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Dance your blues away
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A little exercise goes a long way in boosting your esteem
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FOR LIFE Step up and chase away depression PHOTO : BIJOY GHOSH
Exercise improves mental health, but mental health is a broad term that incorporates many positive features as well as the absence of negative ones. It is common to dissect out the physical benefits of exercise into effects on the cardiovascular system, muscles, bones etc. A similar approach for mental health will reveal just how much difference regular exercise makes to the quality of life.
Take anxiety, for example. It is a form of negative self-appraisal characterised by worry, low self- confidence and apprehension. Millions of people live with this feeling without realising it prevents them from enjoying work or rising to challenges and causes them to settle for a life of low achievement and stress.
Exercise-especially aerobic exercises like walking, jogging, swimming, cycling and aerobic dance, reduces anxiety. The benefits begin after a few weeks of regular exercise, and the best results occur in people who are of low physical fitness or have high anxiety.
Exercise also takes out much of the sting of depression, a common, under-diagnosed condition characterized by feelings of hopelessness or a sense of defeat for large chunks of the day.
Who gains?
A person feels significantly less depressed after weeks of regular exercise- especially vigorous exercise like jogging, swimming, cycling and weight-training done several times a week. The best results appear to be for those who are most depressed. Exercise improves mood and results in feelings of vigour, happiness, and other positive feelings of well-being. Self-esteem, related to mood, rises with aerobic fitness. The emotional benefits of exercise are larger for physically challenged compared to non-physically challenged children, but virtually everyone benefits from the improved self-esteem associated with greater strength, flexibility and efficiency.
Exercise improves the quality and duration of restful sleep. Research suggests that sleep duration, total sleep time, and the amount of high amplitude, slow wave EEG activity is higher in physically fit individuals than those who are unfit, and higher on nights following exercise. After an acute bout of exercise, one goes to sleep more quickly, sleeps for longer, and has a more restful sleep than those who did not exercise.
The biggest sleep benefits go to women, those low in physical fitness and older individuals. Exercise, if longer in duration and completed earlier in the day, has the best positive effects on sleep.
RAJIV. M
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