HEALTH Exercise and mood

I feel good!


Personal trainer
Paul O'Brien

Exercise and your mood
We all know that exercise is good for us. And most of us are aware that it also makes us feel better. You’ve probably heard things like ‘exercise releases endorphins’, which we understand to be some kind of natural ‘feel good’ chemical.
It seems, however, that the real reason exercise makes us feel so good has to do with its affect on our brains. Put simply, when the body moves and the blood flows, the brain begins to work better. This view is increasingly supported by medical science and has been my experience with 100 per cent of my clients.
As I always say, ‘your body wants to move, it was born to do just that’. We are essentially not too far removed from our hunter-gatherer ancestors in some respects. They used their bodies and their brains to outsmart fierce competition in the hunt for food. To do this, they had to move – a lot! Their bodies and brains worked in unison to achieve this end.
Though we may have smarter software (brain capacity and function) than our ancestors, the hardware (bodies) we are using is still the same. Except we don’t hunt and gather food any more. Our bodies move less now than they ever have. Hence, we are vulnerable to depression, stress, cardiovascular disease, obesity and a myriad of other conditions. Getting the point? Could it be that a great part of our problem lies in the fact that we have betrayed our bodies natural urge to move?
Exercise releases a cascade of neurochemicals (dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine) that affect our thoughts and emotions. Indeed, there is a growing movement in medicine to recommend exercise as a prescription, and more and more studies are finding evidence in support of this argument. It seems that when we move, we stimulate the brain stem, giving us more energy, lifting our mood, increasing our motivation and self-esteem and even helping us return to normal sleep patterns. Critically, exercise allows us to prove to ourselves that we can affect change in our own lives.
In my own practice, the first changes I see in clients are invariably those connected with mood. Clients report feeling better in themselves, becoming more focused, being less irritable and sleeping better. Though they may come to exercise to lose weight or improve their aerobic fitness, but to my mind these are just the added benefits. The real benefit of exercise is the effect it has on our body and brain chemistry, giving us back the power to take control of our moods – and our lives.

Next week Fitness smarts – how exercise improves learning ability.

Paul O’Brien is a certified personal trainer with the American Council on Exercise and a qualified life coach. He runs his own business in Westport and is the creator of Bootcamp West, an exciting and challenging exercise program in Westport. For details of bootcamps starting in March in Westport and Castlebar contact Paul at paul@bootcampwest.com or 086 1674515.