,000 also is beneficial, it’s just a smaller, incremental improvement.”

The meta-analysis of eight studies involved more than 20,000 people from the U.S. and 42 other countries. For younger adults, no link between steps per day and cardiovascular risk was detected. 

“This is because cardiovascular disease is a disease of aging and often doesn’t come to fruition until we’re at older ages,” says Paluch, whose project was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “You’re not going to see many people develop cardiovascular disease after six years of follow-up in young to middle adulthood.”

Future research involving younger adults and steps per day would focus on the precursors of cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, obesity and type 2 diabetes. “Those conditions develop in younger adults and are important for early prevention,” Paluch says.

Four of the eight studies the researchers analyzed included data about walking intensity, or how fast the steps were taken. “We’re interpreting these results with caution, but we did not find any striking association with walking intensity,” she says. “There was no additional benefit with how fast you’re walking, beyond the total number of steps that you accumulated.”

Paluch is among the researchers working to build a firm evidence base to guide public health recommendations for simple, accessible physical activity, such as walking.