Mental Health

- Exercise improves
- Mental Health
- Emotion
- Mood
- The National Institute of Mental Health
- Recognizes exercise as a valid treatment for anxiety and depression.
- Exercise is self-empowering
- Bring responsibility toward self
- Positive addiction
- May replace negative addictions
- We don't know (Landers)
- Optimal intensity or duration
- Optimal mode
- Dose/response curve
- Time course (acute)
- Law of initial values
- Relative values - ceiling effect
- Lower initial value - greater potential for improvement
- Unfit, anxious, depressed - greater improvements
- Exercises' effect on emotion
- Fit vs unfit - lower anxiety for fit
- Chronically trained / adaptation - lower anxiety
- Acute bout of activity - lower anxiety

Exercise and Mental Health Theories
- Hatfield 1991, Dienstbier 1989, McCubbin 1992, Crews 1987, deVries 1968, deVries 1972, Horne 1984
- Time out
- Master environment
- Body image
- Dramatic effects in weight training studies
- Biochemical
- Norepinephrine, Epinephrine
- Prolonged stimulation -> ACTH -> Cortisol
- Dopamine, Serotonin, ß-Endorphine, Enkephalins
- Thermogenic (Body Temperature)
- Synchronized Cortical Activity (EEG)
- Decrease muscle spindle activity
- Stimulates Serotonin
- Increase in slow wave sleep (Deep sleep)
- High intense exercise
- Passive heating
- Toughening
- Exercise conditions us to better cope with stressors
- psychologically and biochemically
Exercise May Improve Mental Functioning
- Learning & Catecholamines (Dienstbier 1989)
- Many studies demonstrate that better students have higher levels of Catecholamines (Norepinephrine, Epinephrine)
- Animal & human catecholamines studies (McGaugh 1983)
- When peripheral catecholamines are depleted through drug manipulations, retention of learning is adversely affected
- Acute mental benefits of exercise (Tomporowski 1986, McGlynn 1979)
- Exercise performed before the mental task
- May improve performance
- Mixed Findings
- Facilitation of mental performance
- Moderate intensity
- During or immediately following exercise
- Greater effect for fitter subjects
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