Physical Exercise In The Therapeutic Lifestyle Change

The third step in the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change is physical exercise. Because I'm telling my story on this site, I have got to tell everyone, this is something I really struggle with. It's amazing when you know what to do, but you don't do it anyway. According to Dr. Stephen S. Ilardi, PhD. in his book The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs :

Researchers have compared aerobic exercise and Zoloft head to head in the treatment of depression. Even at a low “dose” of exercise–thirty minutes of brisk walking three times a week–patients who worked out did just as well as those who took the medication. Strikingly, though, the patients on Zoloft were about three times more likely than exercisers to become depressed again over a ten-month follow-up period.

There are now over a hundred published studies documenting the antidepressant effects of exercise. Activities as varied as walking, biking, jogging, and weight lifting have all been found to be effective. It’s also becoming clear just how they work. Exercise changes the brain. It increases the activity level of important brain chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin (the same neurochemical targeted by popular drugs like Zoloft, Prozac, and Lexapro). Exercise also increases the brain’s production of a key growth hormone called BDNF . Because levels of this hormone plummet in depression, some parts of the brain start to shrink over time, and learning and memory are impaired. But exercise reverses this trend, protecting the brain in a way nothing else can.