Posted by bleauberry on October 23, 2011, at 4:43:04
In reply to Excercise A Viable Option In Mental Health, posted by Phillipa on October 22, 2011, at 21:25:11
From my own personal observations of others over the years I do believe exercise is usually helpful for depression. Not always, but usually. If someone were to call it a cure I would not agree with that. I think it is one of our tools to be used in combination with other tools, where multiple tools simultaneously works best.
I think maybe the strongest benefit of exercise is as a diagnostic tool. For example, sometimes people feel worse with exercise instead of better. In those cases, there is a strong clue that we are dealing with low adrenal function and/or low cortisol function. Exercise makes that even worse, so we would feel worse. On the other hand, some people feel better after exercise. Maybe just for a short time, a few hours, a day or so, whatever, but they did feel noticeably better. In those cases, the clues are.....opioids, norepinephrine. If someone goes to Zumba and they come out feeling a lot better, I am pretty confident concluding their problem is not in the serotonin circuitry and any serotonin med probably won't do much for them and maybe even make them feel worse. I would also place bets that the exercise responder folks would not find antipsychotics or mood stabilizers helpful either. That helps us to whittle the list of choices to only meds that would somehow impact the same chemistries exercise does.
A friend of mine had been released from the psych ward for depression and was still doing badly and not doing well with the common prescriptions....lexapro, zoloft, lithium, lamictal, etc....but she said after her weekly dancing class she felt so much better. That told me all I needed to know, and I thus suggested to her Rhodiola Rosea. She is now in remission. It was exercise, or the response to it rather, that gave me the clues to feel confident in helping her decide what to do. Had it not been for her dance class, it would have been a coin toss to randomly choose any med.
Another friend of mine is a marathon runner. He gets depressed if he doesn't run. He doesn't want to take meds. So he runs on a regular basis and it keeps him well. Not to be mistaken, he is not cured, and he is only in a "managed remission", but bottom line is he stays well as long as keeps the running going. That to me tells me he has a deficiency in the opioid circuitry somewhere, and running relieves that deficiency. There are a few meds and herbs that can do that too. Most of them not.
Exercise as a diagnostic tool. I like that. It gives good clues as to what the underlying chemistry is that is causing the problems.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1000530
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20111016/msgs/1000571.html