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Add cold shower to the list.

Great. Now if only people with depression could afford these services.

End stage capitalism comes up with all sorts of remedies no one can afford.

>A single session of exercise

Yeah that is some pricey stuff. Cost me a grand total of 500 calories and some wear and tear on my shoes to go for a run...

A single yoga class is $20 on average. That is pretty expensive to factor in on a regular basis.

You obviously don't need to pay for a yoga session to practice yoga either. Just make some space on the floor, find a free yoga instruction on youtube and have at it.

There is nothing magical that happens when you pay for a session as opposed to you just doing it on your own.

But you have to pay for yoga to learn yoga. Tell me some more stories that make you feel better about end stage capitalism.

People doubt the power of yoga and meditation, mostly because it’s a practice and you need to practice to get the full effect of it. Combining daily exercise with a few yoga sessions per week over the past 2 years have transformed me physically and mentally. Also I don’t pay monthly for either, all you need is some dumbbells, a yoga mat and YouTube. Force yourself to do it for a few months, eventually it will become a habit you don’t want to stop.

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You can both critique capitalism AND know how to use YouTube.

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That’s true. I do think that a guided yoga practice is a different experience than a solo practice. The article does not really specify whether the session was a class or not.

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I have been practicing yoga for years and have not paid for one class or session, there are plenty of videos on YouTube.

Do you have a favorite channel? I am interested in getting into this

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Yoga with Adrienne, she's amazing!

This study is just more evidence of the benefits of exercise. Other studies show that exercise is just as effective as medicine.

>Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/

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Awesome thank you

"positive consequences".... Soooooooo, benefits?

Positive consequences come as the result of something. Benefits come with something.

A strong dose of bootstrap pulling

Eh you can’t even get people who have medical problems with healthy brains to go out and exercise in America, certainly not gonna work for people with depression unless they’re hospitalized.

Potato potato

I agree with Yoga with Adrienne and if you're still in school, you could also check out the down dog apps because they're free for students.

I hate how hard it is to exercise when depressed.

I know it will help. I hear it all the time. But the best I can do is lay in bed and keep breathing.

Never been hospitalized for depression but doing just a little bit of exercise (20-ish minutes) 6 days a week has been the only thing helping me stay out of my usual slumps this past year. Planning on trying to continue this routine until I die, I highly recommend it.

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The hardest thing to overcome with exercise research is the lack of a placebo control. i like that they showed dcreases in inflammatory markers in this study.

I worked in a psych hospital for a few years in the early 1990s, on a locked unit. It was a private hospital and about as nice as one could hope for. So it wasn't an underfunded state hospital. In retrospect, I just realized that they had zero opportunities for patients to exercise. There was a courtyard for getting fresh air, but it was too small to do any walking. So not only were there no opportunities (any kind of a gym, place for walking/running), the unit did not even physically allow for exercise in those who would want to.

Cheaper than health insurance premiums, deductible, psychiatrist appointments, medications, refills every month. My gym 25 dollars a month. Yoga and meditation is free.

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Going for a long walk outside, following a yoga video or guided mediation on YouTube… all zero dollars.

Is it weird if it doesn't help my mental state at all? I have gone through periods of exercising regularly and getting basically zero exercise, and I feel the same either way.

So usually a bunch of hot gals stretching and farting everybody wins.

My brother - a personal trainer, and a former national powerlifting record holder in his weight class - insists that the only equipment that is truly 'required' for strength training at nearly any level are dumbbells. Everything else is a luxury (even if, obviously, luxuries are nice).

“Doing this thing that requires a large amount of executive function will help your lack of executive function.”

Ok then…

That's the exact reason I'm so grateful for my wife.

She's amazing at recognizing when I NEED to do something, even if I don't WANT to.
Sometimes she'll pack up hiking clothes, backpacks, boots and everything, and basically say "let's go, we're hiking now" and it always helps so much.

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My dog was this for me. Depressed? Don't care. It's walk time.

When i was hospitalised for weeks (severe pancreatitis) and had to do low levels of exercise walking around the ward to get my strength back up, i thought that having light hospital aerobics exercise classes would be a great resource to have.

