The Benefit of Fitness For Mental Health
You certainly agree that having regular physical exercise has many benefits for your health. Your body would become more fresh and fit when you do routine exercise. However, how is the exercise can affect the mental health?
Then note the benefits of exercise for having fresh mental health: Reducing the damaging effects of stress. Light exercise such as running or brisk walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes can be the instant way to release the tension by increasing the amount of brain chemicals that have “soothing” effects such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.
According to a study at the University of California, San Francisco, exercise can work on a cell level in order to reverse the adverse effects of stress on the aging process. The researchers found that women who do average physical activity for 45 minutes for three days have fewer cells that are experiencing the signs of aging compared to the women with the same stress level but having less physical activity.
Exercise also helps change the blood flow to the brain areas that involved for relieving stress. Reduce depression. Many researches have shown that having regular exercise and other physical activities which stimulate the emergence of sweat for 3 times a week can reduce the symptoms of depression as effectively as antidepressants.
Exercise is believed can stimulate the neurons growth on the specific brain areas which are damaged during depression. Studies on animal also found that exercise will increase the production of brain molecules that can enhance the connection between nerve cells, thus also act as a natural antidepressant.