9 ms·

Study confirms lifting weights reduces depression

126 points by vldx 8y ago

anoncoward111 8y ago
To what degree? A simple Google search will reveal plenty of body builders and athletes who have committed suicide despite plenty of weight training. Sure there are other factors influencing their decision, but "just lift weights!" is too general of a prescription to help.
- rubbingalcohol 8y ago
  Not smoking doesn't mean you won't get lung cancer. Eating enough fiber doesn't mean you won't get heart disease. Are you seriously suggesting that the intent of this article was to say that lifting weights will make all your problems go away?
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    The title of the article literally says "Study confirms lifting weights reduces depression". I am questioning if it is by a meaningful amount. For example, a gauze pad will stop your bleeding by a considerable amount....
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Do we have quantitative research into other forms of physical activity? You're right, athletes still commit suicide, but marathon runners still drop dead of heart attacks too - does that mean the general consensus that running is good for your heart is a bad one?
  - DanBC 8y ago
    We have ltos of research on exercise and mental health. Exercise is important, but it's probably not so useful as a treatment for mental ill health.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      I guess that depends on a bunch of factors - if it's a mild acute depression why wouldn't exercise be useful? Absolutely, long term chronic deep depression needs different therapy, but exercise may very well be a sort of chicken soup for a the blues. I know it's helped me immeasurably, and enabled me to cope with my anxiety disorder and its co-morbid depression to the point where I no longer require medication.
      - DanBC 8y ago
        But for mild acute depression almost anything works about as well as anything else. The only things that stand out are some talking therapies (CBT especially, because there's lots of research) and medication. The disadvantage if pushing exercise, without providing an accessible course of exercise, is that people find it hard to do and that increases their feelings of guilt and wortlessness.
- cwbrandsma 8y ago
  There are a number of body building supplements with some wild side effects. And if you look at body builders, at the elite levels...that just isn't healthy what they do to themselves to get ready for a show. Getting down to less-than 5% body fat, that isn't good for you. But, going to the gym and lifting weights, and eat like a normal person...that is fine.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  Maybe steroids increase depression more than weight lifting reduces it?
- matheusmoreira 8y ago
  Reducing the risk of depression does not mean eliminating it. In medicine, 0% and 100% don't exist.
- mr_overalls 8y ago
  It's amazing how many people seem to lack even an intuitive understanding of correlation (i.e., "X tends to cause Y"), and think that providing a (usually anecdotal) counterexample negates the relationship/trend. Alice: Smoking tends to cause cancer. Bob: My aunt Wanda smoked for years and lived to be 89. Alice: Exercise is good for you. Bob: My cousin started jogging and found out he had cancer the next month. Alice: The global climate is warming. Bob: The weather in my hometown was unusually cold yesterday. Alice: Childhood vaccinations prevent many deaths. On the whole, they provide a net benefit. Bob: A child in a nearby town had a severe allergic reaction to a chicken pox vaccine; children would be better off just getting the disease. This kind of innumeracy is distressingly common.
  - beenBoutIT 8y ago
    Logic is not something most people seem to care a whole lot about.
  - mmt 8y ago
    >This kind of innumeracy is distressingly common. I would say it certainly doesn't help that science reporting essentially never gives the numbers that matter, nor explains what they mean. > Covering 33 randomized clinical trials with 1,877 participants That's an average of under 57 participants per clinical trial, which seems a bit sparse to me. Still, that's not my point so much as that those are the only numbers about the study in the article. Where is the mention of statistical significance or uncertainty? It's also difficult to teach, since I don't think we're naturally geared for intuiting about numbers bigger than we might encounter in nature. Also, anecdotes about people we know personally are more likely to resonate with us than mere statistics about faceless strangers (not that it explains why a few hundred Anthrax vaccine deaths of strangers would have been more objectionable than the routine tens of thosands of annual road deaths of strangers).
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
It good to see a focus on weightlifting, and I'm glad to see that research like this is proving the same sort of benefit. It seems as though it's kind of faux pas to focus on strength when other options like cardio are available. The standard for physical excellence these days has become the marathon, triathlon, or iron man, where I think that a long term focus on strength training is it's own unique reward, and it's own unique challenge, taking years and years of hard work and focused dedication to achieve peak performance, as opposed to a marathon where (a quick google says) one can achieve with 20 weeks of training.
- faitswulff 8y ago
  It seems like a false distinction to me? Sure, you can complete a marathon in 20 weeks of training, but you can also squat a barbell on your first try at the gym. As someone who has done both, you can dedicate years to the pursuit of either practice. Either way, you will likely be better off. But I will agree that more research on the health benefits of casual strength training is always welcome.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    You're absolutely right, it's a bit of a false distinction, and there are years of benefits one can see in either discipline. I just find that with strength there are obvious aesthetic changes for years, it seems to offer its most visible rewards on a much longer timeline.
- cwbrandsma 8y ago
  I've had arthritis in my knees since I was 18. All those running things just ain't happening. But I can lift. Lifting helped me get thru a pretty bad case of burn out.
  - dingaling 8y ago
    Swimming is also excellent exercise with arthritis though for knees you would avoid breaststroke. It gives a cardio workout rather than just strength training.
DanBC 8y ago
The effect isn't good when you properly design the study. > In this meta-analysis of 33 clinical trials including 1877 participants, resistance exercise training was associated with a significant reduction in depressive symptoms, with a moderate-sized mean effect. Total volume of resistance exercise training, health status, and strength improvements were not associated with the antidepressant effect; however, smaller reductions in depressive symptoms were derived from trials with blinded allocation and/or assessment. This repeats many findings. Exercise seems to work as a treatment for depression until you start using good quality study design when the benefits over placebo reduce.
