Personal experience is that high intensity exercise mixed with a comforting ritual was what broke me out of a couple bouts of severe depression. When the streak was broken by an event or travel, and several days missing out on exercise followed, I would fall back into the depressive mood.<p>The most recent depressive bout was probably the most extreme I've gone through, and required a couple close friends to jump in, but again, routine exercise with comfortable bits of a routine mixed in - like making a cup of tea, making sure I have a podcast queued up, a book to read, and a handful of songs I like - has seemed to help pull me from the brink.<p>Now that I have eclipsed thirty years and I still am over 300 lbs, and some of the recent depression-like feelings, I am making a more of a cognisant action to keep working at this and to journal how I feel before, during, and after the routine.<p>I look forward to seeing this kind of work being taken a little more seriously as a means to treat depression as opposed to only medication and therapy.
My own experience attempting to use exercise to reverse moderate depression was that it correlated with me crashing into more serious depression.<p>It didn't make sense to me as I'd always heard that exercise was a solid remedy for mild depression.<p>It was when I read this 2005 article on Kuro5hin (RIP) called Demystifying Depression [1], that it made sense.<p>The section "The Role of Sports", with its explanation of the physiology behind the benefits and drawbacks of exercise for people with depression or burnout, is consistent with my own experience.<p>These days, having done a huge amount of work over 10+ years, including emotion-based treatments, diet/nutrition, and some pharmaceutical treatment, I can and do often undertake intensive exercise without negative effects.<p>But I still have to be careful - as the article says, listen to your body.<p>As a general comment about this document:<p>Anyone experiencing depression should seek professional help and should not make treatment decisions based on comments on internet discussion boards or online articles.<p>But as a lay-person's summary of the mechanics underpinning depression, I've not found anything better than this in the 14 years since it was first published.<p>If someone can recommend a better one, I'd be pleased to hear about it and will gladly start recommending it instead.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Demystifying_Depression/Print_version" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Demystifying_Depression/Print_...</a>
Exercise is probably one of the most robust treatments we have for a lot of mental health issues. Personal experience: I dealt with recurrent MDD for over a decade, and chronic fatigue/pain issues for many many years as well. There were years were exercise was impossible (I'd literally pass out on the gym floor after trying to work out).<p>However, after I got well enough to move, regular movement helped wonders (I also think it helps get you into an embodied consciousness that contains less interpretation and more direct experience/awareness - esp somatic practices of moving meditation, yoga, contact improvisation)<p>Also, once I started getting /serious/ about exercise - like actual cardio and weightlifting 5 days a week - my energy levels skyrocketed after about 2-3 months, but it did take a bit.<p>--<p>Slightly off topic, but I'm convinced we'll also eventually have a lot of robust data that shows that alcohol, even in minor but regular amounts (2-3 drinks most days of the week, say) has large negative effects on mood/energy that build up over time.<p>--<p>I don't have any problems with psychoactive drugs, SSRIs never helped me, nor tricyclics, (stimulants help mood/energy a lot but have significant negative effects)- but if someone wants to try them, by all means do!<p>However, if someone came to me struggling with depression, I'd nearly 100% of the time encourage them to start exercising regularly, cut alcohol/eat better, and see a talk therapist or work through a self-help workbook and see where they are at in 3 months whether or not they also wanted to take anti-depressants.
Personal anecdote: During a bad depressive time I saw a psychiatrist who enthusiastically prescribed serious antidepressant medications like they were M&M's. One to lift me up, one to help me sleep, one to take the edge off, one just in case an anxious episode occurred during the day, etc, etc. That kind of thing. And he said to me "There is still nothing I can prescribe you that is as effective as exercise."<p>Specifically, heavy weights.
Anecdota about depression and exercise:<p><i></i>*<p>It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in itself. You generally feel better after exercise.<p>It becomes much easier to hit the gym after realizing the reason to go is simply to feel better. Instead of thinking _I don't feel like going to the gym_ the correct cognition is _my medicine is there_.<p><i></i>*<p>There's a variety of options to exercise. Don't stick to running if you don't enjoy it (but you keep doing it because you feel better). There's a large menu of activities, at first try what is convenient, deliberately try many things and find what is more fulfilling to you.<p><i></i>*<p>With exercise nutrition follows quite naturally. It's difficult to navigate all the BS in nutrition, but in general eating fresh things closer to nature (leafs, fruit, veggies, nuts, lean meats) also has an impact on your wellbeing.<p><i></i>*<p>Often there are more issues other than lack of exercise. If you are socially isolated, if you are under constant stress, if your home situation is dire, exercise will help you cope with it but it's not getting at the root cause. Identify and work on the cause too.
