Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious

Re:Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious by petercooper on Wednesday November 18, 2009 @05:45PM (#949317)

A recent Ask HN seemed to reveal there are a lot of people here with bipolar disorder (or bipolar tendencies, at least). For those of you who are bipolar, have you found exercise to be a cure-all or to work in combo with lithium/medication, or...? Basically looking for anecdotal advice here. (FWIW, I have bipolar II.)

This article just reminded me I wanted to raise the question here, but I don't think it warrants its own post.

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Re:Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious by San on Wednesday November 18, 2009 @07:33PM (#949478)

For me, the most important thing is to stick to my daily schedule. Every single day of the week.

Once I skip one or two meals, work long hours, or stay up late, my life starts spiraling out of control. So I live on a fixed schedule now, which includes three hours of exercise per day:

* One hour of swimming at 7AM; this forces me to get out of bed on time, and makes me hungry for breakfast.

* One hour of rowing at 5PM; this forces me to stop working, and makes me hungry for dinner.

* One hour of running at 11PM; this forces me to stop whatever I am doing that evening, and gets me tired for bed.

(In addition I have hundreds of small rules: never go shopping alone, the bed is only for sex and sleeping, dinner must take at least fifteen minutes to prepare, ...)

It does take a lot of time and self discipline (and monitoring by others), but it sure helps me to keep my life under control.

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Re:Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious by tokenadult on Wednesday November 18, 2009 @06:14PM (#949368)

My hypothesis is that exercise-as-such helps with mood disorders, exercise outdoors (to regulate circadian rhythms) helps more, and exercise with someone else (to have pleasant social interaction and a reality check on one's thinking during conversation) helps still more. I wouldn't recommend NOT taking standard medications--I've seen a lot of people get a lot of help from lithium, but lithium leads to weight gain for many people, so then the exercise becomes all the more necessary.

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Re:Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious by kirse on Thursday November 19, 2009 @11:09AM (#950451)

I don't have bipolar disorder, but I do know on particularly stressful days that the best thing exercise does is get you out of your own head - so the only thing you can possibly do is focus on is moving faster, pushing that weight harder, swimming faster, etc.

Personally, if I'm exercising and can keep an internal thought dialogue, I'm not exercising hard enough. Then again, I've been a runner all my life, and we runners take great pleasure in feeling pain and finding that point where we just can't mentally take it anymore.

Bottom line though, exercise is bar none the single best thing you can do for personal health and sanity (after a good night's rest of course)

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