However you'd quickly run into problems with an already stretched hospital staff and budget having to then determine which patients are fit and well enough to participate and making sure the classes are tailored to their specific capabilities and restrictions. Also getting all the patients to the central location and then having staff on hand when things go wrong is another hurdle.

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So those people saying go get exercise and sunlight are right. That stuff does help.

Can somebody explain the difference between well-being and affect?

Yeah, they say dogs are good for depression and cats are good for anxiety.

Doesn’t matter how down I feel, my dog needs to competitively pee where that other dog did. So I have to get up.

So grateful for our pets!

This article is about hospitalized patients being encouraged/supervised to participate. When you are depressed, exercise or yoga is not even in the realm of possibilities. It is a struggle just to get out of bed. If you have never had severe depression you have no idea how bad it is. How difficult it is to conjure any kind of self motivation. How much pain your body is in that gets a little worse every day. Yes, depression can cause physical pain. Much less interact with a group of strangers not knowing if you will start crying for no reason. Exercise was not an option for me.

I am on medication now that works for me, so I am happy, healthy and physically active.

Positive effects. For how many hours? Relief is nice. Can’t do that all day every day unless you are paid to do it. Nothing wrong with it. “Positive effects” need to matter more than a few hours

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In some cultures daily exercise or stretching is encouraged. I would love to see more of that here.

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Shout out to Yoga with Adrienne. She doesn't need more attention but it is a great place for beginners.

Lots of free content exists because its not accessible to everyone otherwise.

Yes! I’ve been using her 30 day yoga programs they’re great!

It might not be the same in your experience but I find doing a team sport or really just any sport can help. You feel obliged to turn up for your teammates as much as yourself and sometimes that is more motivating weirdly.

I have social anxiety yet I find it much easier to discipline myself to do regular sports than any gym/running/home workout even though I can avoid people with those.

Depression is a fucker, keep on fighting.

Well being is a state or a result. Affect is the relationship between two things. Simmilar to but not to be confused with effect which is also the relationship between two things.

I am a man who stretches and farts thank you very much

Just do one, you’re good!

while you mentioned it yourself, i would like to reiterate:

thats why medication exists, and ppl should not be scared to use them. To get you back into a state where these things are in reach for you again. once you are able to participate, more often than not the effect from that is more effective than the meds. Ask me how i know.

I'm a strong believer that most of these studies aren't taking into account that a depressed person will lie to get you off their back.

Exercise does probably help to some extent, but as someone who suffers to an extreme degree with depression, I find it hard to believe that moving rigorously for a while completely alters your mental state.

Or maybe it just doesn't work for me either.

Then there’s people like me who go fckn nuts and wanna off themselves and everyone around them if I don’t exercise regularly and get proper sleep

Just a week or two off of cardio in general is noticeable on anxiety and anger levels especially

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Yeah for me it helps a lot to prevent depression, but once I'm having a depressive episode, it does nothing to help bring me out of it.

I wish it had a bigger effect on my mood. Even though it's so beneficial in the long run, its hard to exercise consistently because it doesn't have any immediately obvious effect for me.

I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, but we're talking about people who have depression. I know a lot of people don't understand how depression is different than generally feeling bad, but it is. And when you're having a depressive episode, having somebody tell you you should just force yourself to do something can be really harmful. It really plays into the harmful stereotype that depression is self-inflicted and just means a person is lazy. The truth is depression often makes it nearly impossible to perform basic daily tasks, much less add in something like a yoga class a few times a week.

You can try to set like a goal unrelated to mental health like “ I want my resting heart rate to be —“ and see if coming at it from another angle like that would be more motivating?

I know it’s a vicious cycle and easier said than done but I’ve been there to an extent and having a physical goal help keep me in track

Thank you for this comment. Every time there's a post about depression, people are quick to compare it to their "slumps" or general unhappiness. It is not the same thing. Depression is a monster of a mental illness that is often misunderstood and negatively stereotyped.

I'm so happy you found a treatment that works for you! I did too some years back and it's incredible how much different life is now.

I work in a prison, get you some trash bags and water, you can get jacked for about 1.99

you can likely remove the "for those hospitalized for depression" part of the title

Agreed. I've been there myself.

