Often at Good Therapy SF, we talk to our clients about the role of exercise when it comes to their mental health. We’ve all heard that exercise is good for our brain, it’s good for our mental health. And one of the ways in which I like to explain why exercise is good for your mental health comes from this book called Spark, actually.
And it’s a great book. If you want to check it out, it really goes deep into the biology about how exercise influences the brain and gives you really positive mental health. But one of the takeaways from Spark is that exercise helps promote something called brain derived neurotropic factors, or BDNF. And it promotes these factors, or BDNF, in a way that helps the brain produce ultimately more helpful emotions as opposed to the more negative or unpleasant emotions.
There is a strong biological reason why exercise really helps. It takes these BDNF or these factors and helps bring them to the parts of the brain that are going to promote more positive emotion as opposed to more unhelpful or negative feeling emotions.
Another thing that I like to remind clients of to when it comes to exercise and mental health was a big meta analysis that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA for short. Several years ago they did a big meta analysis and they looked at weightlifting, which they called resistance training.
So resistance training compared to cardiovascular, like running exercises, purely at cardiovascular, compared to yoga. So resistance training compared to cardiovascular compared to yoga, as a form of treatment for depression. Those people who met criteria for major depressive disorder. And what they found was that while all forms of treatment are beneficial than the control group, which is essentially doing nothing, that actually resistance training was the most helpful for treating depression.
Cardiovascular training was the second most helpful. And yoga was the third most helpful. So that’s not to say that’s exactly how it’s going to play out for you. This is just an analysis they took from gathering the statistics from multiple studies. But it’s important to remember that if you’re really looking for the best bang for your buck and you’re feeling depressed, the studies seem to suggest that resistance training or weightlifting is going to be the most beneficial compared to yoga.
But I often tell people, hey, like something is always going to be better. Then nothing. And it actually is good to change up different forms of exercise just so that you will consistently show up and do something. The consistency is the most important part there, obviously as well.
And then the third thing I like to tell people about the role of exercise and mental health are more the social benefits. Very often I have clients that kind of move into the San Francisco area from other cities and they’re unsure how to meet people.
And a lot of running groups or these kind of group exercise classes have people that force you to engage and communicate and get to know each other. So there can be a really good, strong community social benefit that comes with engaging certain types of exercise as well.
To finalize here and wrap up.
Exercise really helps promote the biology of the brain through something called brain derived neurotropic factors. There also is good evidence from the study produced in the Journal of the American Medical Association that resistance training really helps with treating depression. And then lastly, there’s a strong benefit that comes from being connected to people through the social benefits that come with being in group exercise classes.
So if you’re interested in this and more information, please feel free to reach out to us at Good Therapy SF. Take care.
