http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18335173
Seems surprising, but man on radio said that group had quite severe depression.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Exercise 'no help for depression', research suggests"
(11 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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My understanding is that the research which showed exercise being beneficial for depression looked at mild to moderate depression where the patients were not undergoing other forms of treatment, so not really comparable to this study at all.
Posted 13 years ago # -
A holiday in the sun would be my preferred option, not a gym subscription! Or just sunshine and lots of it... this dreary, dreich, dull, overcast, rainy, windy climate is enough to depress anyone.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"Or just sunshine and lots of it... this dreary, dreich, dull, overcast, rainy, windy climate is enough to depress anyone."
Depends on the user. I feel more compelled to stay in if there's a risk of ending up fried and reddened by going outside. Coldness is easily defeated by keeping moving.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@ah, true Wingpig but what about contemplating a day out on the bike, for instance, in the rain... I have no problem with getting wet if it rains on the way home but have a real struggle (and usually give in and stay in) to get the bike out if it is already raining and the forecast is for rain all day.
I lived abroad for years and the sun was never a problem, we used to sit in the shade, not be out in the midday sun, and wear a hat and suitable clothes where huge expanses of you were not exposed to the rays. We also never used sun creams and SPF stuff was unheard of.
We had 25% less sunlight last year than is normal and I certainly noticed it, with continuous days of cloudy, dull, overcast conditions, and it was depressing. Also countries like Norway and Sweden have some of the highest rates of depression and suicide, which is believed to be due to lack of daylight, causing SAD (seasonally adjusted depression). Particularly the very short days in winter, it is a struggle.
Posted 13 years ago # -
From the point of view of someone working normal office hours the day length in winter isn't that much of a problem as the length and position of my working day doesn't change but in the winter it's possible to head out for some exercise/daylight at lunchtime without feeling oppressed/threatened by the sun or being made torpid by the heat. The summer does have the additional daylight-exposure window of the late evening but even then the thought of midges is a greater deterrent to heading out for exercise than the need to wrap/light up is in the winter.
Posted 13 years ago # -
the links between vitamin D deficiencies, and MS and rickets* are very real and worrying. I know some people have much more serious problems with skin cancer etc and need to be careful, but there is a very real lack of vit D in our population, which needs to be taken seriously.
* bone density more generally also - middle aged women often very unaware of how fragile their bones can be owing to a range of factors, until they break one.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I suffer/ed PTSD and depression following the birth of our Scenery Watcher (anaesthetist administered muscle relaxant, which is used with general anaesthetic and intubation, when I was having a c section under epidural. I was suffocating but couldn't alert anyone due to paralysis and he didn't notice until the alarms went off)
Due to carer's duties (SW and parents) I haven't been able to go out on a bike or exercise properly for many years and I miss it as I'd been very sporty before. However, following the failure to get SW on a tandem ( still hoping) I signed us up for a gym and it has been wonderful for my mental health. SW comes along and happily exercises on treadmill, cross trainer, bike and "oary boat" and I feel a million times better. We can only squeeze in an hour or so a couple of times a week when other duties allow, but I do think it has improved my mental health as well as the physical health of both of us.
Maybe its benefits depend on how athletic you were before the depression hit?
Posted 13 years ago # -
@pocopiglet - good for you! had been wondering how it was all going. sorry to hear tandeming has not worked, but good to hear you so cheery about the gym. I can only imagine that even w/out depression, there is a huge mental weight at being constantly responsible for someone else. (actually, as a mum of two littl'uns, I can imagine it very well, but appreciate that I have the luxury of seeing gradual signs of independence - even the baby managed to play briefly in his cot this morning rather than wailing disconsolately. makes such a huge difference)
Posted 13 years ago # -
A more balanced article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/06/exercise-depression-research-misses-point
Posted 13 years ago # -
The carefully worded statement by the researchers is lost in the headline. The researchers said, "Numerous studies have reported the positive effects of physical activity for people suffering with depression but our intervention was not an effective strategy for reducing symptoms."
The key part is, "...our intervention was not an effective strategy..." which reads to me as saying something along the lines of '...all research evidence is that exercise is effective but our research didn't find that. The problem is with our research'.
More generally, this is a classic example of how small scale and short term government funded research has become. The 361 participants were split into two groups and then the researchers had to look for a significant difference in their results. The exercise would have had to be very effective indeed for them to have found it from samples that small.
Posted 13 years ago #
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