During a depressive episode after the suicide of a friend I compiled a check list of very basic things that I noticed had helped in everyday life. I wrote it down when I noticed that I couldn't remember the items reliably (or when it didn't occur to me to think of them). I carried it in my pocket for some while.<p>It contained very basic things, like questions if I had eaten enough, slept enough, whether I spent time outdoors (fresh air/sun), had met friends recently or exercised recently and corrective actions for each item (and yes, "eat something" was on it). Some items were accompanied by comments like "exercise will only help for the next day or two, do not skip for longer than that".<p>Another thing that helped surprisingly well was having a shower, shaving and dressing up. Basically the opposite of letting oneself go.<p>And in really bad moments, jamming/DoS-ing my brain by some sort of meaningless meditation (sitting, breathing and counting so that no other thoughts appeared anymore) helped as well.<p>The best thing is that I haven't had to use the list in a long time now and hopefully never will have to again.
In my opinion, motivational energy works a lot like financial investing.<p>It grows and shrinks exponentially. You have to spend energy, to get more energy (or even conserve it) but the return is uncertain. The optimal strategy is to invest an amount relative to the energy I have, to avoid draining my reserves.<p>To escape the effects of depression [alongside medical treatment] I have to invest my energy wisely, and ultimately I can (and have, in the past) achieve motivational abundance again. And I must adjust the investment strategy to my current capital. Exercise can be a very rewarding way of investing energy. But it can also be really hard at first.
My personal experiences go something like this:<p>* Strength training tends to be a long term benefit. It can be really draining if you put in a difficult workout every session. Copious logging matters to lock in the sweet spot of difficulty, and maximizing recovery rate matters just as much - I found that increasing vitamin D intake did the trick here. But I find that the strength isn't the beginning and end - it helps to have it as a barometer of progress, but it's only one thing.<p>* Cardio-intensive activity helps my mood throughout the day. Last year I trained judo, which rewards all-around athleticism(though my desire to compete is limited) and it pushed me to take cardio more seriously. I got gifted a Fitbit last Christmas, and took up a jogging routine first thing out of bed by way of pleasing the hourly activity monitor. By focusing mostly on the technique and habit instead of pace, I've improved my form quite a bit, gotten my sleep schedule under control and also hit on another supplement that seems to get my anxiety down(magnesium citrate). However, this led me to something else which I'm still working on:<p>* I would tend to finish my jog with a cup of coffee and I finally realized last week that I had been letting my caffeine consumption creep up, and this was throwing off a lot of other stuff. My gym numbers were still coming in, but my concentration was mostly shot, and finally at an event Thursday I had one of the free diet sodas and soon after found that I was unusually anxious and had developed an eye twitch. <i>This is too much,</i> I told myself. I had gone through phases of overconsuming and cutting back before, but I was tired of the cycle.<p>So I decided later that night that I would cold turkey caffeined drinks. I'm still consuming a little bit of chocolate, but it's been an eye-opener. I started having bottled water instead of coffee so as to keep my other habits in the same place. Day one was the most difficult, but my sleep improved immediately and my focus already started getting better on the second day. By the third I realized that I was smiling and engaging with activities better than I had in a long time. My depressive spells never quite went away with the other things, but they seem to be gone after dropping the caffeine(although I'm still getting the eye twitch).<p>So, yes, it's a lot of things. Sobering up from coffee is something that's helped by getting all my other habits together. If you're starting from a "sodas every day/no exercise/no gym experience" standpoint, this is roughly the path I've recommended to friends:<p>* Get some resistance bands and start a program with those. They're some of the simplest and most accessible strength training around. Focus on developing some technique and logging your progress.<p>* Get a fitness tracker and try to hit some of the goals. I like the hourly goals(even though they do not measure when I get up and do housework), others like daily steps.<p>* Switch either from sugar + caffeine to just sugar or just caffeine. I shifted away from soda about a year into my first job(by - surprise surprise - overconsuming until I felt ill). Then work your way down from there by getting bottled water more often.<p>* Research supplements. This is not easy with so many options, but there are usually common ones that come up with respect to certain sports and activities.
For those of us who loathe excercise for the sake of excercise, may I suggest metalworking? You get the distraction of a project / learning to make cool things and it's a surprisingly physical process to inflict your will on such dense objects.
my depression went away when I switched my diet from Standard German Diet to Keto, the anxiety went away when I made the switch to carnivore.
