Impact Of Exercise On Mental Health

The positive impact of physical exercise on physical as well as mental health cannot be denied. Physical exercise helps in the regulation of stress and in addition reduces the risk of certain illness like cancer, obesity, stroke and cardiovascular diseases. Samples collected for 1237194 individuals were analysed for mental health by dividing into two categories – individuals who exercised and individuals who did not exercise. The participants of the study were asked to assess their mental health and score them accordingly. The part of the population that agreed to exercising showed lesser days of poor mental health than people who did not exercise.

 The relationship between mental health and exercise was found to be significant (Chekroud et al, 2018). The psychological, cognitive and physiological ability of an individual can be improved with the help of exercise. Physical exercise can also improve the functioning capability of the brain even in the individuals who show no signs of fatigue. The BDNF of brain derived neurotrophic factor in an individual tends to increase after exercising. The BDNF and changes in the brain induced by exercising are positively correlated. An increase in the hippocampal volume is related to the long term memory of an individual. This increase is caused by aerobic exercises among older adults. Regular exercise is directly relate to the improvement of communication and awareness. Physically fit children are also seen to have an increased hippocampal volumes. The cognitive performance of children are enhanced when hippocampal volume increases.

A UK based study shows that the illness related to workplace is very much common among the people. It has been estimated that over a span of 10 years more than five million working days have been lost in healthcare. This study answers the question – “Could exercise improve mental health and cognitive skills for surgeons and other healthcare professionals?” At any given age occupational stress is a very well-known factor that can affect healthcare professionals or clinicians. Even after this, a lot of clinicians are seen to be working under this occupational stress or other psychological problems that include chronic fatigue, anxiety, burnout etc. These medical professionals tend to do so in the sense that they do not want to let down their colleagues. In the case of surgeons, mental health issues are discarded. This is because of the general idea among people that surgeons have a better capability to cope with stress than the people working in other medical specialities and thus being protected from the psychological burnout caused in the workplace. It is known that there are various benefits of exercise on the physical health of an individual. The importance of physical exercise in maintaining a good mental health and well-being often gets underestimated. Regular exercising has a positive effect on the psychological health of an individual that helps in boosting the self-esteem of person and thus helps in fighting clinical depression (Parry et al, 2018).

According to a study conducted by Pascoe et al, (2020), depression seen to decrease among youths who exercise regularly. In the developed countries it is expected that by the year of 2020, mental health disorders among the youth will be the leading cause of disability. Interventions are necessary because young people have the tendency of denying help for mental health related issues. Therefore, if individuals have access to mental health problem related interventions at an early stage of illness, they find it beneficial as it has the ability of improving the mental health status of the individuals and thus help in the prevention of negative impact of the ongoing mental illness. It was found that the effect of exercise had a beneficial effect on the mental health of young people. It has been stated in this study that any physical activity or exercise can be considered as a non-stigmatism intervention which has very few side effects.  Higher level of depression has also been reported by women who do not exercise regularly.

 Apart from the physical activity itself, the duration of a physical activity also has a significant effect on the mental health of individuals (Grasdalsmoen et al, 2020). The aim of this paper is to check the association between running for 30 minutes and the mood of a person. Correlation analysis has been used as the selected measure of indicator.