By Anna Beatriz De Santanna
Maria Alice Barros went to see her doctor when she started experiencing panic attacks. He diagnosed her with anxiety and told her to start exercising.
“It improved my life a lot because I stopped having symptoms,” says the post-secondary student. “First, he asked me to exercise at the gym, but I couldn’t because I suffered panic attacks when I was indoors, so I started doing it outdoors.”
Not long after, Barros got used to the outdoor activities and felt prepared to go to the gym. Today, with the combination of exercising and medicine, she started to eat well again and decreased the number of anxiety attacks.
“The first important thing to understand about this is that the human being is a being composed of three fundamental dimensions, which are the biological, the psychological and the social,” said Luis Felipe Fleury, professor at the department of psychology at UNISUAM – Brazil’s University Center Augusto Motta.
Each of these dimensions will require care, he says, noting both the biological and psychological dimensions are closely associated.
“So if you take care of your body, performing physical activities, it will obviously have a very positive and significant impact on our mental health.”
When doing physical activity, he says our bodies release serotonin, endorphins – which are fundamental for our body – and dopamine. These three neurotransmitters are responsible for the feeling of joy, relaxation, and mood regulation.
“While helping to release these three neurotransmitters, exercising has a very positive impact on anxiety care and depression care,” said Fleury.
“Another area affected by exercising is insomnia,” Fleury said. “Physical activity will assist in the regulation of mood, the functioning of the nervous system and, with the release of the three neurotransmitters, we indirectly achieve a regularization of the mechanisms that cause an impact on sleep.”
Since exercising helps to regulate our mood, which is essential for our interpersonal relationships, this can also help us in our everyday interaction with others.
“Exercising is an activity that acts in our biological dimension but has fantastic effects on our psychic dimension. If we are talking about a human being who is composed through these three dimensions and these dimensions communicate, it is evident that this positive impact on the biological and psychological dimension expands to the social dimension.”
Fleury urges those who already work out regularly to continue to do so. For those who still don’t but want to make an effort to get out of the sedentary lifestyle, the professor gives an important tip: “take the first step.”
“Any physical activity is better than nothing, so overcome this initial barrier of the comfort zone, work with real goals, set achievable goals.”
Physical activity will act by reducing stress, improving the quality of our sleep, balancing the production of hormones, improving our immunity, increasing our productivity, acting in the prevention of very known diseases – such as diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. “Those who don’t go for love end up going because of pain, many people that don’t perform regular physical activity, develop an illness, whether physical or mental. Consequently, they seek a doctor or psychologist to hear what they already knew: exercise.”