Observed changes in mood and thought after consumtion of starch/plant food (The occurence of these effects takes about 4 days):
Frozen non processed Spinach: Anxiety - Thoughts revolve around other people wanting to get me or steal from me or my friends.
About one tablespoon of mashed potato and sauerkraut: depression - Suicidal wishes, low energy Thoughts and self talk are going in the direction of "everything is my fault, I deserve this suffering, I should be dead"
A piece of apple without the skin every day for a week: Depression, laziness, don't want to get up, move, walk the dog, everything is too much, I'd rather just play games all day long.<p>These effects keep going for about two to three days and then vanish suddenly and I can do my work and routine, workouts, clean my place, etc.<p>I did depression comics/art when I was trying to fix it with meds, therapy and excercise, I'd be happy to cooperate if someone would like to help me market the stuff <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/aszantu/gallery/52706431/key-project" rel="nofollow">https://www.deviantart.com/aszantu/gallery/52706431/key-proj...</a>
From personal experience, having dealt with MDD/bipolar^, I can attest that exercise does help.<p>However, exercise alone is not always sufficient. Daily meditation sessions help tremendously. But the icing on the cake (pun intended) is, in the end, nutrition.<p>Our body (and thus our mind) works with what we put inside it. In fact, our body is <i>made exclusively</i> of what we, or our mother, ingested in the past. There is no escaping that fact, and most people seem to ignore it every single day.<p>Personally, switching to a zero-carb ketogenic diet has done wonders for my overall health and well-being, including mental health. I am of course very biased in affirming this, but I honestly think sugar and most other plant substances (except perhaps some fruits and their oils) are there to harm us. The phytotoxin defense hypothesis really resonates with my experience.<p>^: I have had recurrent depressive episodes throughout most of my life, and antidepressants make me manic, but I otherwise experience no "natural" mania, only a mild hypomania.
That exercise (especially endurance sports) is as effective as your typical SSRI is known for decades. The problem is getting a depressed person to exercise five days a week and holding up to that schedule for months and years.
From the summary:<p>Exercise has a large and significant antidepressant effect in people with depression (including MDD<i>).
Our data strongly support the claim that exercise is an evidence-based treatment for depression.<p></i>MDD I assume it means major depressive disorder<p>From personal experience, being (extremely) fit made me feel better about myself.<p>Just based on the fact that I can do a lot of things (sprint, hike, some cool gymnastic moves, solid flexibility, can run good distances) makes me feel better about myself.<p>Also, once you get in a good shape, it's really <i>not</i> difficult to stay in it. Contrary to what anyone says. But you have to do it "the right way": change your approach to exercising, eating, sleeping, etc. There will be things that you have to sacrifice. I recommend anyone struggling with "bad thoughts" to at least consider this - give it a couple of months, see how it plays out.
Does exercise treat depression effectively? Yes, of course! The only problem is when you're too depressed to work out. This is where SSRI's and other first-line treatments can be valuable: they can lift you up just enough to go get the rest of your life squared away.
A lot of people in this thread giving their personal experience, but failing to realise they're doing <i>exactly</i> the same as people who promote crystal healing or homeopathy.<p>Depression is an umbrella term and it covers a wide range of experience. Some people will recover even if you do nothing to treat them; others will recover if you do anything (such as providing homeopathy) to treat them. Correcting for this is difficult, which is why respected organisations disagree about whether exercise works or not.<p>Felipe suggest that publication bias explains why other analyses don't show benefit of exercise as a treatment, but that doesn't make much sense. The only reason he sees such large effect sizes is because he includes huge amounts of low quality research.<p>When you restrict the analysis to good quality research the effect reduces and it's much harder to see any difference between no treatment and depression as treatment.<p>It's not particularly suprising that physiotherapists and sports therapists think what they do works. What is somewhat suprising is that HN routinely falls for it.
Vitamin D3 is essential to fight against depression. Low vitamin D levels is one the major contributors toward depression.<p>Many of us work inside office with hardly any sunlight coming in. Going out under sun in the morning for 30 minutes will be helpful.
Any sort of excercise has never made me feel anything other than shit. High intensity? I feel like shit instantly. Just miles of walking? I feel like shit throughout the entire process. I don't get any sort of "high" after doing it - everything aches, and I am tired, and I feel like shit. If a doctor told me to get more excercise, I would tell them to fuck off.
Looking good naked cures all ills. I know that won't play well among the Rain Man comment section here, but the material you are woven out proves this to be true.<p>Among nearly all western countries there has been a decrease in testosterone levels, higher BMIs, and lower birthrates.<p>Go read Chateau Heartiste.