It helped me a lot to understand that in some people, depression kind of shuts down certain mental processes or at least hampers them - especially the ones related to exteroception, your perception of the outside world. Any activities that help reactivate those can lessen depression a little, at least temporarily.

Now that I know this, it is a little bit easier to make myself take very small steps during depression: while lying in bed, count all the items in the room that are red, then yellow. It's doable and if you know why you're doing it, it really does reactivate something.

For the same reason, meditation techniques that aim at mental silence and emptiness of thought are NOT helpful in that situation.

Making yourself go to yoga sessions might be completely out of reach. Working with your brain in a really low key way might be achievable though, and you might be able to reactivate to the point where getting out of bed or out of the house might be doable.

It really helped me, as did changing my expectations of what constitutes a successful day. Have to adjust the games rules to match the board and pieces that you currently hold.

I think you were spot on with highlighting how harmful it is to veer into blame or self blame for not being able to perform according to set standards. It was enormously helpful for me to understand that the standards had to adapt according to my ability and needs, and not the other way around. That, and not comparing myself to others.

My advice for anyone who wants to help a loved one with depression is to think of easy ways to engage exteroception, and to start with wherever the person currently feels able. If the only thing that's possible is a bit of conversation while lying in bed, then that's a great start. Maybe take them on a mental journey to a place they really like.

There it is!

There's the "woe is me" comment I was looking for from Reddit.

Study after study proves that it IS indeed as simple as getting some exercise to reduce the effects of depression, and there is always the usual suspects who falsely claim that it doesn't work simply because they love to be coddled in the warm embrace of the familiar.

Your leg isn't broken. People have to work through the pain all the time. They push themselves even when the easier route is simply to give up.

I like to think of it like this. Your brain is just another body part and needs exercise to work and function properly.

If you aren't exercising then your brain isn't working properly, and it might in fact be impossible for any amount of therapy/drugs to make you better.

So even if you don't get any direct change in mental state, you should be exercising in order to get it working properly. You are then in a much better position for other treatments to work.

>I find it hard to believe that moving rigorously for a while completely alters your mental state.

You brain requires exercise to work properly. If you aren't exercising then your brain isn't working properly. It's not a big jump to go from brain not working properly and poor mental state.

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Just set a nice minimum to do. So if you just can't bring yourself to do a really long session at the gym miles away, then decide to just do a 10min jog, or 5min walk, or 10 burpees, etc.

Get yourself in the habit of doing just a bit of exercise each day.

While some people experience a short term high, your brain requires exercise to work and function properly.

So if you aren't exercising that means your brain isn't working properly, which may surface in mental illness such as depression.

So I suspect that doing some exercise get's your brain working properly, hence being a more permanent fix to some mental health issues.

Great bacon flavored farts.

Wow im sorry. It was not my idea to be making fun of anyone but myself. I had totally diff expectations of the class and I was warned by every other man there DON'T DO IT DUDE. And to be very honest it was very intense, anything advanced just becomes a battle of wills these poses are very hard to hold over a length of time. And usually ladies classes are harder to do than guys, we were down on different things at different rates. I have done a Ladies deep water exercise class for the last 2 years and It still get my heart rate up. And still every 2 months some idiot will make fun, get in the water, try like hell to keep up, and go under.

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Clearly you don't understand depression. I got up every day. I kept my job my family my marriage. I did everything in my power to keep my life together. I didn't say it doesn't work. I had no interest in being coddled. There is nothing familiar about depression. Giving up is what depression does to you. If you can muster the motivation to exercise while depressed then more power to you. I could not.

Literally the scientist studying these things are telling people that X, Y and Z helps, and you still have people who love to wallow in their own self pity saying otherwise because ThEy KnOw BeTtEr.

This is how garbage misinformation has helped push anti vaxx sentiment and undermined real science.

Did you read my response? I did not say it doesn't work. How about this? Exercise is how my son and daughter have both avoided severe depression. Maybe if I had started vigorous exercise when the symptoms first started I could have avoided the worst of it. I am not pushing misinformation. I am sharing a subject that does not get enough attention and certainly not enough empathy from people who nothing about it.

I get anxiety too and mood not as stable as u said. Not getting sufficient exercise and burning our calories we eat directly causes anxiety and depression. It may take a weeks of working out too to get your body to switch states or modes