Step 94: Chase the Blues

Movement is good for you. Every organ, tissue and cell in your body works better when it is active. Movement is good for your body, and it is good for your spirit. Even thinking about movement makes you feel brighter. A frolicking colt, a tumbling puppy, a romping child bring smiles. It is hard to conceive of feeling bad after a roller coaster ride, a downhill ski run or a merry-go-round spin. A jet plane, a race car or a speedboat creates excitement. Movement is an upper.

Physical Exercise as Therapy

Sitting is a downer. For a long time there has been a suspected relationship between inactivity and depression. The very idea of a caged animal is depressing, but as I've said before, all of us are zoo animals. Our culture has placed us in inactivity cages. Maybe the only ones who aren't depressed are those of us who are active. It has been asserted that no depression can withstand a 10-mile run. Psychologists and psychiatrists have embraced the notion that physical exercise is an important form of therapy for depressed people.

How could exercise help depression? The chemical modulator of the many body adaptations that accompany physical exercise is adrenalin. One of the various effects of adrenalin is to act as a stimulus for the release of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are chemicals that nature has created to make us pain insensitive. The evolutionary advantage to being resistant to pain, while engaged in the survival strategy of fight or flight, is obvious. Wounds don't hurt until the battle is over. A fellow ran almost the entire Boston Marathon with a broken leg. He didn't feel it until the race was over. Together, adrenalin and endorphins are uppers. Depressed people have less of both. The preferred way of treating depression is to restore the deficiency in adrenalin and endorphins. Nature's way is prescribing exercise.

Don't Slow Down

As you dare to be 100, losses occur along the way. Being physically fit allows you better to bear the burden those losses thrust upon you. There is an inevitable tendency to slow down as you age; the very thought of having to keep up with the trail of grandchildren is daunting. But the better able you are to do it, the less chance you will have of becoming depressed. The last of life should not be lived with a sad expression. It should be lived with a bright and optimistic outlook. A physical exercise program is a central part of maintaining that attitude. A walk to the store, the library or the post office is better medicine than anything I have in my black bag.