To better cope with all the discouraging news this winter about rising Covid-19 cases and much more, you may want to get out there and play in the snow, according to a new report. The large-scale study of nearly 200,000 cross-country skiers found that being physically active cuts the risk of developing clinical anxiety in half over time. The study, from Sweden, focused on skiing, but the researchers said that almost any type of aerobic activity is likely to help protect us against excessive worry and fear – an encouraging thought as we face another grim pandemic season.
Science already offers much encouraging evidence that exercise can improve our mood. Experiments show that when people (and laboratory animals) begin to exercise, they usually calm down, more resistant, happier and less likely to feel unduly sad, nervous or angry than before. Epidemiological studies, which often focus on the links between one type of activity or behavior and various aspects of health or longevity, also find that more exercise is related to substantially lower chances of developing severe depression; on the contrary, be sedentary increases the risk of depression. a remarkable 2013 neurological study He even found that exercise leads to reductions in nervous anxiety in rodents, by causing an increase in the production of specialized neurons that release a chemical that relieves excess activity in other parts of the brain.
But most of these studies were small, short-term, or primarily relevant to mice, leaving many questions open about what types of exercise could help our mental health, how long could the improvements in mood potentially last, whether or not? men and women benefit equally and if possible. exercising too much and perhaps increasing your likelihood of feeling emotionally worse.
So for the new study, which was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, exercise scientists at Lund University in Sweden and other institutions decided that the long-term mental health of the thousands upon thousands of men and women would be worth investigating. They have competed in Sweden’s famous Vasaloppet cross-country skiing event over the years.
The Vasaloppet, which celebrates its centenary this winter, is the largest series of cross-country ski races in the world, with crowds of runners lining up annually in the forests of central Sweden to run, slide and gasp through races ranging from 30 kilometers, or nearly 19 miles. miles, to the end. Show distance of 90K, about 56 miles. Because this type of endurance event requires abundant health, endurance, and training, the researchers previously used data on Vasaloppet runners to study how exercise influences it. heart health, cancer risks and longevity.
“We used participation in a Vasaloppet as an indicator of a physically active and healthy lifestyle,” said Tomas Deierborg, director of the department of experimental medicine at Lund University and lead author of the new study, who completed the 90-degree race twice. km.
To begin with, he and his colleagues collected completion times and other information from 197,685 Swedish men and women who participated in one of the races between 1989 and 2010. They then collated this information with data from a Swedish national patient registry, looking for diagnoses of clinical anxiety disorder among runners in the next 10 to 20 years. For comparison, they also checked the anxiety diagnoses over the same time period for 197,684 of their randomly selected fellow citizens who had not participated in the race and were generally considered relatively inactive.
Skiers, the researchers found, were shown to be considerably calmer in the decades after their race than other Swedes, with more than a 50 percent lower risk of developing clinical anxiety. These good spirits tended to prevail among male and female skiers of almost any age, except, curiously, the fastest runners. The female finalists each year tended to be more likely to develop anxiety disorders than other runners, although their risk overall remained lower than that of women of the same age in the control group.
These results indicate that “the link between exercise and anxiety reduction is strong,” said Dr. Lena Brundin, principal investigator of neurodegenerative diseases at the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, who was another author of the study.
And luckily, you probably don’t need to cross-country ski for long distances in Sweden’s snowy forests to reap the benefits, Dr. Deierborg said. Previous studies on exercise and mood suggest that following the World Health Organization recommendations of about 30 minutes of brisk walking or similar activities most days “has good effects on mental health,” he said, and these benefits appear to apply to a “larger population”. “That only Swedes.
Still, it may be worth monitoring your psychological response to intense training and competition, especially if you’re a competitive woman, she said. The finding that faster women tended to develop anxiety more often than other runners surprised the researchers, he said, and suggests that perhaps performance anxiety or other problems could be initiated or exacerbated in some people by running.
“You don’t have to complete extreme exercise to achieve beneficial effects on anxiety,” Dr. Brundin said.
However, the findings have limitations. They can’t prove that exercise makes people feel better, only that highly active people tend to be less anxious than their more sedentary peers. The study also does not explain how skiing could reduce anxiety levels. Researchers suspect that physical activity changes the levels of brain chemicals related to mood, such as dopamine and serotonin, and reduces inflammation throughout the body and brain, physiologically contributing to stronger mental health. . Going outside among silent, snowy pine trees and away from Zoom’s calls while training for a Vasaloppet probably won’t hurt either.
Any exercise in any setting should probably help us cope better this winter, the researchers said. “A physically active lifestyle appears to have a strong effect in reducing the chances of developing an anxiety disorder,” said Dr. Deierborg, who hopes to extend those benefits to the next generation. He plans to enter and train for another Vasaloppet in a few years, he said, when his young children are old enough to join him.
