How Does Exercise Affect Your Mental Health?

Exercise has a very beneficial effect on your mental health. Diet does, too, of course. Here’s how both can affect your well-being and overall health, too.

There’s so many reasons to keep moving, including:

Reaching and maintaining a healthy weight

Prevent or lower high blood pressure

Lower blood sugar

Reduce risk for kidney disease, heart disease, stroke and even certain types of cancer

Prevent or mitigate depression and other mental health issues

Relieve anxiety and help handle stress

While many people know the physical benefits of exercise, how it benefits mental health is equally important, and very striking. 

Exercise Helps with Depression and Anxiety

How does exercise help alleviate depression and anxiety? Endorphins raised through physical activity rise, increasing the body’s ability to feel good. Moderate exercise throughout the week can help relieve and improve depression and anxiety, and in fact, many medical professionals recommend trying it before using medication. 

Exercise Decreases Stress

Exercise also reduces stress levels, reversing stress-caused brain damage and stimulating the production of certain brain hormones that can improve cognition and lift your mood, as well as improve thought processes that could become clouded from stress. 

Exercise also causes your body’s nervous systems to communicate with one another, which improves your ability to respond to stressful events.

Increased Self-Esteem and Confidence

Exercise will not only improve your endurance, muscle tone, and appearance overall, it can boost your mind, body, and spirit, providing a new-found ability to handle greater activity and provide more energy for all your activities at work and play.

Exercise Can Improve Your Sleep

Having trouble sleeping can negatively affect your mental health, but exercise can help there, too. Increasing your body temperature through exercise can calm the mind, while exercise techniques such as yoga can relax, soothe, and encourage. But, it’s also important not to exercise too close to bedtime so your body has a chance to wind down. 

Exercise Builds Your Brain

Exercise can create new brain cells, improving overall brain performance, preventing cognitive decline and memory loss. 

What About a Healthy Diet?

Maintaining a healthy diet is important for your mental health, too. Together with exercise, a nutritious diet, made up of a variety of different types of foods, can improve your mental health.  

When you eliminate fat and sugar as much as possible, and choose a diet with a greater emphasis on plants and whole grains, your body and mind can both benefit. Eating fresh foods that contain vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants helps to nourish and protect the brain from cell-damaging stress. 

And diets that are high in refined sugar can actually harm your brain, promoting both inflammation and oxidative stress. Sugar can even impair brain function, and worsen symptoms of depression. 

A diet that is filled with whole foods is the most beneficial for your health, including: 

Healthy vegetables, fruits, beans, and legumes 

Fiber rich foods like raspberries or beans

Fermented foods like kombucha, yogurt, or sauerkraut

Prebiotic foods contained in many fruits, veggies, and whole grains

Whole grains 

Focus on a plant-based diet to reduce inflammation 

Foods rich in polyphenols such as dark chocolate, almonds, or blueberries to increase healthy bacteria and reduce triglycerides and C-reactive protein, all of which are markers of  inflammation 

Probiotics which benefit your health by changing your body’s microbiome for the better, especially if it is adversely affected by medications

Combining a healthy diet with 30 minutes of exercise a day, is simply good for your body and mind!

Learn More About Longevity Herbs

Along with exercise and diet, if you want to keep your health needs covered, consider adding a healthy vitamin or supplement to your diet. At Longevity Herbs, we are happy to help!

If you’d like to learn more about Longevity Herbs, browse our product selection online, or contact us today.