Sport as mental therapy

Sports are good for your health, but not only. It calms the mind, helps moderate stress and mood, combat depression, and can help prevent and manage even the most severe mental health problems.

That's also why more people are now practising sports weekly and even looking at adding them and cannabis to their diet. You can learn more about fast-growing weed seeds of Sensoryseeds online and also about how to best use hemp seeds along with your sports routine.

Doctor, how does sport promote psychological well-being?

There have been several studies that have confirmed the benefits of sport not only for physical well-being but also for mental well-being:

1. Physical exercise affects serotonin levels, stimulating the hormones adrenalin and noradrenalin, which improve mood;
2. Physical activity releases endorphins, chemicals produced by the brain that regulate mood, reducing stress levels;
3. Participation in team sports improves resilience, empathy, and social skills;
4. Sport improves cognitive development, creativity and concentration;
5. Sport requires setting goals, coordinating with the theme and working to achieve them, increasing self-esteem and confidence in oneself and others, and self-affirmation
6. Sport allows you to spend more time outdoors and free your mind from worries;
7. Playing sports helps improve attention, self-control and problem-solving;
8. Sport improves the perception of one's physical health;
9. Sport allows us to sleep better and thus be more rested.

Which mental conditions can benefit from sport?

Several mental conditions can benefit from physical activity, mainly when performed in a group and outdoors in the sunshine. 

It is very helpful in managing both acute and chronic stress. For example, walking before returning home after a hard day at work can help us feel better. But even short, intense exercise, for example, 20 minutes of spinning, when medical conditions permit, can help us manage anger. 

Patients with depression are then the class of patients with psychological disorders that can undoubtedly benefit the most from sporting activity, as many scientific articles have told us and demonstrated. 

In a study published in 2018, the effect of fluoxetine, a widely used antidepressant that belongs to the category of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and sports activity on brain function was compared. The study aimed to assess the extent to which the intake of fluoxetine, on the one hand, and sporting action, on the other, can alter neuronal activity and brain neurogenesis, i.e. the development of new nerve cells or new neuronal circuits.

The authors concluded that both fluoxetine and sporting activity stimulate neuronal activity in the hippocampus, increasing the production of new cells. Recall that the hippocampus is the main structure involved in memorising and learning, but it also plays a vital role in managing and understanding emotions.

Can sport be considered a therapy?

As mentioned above, yes, but as an adjunct to other psychological, psychotherapeutic or pharmacological therapies. 

How much exercise is needed to reduce stress?

Difficult question. There is no absolute rule that we can use for everyone. Some people need relaxation to reduce stress rather than strenuous physical activity. They are generally speaking. However, we only realise how much physical activity we need to do to feel good and rejuvenate. 

Sometimes, a brisk 20-minute walk (also recommended by cardiologists as cardiovascular prevention) may be enough. Still, the important thing is not to overdo it: our organism, in all its functions, has limits that we must learn to recognise and respect. In recent years, scientific research has alerted us to excess. We can compare our body to a car; no matter how powerful it may be, we cannot expect it to run at full speed all the time; otherwise, the engine will burst, just as it might happen to our organism. 

Individual or group sport: which to choose?

Definitely group sport, for several reasons, primarily because it allows us to socialise, to get involved. The lockdown has left 'psychological' marks on all of us that we will carry with us for quite some time and which are even more visible in adolescents. Let us think, for example, of the excessive use of social media, of the various devices we have at our disposal, telephone, tablet, and TV, to say the most common, which steal time and almost lead us to live a parallel reality made up of digital or virtual contact and not actual contact, with the risk that then, in fact, we find it even more difficult to interact, especially for the more introverted. 

Therefore, group physical activity organised and managed by a coach helps a lot in overcoming those barriers of psychological discomfort. But let's also think about how much our sleeping and waking rhythms have changed; our schedules are different from those we had before the lockdown, and even in this case, doing physical activity consistently, perhaps in the morning, helps our organism to re-establish those lost balances and maybe even to make us feel happier, while also helping us to manage stress.