Sports And Depression: Emotional Healing
Depression has now become the disease of the 21st century and is the first reason for absence in the workplace in different parts of the Western world, related to the high levels of stress we suffer from.
The question we ask you will invite you to reflect on the strategies that seem most suitable for you to overcome this problem of an emotional nature. Prozac or adidas?
This question is the title of a chapter in David Sevan-Schereiber’s book titled Emotional Healing. This chapter of the book discusses the simplest ways to treat depression.
A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports that 69% of people who take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the active ingredient of antidepressants, have never suffered from severe depressive disorders.
What are the causes of overmedication?
-People are looking for quick and strong solutions
– A greater prescription from the doctors of the clinics, who remain displaced by the lack of psychologists and psychiatrists who deal with these cases.
– Lack of organization in medical centers, so that these cases are entrusted to a psychologist or psychiatrist if necessary.
In fact, there are countless remedies to combat depression, but in this article we will focus on a comparison: medical care and sports care.
Are they comparable? Do you believe that even in cases of the most desperate human sadness, sport can intervene not only as a balm for the soul, but as a remedy?
Sport can counteract some effects of depressive state in people: it allows you to keep weight under control, increases libido, improves sleep, reduces blood pressure and strengthens the immune system, protects against heart disease and some types of cancer.
Although in some cases the intervention of an expert is essential, it would be good for patients who no longer perform any type of activity to know that, even if the medicines have immediate effects and help patients to resume their usual rhythm of life, to in the long run they will be as effective as non-medical treatments
Taking these data into account, it is good to undergo medical treatments for depression only when it comes to severe cases, and after having undergone psychological therapies.
Regardless of the type of treatment that each patient decides to take, one must be aware that sport can really help a lot, in all cases to follow: without any symptoms of depression, mild depression, dysthymia or other not so serious mood alterations ( PMS, seasonal depression, sadness, distress, fear and stress).
The main benefits of choosing sports instead of medicines:
– Running, with its prolonged physical effort, blocks the flow of negative ideas, characteristic of depression.
-Once 30 minutes of sustained effort has been achieved, one automatically enters a state where thoughts are spontaneously creative and positive. They are involuntary and let themselves be guided to the rhythm of effort.
–Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the student of the flow or state of Flow, reflects on the fact that what keeps a runner in this state is the effort taken to the limit, without exceeding it.
-It is not necessary to be young to practice physical activity, because depressed people between 50 and 67 who walk for 30 minutes a day, derive therapeutic effects from this activity.
– Exercise has an impact on the emotional brain, on endorphins and its derivatives similar to that of opium, morphine and heroin, because it brings an immediate feeling of well-being, without unpleasant side effects such as those of these substances.
– When the emotional brain is stimulated, the activity of the immune system is also stimulated.
For physical activity to have therapeutic effects it is necessary:
– Let it be regular
-It is not necessary to practice too much
– Sustained effort
-Start slowly, be guided by the body and always stay on the limit, without exceeding it.
-Collective and group exercise is even more effective
–Choose an exercise and a place that we like
If you are going through a bad time, if you are sad or suffer from mild depression, try not to undergo medical treatment immediately, but consult an expert and .. put on your sneakers!
