It’s no secret that exercise is beneficial for your physical and mental health. Less clear, however, is how much exercise it takes to achieve meaningful benefits. Increasingly, we’re seeing that less is more when it comes to exercise, provided it’s done correctly and at high enough intensity.
The latest research, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, seems to confirm this, finding that exercise three to five days a week for 45 minutes is the “sweet spot” that leads to the greatest mental health gains. Going beyond this and exercising for more than five days a week or for more than 90 minutes per session was actually linked to worse mental health. (Mercola)
Background
Exercise is known to be associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes, but its association with mental health remains unclear. We aimed to examine the association between exercise and mental health burden in a large sample, and to better understand the influence of exercise type, frequency, duration, and intensity.
Methods
In this cross-sectional study, we analysed data from 1,237,194 people aged 18 years or older in the USA from the 2011, 2013, and 2015 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System survey. We compared the number of days of bad self-reported mental health between individuals who exercised and those who did not, using an exact non-parametric matching procedure to balance the two groups in terms of age, race, gender, marital status, income, education level, body-mass index category, self-reported physical health, and previous diagnosis of depression. We examined the effects of exercise type, duration, frequency, and intensity using regression methods adjusted for potential confounders, and did multiple sensitivity analyses.
Findings
Individuals who exercised had 1·49 (43·2%) fewer days of poor mental health in the past month than individuals who did not exercise but were otherwise matched for several physical and sociodemographic characteristics ( W=7·42 × 10 10, p<2·2 × 10 −16). All exercise types were associated with a lower mental health burden (minimum reduction of 11·8% and maximum reduction of 22·3%) than not exercising (p<2·2 × 10 −16 for all exercise types). The largest associations were seen for popular team sports (22·3% lower), cycling (21·6% lower), and aerobic and gym activities (20·1% lower), as well as durations of 45 min and frequencies of three to five times per week.
Interpretation
In a large US sample, physical exercise was significantly and meaningfully associated with self-reported mental health burden in the past month. More exercise was not always better. Differences as a function of exercise were large relative to other demographic variables such as education and income. Specific types, durations, and frequencies of exercise might be more effective clinical targets than others for reducing mental health burden, and merit interventional study.
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(18)30227-X.pdf
