Your emotional well-being has a significant impact on your life, helping support your ability to form and maintain meaningful relationships, make and achieve goals and develop a healthy sense of self-worth. While genetics and life experiences help shape your emotional health, lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise play a role. Aerobics or other cardiovascular exercise has a beneficial affect on your emotional health.
Aerobics and Endorphins
During intense exercise, your brain responds by releasing chemicals called endorphins -- specifically beta-endorphin, a hormone that affects your brain. Beta-endorphin reacts with regions of your brain involved in emotional regulation, helping to boost your mood. More intense exercise or longer workouts lead to a greater release of endorphins into your bloodstream, causing the sensation known as a "runner's high."
Effect on Self-Esteem
Performing aerobics and other physical activity can affect your emotional health by improving your sense of self-esteem. Developing an exercise program requires discipline. Successfully sticking to your program can promote a sense of achievement that boosts self-esteem. Many types of aerobics can benefit your sense of self-worth -- even video games that involve aerobic activity increase self-esteem.
Effect on Depression
Aerobics' beneficial effects on your emotional health can have implications in treating mental illness, including depression. Individuals suffering from depression might suffer from low levels of endorphins in their brain, and regular exercise might help to raise the levels of these chemicals. Southwestern Medical Center at the University of Texas reports that performing aerobic exercise helps reduce depression symptoms in individuals suffering from mild or moderate depression. If you have depression, talk to your physician about the possible benefits of performing aerobic exercise as a complement to other treatments for depression.
Overtraining and Your Emotions
When it comes to aerobics, like many other things in life, too much of a good thing is bad for you. Performing high-intensity aerobics without adequate rest in between your workouts, particularly if you rapidly increase your workout intensity, can lead to overtraining. In addition to the risk of injury or muscle damage, overtraining can affect your mental health. Individuals who overtrain can feel depressed and irritable, excessively fatigued, face difficulty sleeping and develop a lack of motivation. Avoid overtraining by scheduling rest days into your workout program so your body can recover between aerobic workouts, and only gradually increasing your workout intensity as your fitness improves.
References
- University of New Mexico: Exploring the Mysteries of Exercise
- University of California, Santa Barbara: Dance Games and Other Exergames: What the Research Says
- Southwestern Medical Center: Exercise Helps Reduce Symptoms of Depression, UT Southwestern Researchers Find
- Hospital for Special Surgery: Overtraining
Member Comments