Should Americans value the benefits of exercise? In almost every aspect of daily life, the rewards of staying active are clear. At the high school level, the benefits are specifically present in athletics. Football players build strength through lifting and resistance training. Track and cross country runners develop endurance and speed through cardio workouts. Basketball players improve their agility by practicing plays and ball movement. Each sport has its own set of skills that players work to improve. While many of the benefits of being active in a sport are obvious, what are the values that do not receive our attention? Additionally, why should people continue to exercise when their time in high school athletics ends? Both questions share a connection. Some benefits of staying active may not seem clear at first, but they stand as a constant reason for why physical fitness must be a lifelong pursuit. Although routine physical activity can be time consuming, Americans should get more exercise because it leads to a healthy and …show more content…
For most individuals, happiness is the main objective. What if there was a natural way to increase happiness? As it turns out, there is. Exercise not only makes people healthier physically, but it also improves mental health. In the article “Can Exercise Cure Depression and Anxiety?" written by Amanda Loudin, Loudin makes a statement that validates the mental values of exercise. According to Loudin, “Jennifer Carter, a clinical assistant professor of family medicine and the director of sport psychology at Ohio State University, said she has been pushing exercise therapy since the early 2000s. ‘I view balanced exercise as an important component in treating anxiety, depression and other mental-health disorders,’ she said” (3). Loudin’s point is that physical activity is a proven asset in treating mental disorders. Moreover, exercise leads to a more positive outlook on
In the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain by Dr. John J. Ratey, MD (2008), Ratey discuses how exercise can help treat many mood disorders and how it can help strengthen our brains. This book is divided into ten chapters all with five to ten subsections in them. The chapters include: Welcome to the revolution: A Case Study on Exercise and the brain, Learning, Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Attention Deficit, Addiction, Hormonal Changers, Aging, and the Regimen.
For many people dealing with depression and anxiety, exercise might might not seem like the easiest of treatments. Exercise can make a difference in that far outlast that of most prescription medications.
In today’s society many people lack the proper nutrition and health fitness that our body needs on a daily basis. As we are challenged everyday with different activities we take on, we are also challenged with technology. Technology not only has changed psychological parts of life, but the historical and sociological parts of life as well. How can we implement more physical activity? That’s a great question. Many people seem to forget their charger when they go out, or either on their phone so much while enjoying a night out on the town that they are always loosing a charge. Many malls, gyms, and workplaces now have charging stations.
One of the studies showed that a combination of exercise and counseling was more effective than counseling alone (Rueter et al. 1982). Martinsen et al (1985) divided a group of 23 participants with clinical depression into two groups – (i) a control group of 14 patients and (ii) a exercise group of 9 patients who were given TCAs (Tricyclic antidepressants) to augment treatment. It was seen that both the group showed similar improvement in depressive symptoms. This does show that exercise has an impact that is as good as medication to lower depressive
A growing epidemic in America is depression. Physicians are able to prescribe drugs to help with the symptoms of depression, but other therapeutic methods have been studied and show great results in recovery. Therapeutic Physical Fitness has shown to reduce depression and anxiety. Ihas been confirmed through experiments that physical exercise can be as effective as antidepressant drugs and some cases suggest that it better prevents symptom recurrence.
There is a flourishing interest in the use of physical activity or exercise in the treatment of depression because
Critically Analyse the Research Findings on the Acute and Chronic Effects of Exercise on Anxiety and Depression
Since 1990s, many scientists agree that exercise has positive impacts on people’s physical health and mental health (SIME WE, 1987). From Morgan and O’Connor’s research, people can reduce stress and state anxiety by doing physical activities; also gain emotional pleasure from the process (Morgan and O’Connor, 1988). Later in 1997, Landers states that physical activities can reduce people depression after weeks of regular and routine exercise. In addition, people can benefit from more
Sports are embedded in many American schools in a way they are not anywhere else. One element of our educational system consistently surprises them, “Sports are a huge deal in American schools,” says Earl Smith of the New York Times. The positives have always outweighed the negatives in the case against high school sports. As Sato Kai state, “The benefits of sports as part of the education process are abundant and sometimes beyond quantifications,” According to many academic specialists, sports offer formative and life long lessons such as: discipline, responsibility, self confidence, and accountability. These skills can furthermore excel your later life and give you a greater chance of being employed in a high level job. Participation in high school sports helps your later development as an adult and teaches you life long skills that can't be taught elsewhere.
Some hypothesize that moderate levels of exercise will decrease the symptoms of mental health conditions (Blumenthal et al., 2007; Diaz & Motta, 2008; Motta, Kuligowski, & Marino, 2010; Rosenbaum, Nguyen, Lenehan, Tiedemann, van der Ploeg, & Sherrington, 2011) and therefore be used as an alternative or complimentary treatment option for mental health (Libby, Pilver, & Desai, 2012).
General recommendations are now widely accepted as to the general advantages of exercise in terms of physical health, such as its ability to prevent weight gain, coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and osteoporosis.14 It appears that health promotion schemes have shied away from extolling exercise’s psychological benefits. After all, there is no government campaign, no public policy initiative, which pontificates exercise on account of a concern for mental wellbeing. Although many people would identify that exercise has a positive influence on mood state, it appears that, generally speaking, this is regarded as a positive correlation, rather than a causal relationship. The ‘healthy body, healthy mind’ concept is thus, for many, a heuristic utopia, rather than a scientifically proven
Exercise is one of the most important factors in a persons’ life. Physical activity, or the lack of it, can result in a person having a healthy life or cause them to have diabetes. The benefits of exercise are countless. The positive health results, the improvement in attitude, even better academic performance are all factors which make not exercising inexcusable.
They found that an exercise training programme could be an alternative treatment for MDD. Although antidepressants had a more rapid response than exercise, after 16 weeks of exercise the effectiveness in reducing depression was equal to the anti-depressants. A study also found that a single bout of exercise could result in substantial improvements in mood, which shows that it’s not just duration and frequency. However, it may be that the improvement in mood is only temporary (Dimeo et al., 2001). Lawler and Hopker (2001) stated that effectiveness of exercise on depression couldn’t be determined due to lack of quality research based on clinical populations. They also wrote that the explanations of the results may have been that depressed patients who did regular exercise could have got positive feedback from other people and a sense of self worth, which may act as a diversion from negative thoughts. Physical activity was found to be linked with less coexisting depression, which remains the same after controlling for gender, age, and race. The results of the study showed that physical activity is helpful with medical problems, life stressors and quality of sleep (Harris et al., 2006).
Physical Activity is undeniably good for everyone, not only does it keep you fit and healthy but when started at a young age, it can set up good habits for life. Sometimes however, people do not take care of their physical wellbeing, resulting in obesity and other eating disorders which can be detrimental to their health.
Exercise and eating healthy are two of the most important things you need to do to take care of your body properly. Both exercise, and eating healthy, have many advantages and benefits. They help with multiple things needed throughout your life. These things include growing physically, mentally, and if you are religious, spiritually as well. All of this adds up to your body functioning in the highest and best way possible.