- iooi 8y ago
  > The effect isn't good when you properly design the study. Not sure if you meant to say "isn't as good', since that has a very different meaning and it's what's actually stated in your quote: > smaller reductions in depressive symptoms
Wonnk13 8y ago
I think there's some truth to this. I get a very different "high" after a session of lifting heavy vs 90 minutes of running or cycling. I feel like with weight lifting I get more a testosterone high and much less of an endorphin high.
- busterarm 8y ago
  I found it somewhat dangerous to play with cortisol levels like this though. I had to keep lifting, at worse, every other day. If I rested for two days, on the second day I was completely miserable. Like non-functional, despondent, etc. When I injured myself and couldn't lift for months, I fell into the worst depression of my life.
  - rc_hadoken 8y ago
    You had to keep lifting? You make it sound like a side effect. Do you think its possible you are conflating "lifting" with "exerting energy"?
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Does it matter? That's missing the forest for the trees a bit, isn't it?
      - rc_hadoken 8y ago
        Ye-yes..I think it does matter. It's possible I have no idea what you mean by your post above. I just don't think there is a problem with "having to keep lifting."
        busterarm 8y ago
        The whole point of what I was saying had nothing to do with lifting and everything about being careful if you're going to do something radical to alter your mood if you're a depressive. My advice would have been the same if I had said to be careful about abruptly stopping a medication. My lifting injury was related to my sciatic nerve. I could barely walk for months and sitting or standing for any length of time was a challenge. Taking on any other kind of physical activity was out of the question. The effect on my mood and the depressive episode stopping my workouts triggered was a pretty significant problem. If you're a depressive and you suddenly start doing something majorly physically-taxing, get really good training and be very, very careful. But I had great programming and an industry-leading coach and I still got hurt.
dsr_ 8y ago
In my experience, people who are significantly depressed can't make time in their lives for exercise. One of the indicators that they are coming out of a depressive period is that they return to exercise routines that the abandoned on the downslope. So -- I strongly suspect survival bias here. It might even be true that weightlifting is an effective treatment for depression, but it would be awfully hard to get a negative result because you can't get depressed people to do it.
- skellera 8y ago
  Anecdotal but I did not exercise before and exercise did more than any medications did for pulling me up. It has made me truly believe that a healthy body can help make a healthy mind.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    I find that good exercise (particularly in the evening) helps tremendously with sleep, and that really, really helps with everything else.
  - slothtrop 8y ago
    I've had a similar experience, such that at my healthiest my depressive lows are nowhere near what they once were.
  - keyle 8y ago
    I completely agree. I've always said that I go to the gym to keep sane.
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    Also anecdotal but I get depressed when I can't exercise (usually because of injury, weather or sickness). The longer that lasts, the more depressed I get. It has a very noticeable effect on me, to the point that honestly I can't understand how people who don't exercise manage to stay above water.
    - 8y ago
peterwwillis 8y ago
"Resistance exercise training significantly reduced depressive symptoms among adults regardless of health status, total prescribed volume of RET, or significant improvements in strength. Better-quality randomized clinical trials blinding both allocation and assessment and comparing RET with other empirically supported treatments for depressive symptoms are needed." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2680311 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst... I can't read the full paper, but it seems like "weightlifting"/"lifting weights" may not have been the only exercise throughout the 33 studies. It also seems like any kind of resistance exercise, regardless of how you did it or how well it worked, made people less depressed. If that's true, you could lift 2-lbs weights for 10 minutes and feel better.
- DanBC 8y ago
  But notice the important caveat: > however, smaller reductions in depressive symptoms were derived from trials with blinded allocation and/or assessment.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  That's only true if lifting 2-lbs weights for 10 minutes was actually represented in the study.
andrewla 8y ago
This is one of those cases where my instinct is to believe the result because I agree with the basic conceit. Given the state of replication in social sciences, though, I'm inclined to be very skeptical of the paper at first blush, given that it is a meta study [1]. Especially since many of the studies cited in the meta studied show no effect or a negative effect, and it's completely possible that additional studies showing no effect or a negative effect were never published or even terminated early because null results are uninteresting. [1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2018-gordon.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2018-gordon.pdf
ergothus 8y ago
This is a topic I'm interested in, because I have NO interest in exercise. Do I think it would help my health? Yes, outside of some absurd circles, absolutely. Do I think it would improve my self-confidence? Probably, if I stuck with it, but I sincerely doubt that I would because of the heavy incentives against it. Am I just being obstinate and stubborn if I acknowledge it would likely help but am still not doing it? I have no safe answer to that question. "No" is clearly wrong, but "Yes" dismisses the problems. Here's my problem: Exercise is extremely uncomfortable. It's hot, humiliating, and painful. If I push through that...it's 10 seconds later and I'm more hot, more humiliated (even with no one else around) and in more discomfort. I can push through again, but my brain is well aware of what to expect. There's no "endorphin high", no sense of satisfaction. Those are at least many days off in even the smallest of quantities (for me at least - people that cheerfully tell me of their "good pain" just make me feel more misunderstood/disregarded/ a failure). All the benefits are theoretical and in future, with benefits that equal the costs even further out, while all the costs and pain are up front. Humans are bad at managing such equations - I certainly am. Even this awareness is a sense of failure. Am I making excuses, or do I really feel more pain and less "good pain" than other people? Either answer is not good for me. And these are what my brain focuses on while suffering. Listen to music? Read a book? Watch a movie? