Here's a shocker ... Exercise May Protect Against Depression

Pretty extensive behavioural and body chemistry study of (depressed) mice:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/how-exercise-may-protect-against-depression

I know when I'm feeling down, exercise (whether its running, cycling, swimming, lifting weights etc) always gives me a big mood boost.

My bike is the only thing that keeps me sane.

last summer I worked with some 20something camp counselor/leader types 2 of whom had been on Ritalin as kids and they told us exercise was the key to getting a kid off the stuff

last summer I worked with some 20something camp counselor/leader types 2 of whom had been on Ritalin as kids and they told us exercise was the key to getting a kid off the stuff

Yep.

http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/riding-my-ritalin

Quote from page 4,

For the past 30 years, athletes, coaches, sports psychologists and medical researchers have probed and debated one of the most complex mysteries of the human body: How does exercise affect the brain? Common sense and our own experience tell us it does something. Every parent knows the best way to settle down a hopped-up kid is to take him out to the playground and run the bug juice out of him. A generation ago, teachers and coaches frequently used this approach as well.

This seemed a homespun, intuitive remedy, but in fact there was a scientific basis for it. In 1978, two years before the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) recognized ADHD as a condition, W. Mark Shipman, MD, conducted a simple test. Shipman was medical director of the San Diego Center for Children, an institute for psychologically troubled children. Back then, kids at the center were among the few in the United States taking psychostimulants such as Ritalin to calm what was then called hyperactivity. Kids can be naturally impulsive, inattentive and overactive, but those with ADHD are more so, all the time. (ADHD is an umbrella term that also includes ADD, attention deficit disorder.)

Shipman sent a group of hyperactive kids running for as much as 45 minutes a day, four days a week. An amazing thing happened: The running kids started acting as if they were getting extra doses of medication. After a while, the doctors who monitored the behavior of each child began lowering drug doses for most of the runners. Very few nonrunning participants had their doses reduced. The doctors who were administering the doses didn't know which students were running; the changes in behavior were that clear.

Shipman's study might have led to a boom in physical fitness programs for ADHD-identified kids. It didn't. Instead, just the opposite occurred: Doctors began writing more prescriptions.

At the time of Shipman's study, few parents had heard of Ritalin. By 1988, half a million kids were taking the drug. By 1995 that figure had quadrupled. The United States was using five times as much Ritalin as the rest of the planet combined. "An increase of this magnitude in the use of a single medication," observed pediatrician and Running on Ritalin author Lawrence Diller, MD, "is unprecedented for a drug that is treated as a controlled substance."

From page 8,

There's something else to consider. During the years when Ritalin prescriptions spread through the nation's classrooms, school districts across America were cutting back on physical education programs and coming under increasing pressure to boost standardized test scores. From 1991 to 1995the very era when ADHD diagnoses were sky-rocketing the percentage of high school students enrolled in daily PE classes dropped from 42 percent to 25 percent. For money-strapped school districts, cutting PE became an easy way to save money and devote more time and resources to "teaching to the test."

My bike is the only thing that keeps me sane.

The irony is that cycling like a lunatic on the bike seems to keep you sane off the bike.

The irony is that cycling like a lunatic on the bike seems to keep you sane off the bike.

Focused, controlled insanity. I like it.

The irony is that cycling like a lunatic on the bike seems to keep you sane off the bike.

some would argue (successfully imo) that fear and anger are our two most primal and important emotions. to wit, it is these emotions that helped our species survive and flourish to the point where we do not have to worry about survival in terms of predators. for the vast majority of us in western society, fear and anger have been removed from our daily lives. the problem is that we need an outlet to satisfy them, that our minds need to experience these emotions in order to stay stable.

this is where the risk-prone behaviours, or activities such as mtb'ing, "black diamond commuting," base jumping, and intense physical exertion activites come into play - they help to satisfy those primal emotions. for those that don't engage in these sorts of activites, they may be prone to satisfy these emotions in other ways - road rage anyone?

there's not a huge level of science or research out there on the topic afaik, but this article does provide some insight.

http://primal-page.com/toxicmnd.htm

I think it might be a shocker though. As someone who has been exercising for years I'm still surprised how great I feel coming out of the gym after going in feeling like complete shit (both physical and mental).

I think it might be a shocker though. As someone who has been exercising for years I'm still surprised how great I feel coming out of the gym after going in feeling like complete shit (both physical and mental).

Ya, never once regretted dragging myself out of bed or off the couch to go do something physical. Even waking up at 4:45 am to go Master's swimming, cursing and swearing for having to get out of a warm bed in the dark, but without fail, feeling like a million bucks and high on life at the end of the workout.

some would argue (successfully imo) that fear and anger are our two most primal and important emotions.

We live such cushy, pampered, protected lives compared to almost every human who has ever lived. It is no wonder our brains and nervous systems start to go haywire after a while. Its like keeping a high-performance car in the garage for 40 years and then wondering why it won't start and and why leaks oil when you try to get it going.

And apparently doing that exercise outdoors will do even more.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-advisor/the-surprising-health-benefits-of-working-out-outside/article19186723/

And apparently doing that exercise outdoors will do even more.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-advisor/the-surprising-health-benefits-of-working-out-outside/article19186723/

I believe it. A hike or ride in the woods is almost always a tonic. The Japanese call it "forest bathing".