Exercise! How does exercising help relieve anxiety? Believe it or not, it’s not just about lowering your stress levels and increasing feel-good hormones.
According to Jasper Smits, Ph.D., coauthor of Exercise for Mood and Anxiety, “Exercise raises your heart rate and triggers a surge of hormonal changes.” While you may feel more relaxed after a good workout, exercise is actually a low-level form of stress. But the more you expose your body to the “stress” of exercise, the better your body becomes at handling it.
“Your body builds up immunity to it. Eventually, it will get better at handling the rest of life’s stressors,” she tells Self.
The opposite effect happens when you don’t exercise: Stay sedentary for too long and your body can become more sensitive to stress, causing the slightest stressful situation to leave you frazzled and on the verge of an anxiety attack.
In other words, exercise works out the brain as much as it does muscles in your body. Moreover, the more vigorous the exercise, the better it is for people who suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. “You experience rapid heartbeat and heavy breathing – the same symptoms that occur in anxiety. But when you you exercises, you can get accustomed to those symptoms and stop seeing them as negative,” adds Smits.
A study from the University of Georgia in Athens found that sedentary women with anxiety disorders who began doing two 16-minute cardio sessions a week no longer met the diagnostic criteria for the disorder after just 6 weeks.
Yoga works, too. Research from Boston University School of Medicine found that people who practiced an hour of yoga just three times a week had less anxiety and felt calmer than people who walked slowly for the same amount of time.
Give it a try!
