Conquering Depression and Anxiety Through Exercise
Language: English
Pages: 305
ISBN: 1591021928
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
One out of every two Americans will suffer from some mental disorder during their lifetimes, with depression being the most common problem. How do most of us cope? Usually, we turn to overeating, drinking, and smoking. In short, we treat our unhealthy mental reactions to the American lifestyle with even unhealthier physical habits.
Clinical psychologist Keith Johnsgard — an inveterate runner who is in his 70’s! — proposes a better solution in this uplifting book. Why not turn to exercise — one of the healthiest aspects of American lifestyle — as a means of improving not just our physical well-being but our state of mind as well? Though usually associated with losing weight and physical fitness, exercise does in fact offer many mental health benefits. Johnsgard inspires us to put on a pair of sneakers and start moving. He draws from a lifetime of clinical experience, research on the psyche of the athlete, and personal experience as an athlete to make a convincing case that exercise can greatly enhance our mental outlook. Further, physical activity decreases the symptoms of depression as well as psychotherapy and drugs, and with only positive side effects! Exercise not only reduces depression and anxiety, but also boosts your energy level and self-esteem.
If depression and anxiety have overshadowed your life, or you just want to improve your mental outlook while enhancing your physical fitness, this book is a superb motivator to help you help yourself through the healthiest, least expensive, and simplest method available.
Best Practices: Achieving Goals: Define and Surpass Your High Performance Goals
A Field Guide to Now: Notes on Mindfulness and Life in the Present Tense
Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
The Epic of Gilgamesh and How Siduri's Ancient Advice Can Guide Us to a Happier Life
The Science of Happily Ever After: What Really Matters in the Quest for Enduring Love
take much stress to cause heart failure. The greatest number of those Rhode Island sudden deaths occurred on golf courses, and the fourth most common venue was bowling alleys.2 Three decades ago, when a larger percentage of us smoked, two studies found that 70 percent of exercise-induced sudden deaths were suffered by heavy smokers.- While fewer of us now smoke, for those of us who still do, tobacco escalates our risk. Those of us who are sedentary smokers (especially if we are older and
of those 2.15 million deaths could have been prevented. About one million of the deaths were the result of self-destructive lifestyle choices: tobacco (four hundred thousand deaths), obesity (three hundred thousand), and alcohol (one hundred thousand) were the major root causes, accounting for 80 percent of all preventable deaths. It's interesting that we spend countless billions at home and abroad in our war on illegal drugs, when 80 percent of all preventable deaths (eight hundred thousand)
affirmation to set reasonable and attainable new goals. We all have a Wonder Woman or a Superman caged within us, and they yearn to be set free. But they need to be treated with tender and loving care, perhaps considered as infants with great potential. HEALTH AND FITNESS Loss is one of the experiences all of us share in common. If we love, we will inevitably experience loss, be it the death of a puppy, the end of a love affair, or the death of family member. My Fifty-Plus members related
America's most common mental affliction. What's more, the survey suggested that the prevalence of mental disorders may be considerably higher than we previously thought. Nearly half of the representative sample of eight thousand men and women who took the structured diagnostic interview reported having suffered one or more of the most common disorders in their lifetimes. However, less than 40 percent of those with lifetime disorders and fewer than twenty percent of those with a recent disorder
is a marvelous vessel to keep us afloat during the inevitable periods of stress we all must deal with in our lifetimes. Such periods don't always require professional assistance. They sometimes have no solutions: They must simply be gotten through. HYPOTHESIZED MECHANISMS: PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES Since exercise appears to be an efficacious and safe treatment for clinical depression, perhaps theorizing about just exactly how it works is irrelevant. If it works, it works! However, scientists
