Exercise Treats Depression as Well as Medication and Therapy, Study Finds
It’s no secret that exercise can boost your mood. How many times have you heard that a good workout releases "happy endorphins" and helps you feel better? As cliche as it sounds, it turns out it’s true. A major new review from the Cochrane Collaboration found that exercise can play a meaningful role in treating depression, putting physical activity in the same conversation as therapy and medication.
The review analyzed 73 randomized controlled trials involving nearly 5,000 adults with depression, making it one of the most comprehensive evaluations of exercise as a mental health treatment to date. The research team looked at how structured exercise compared with therapy, medication, and other approaches.
People who exercised experienced significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms than those who received no treatment. The overall effect was considered moderate to large, showing that exercise can deliver real mental health benefits.
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Notably, exercise performed about as well as established treatments for depression. In head-to-head comparisons, it was just as effective as psychological therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy and showed similar results to antidepressant medications. That doesn’t mean exercise should necessarily replace therapy or medication, but it supports its use as a legitimate treatment option, either on its own or with other approaches.
Overall, researchers say exercise should be taken seriously as an evidence-based treatment for depression. And it's not even about what type of workout you do, but rather how consistent you are.
"Ultimately you want to work your way up. But going from completely sedentary to even just going for a walk every day, that's where you start seeing those exponential gains," says Nicholas Fabiano, MD, per NPR. "When it comes to exercise, it's about just finding the exercise that works for you, such as something like yoga or tai chi versus something like walking and jogging,
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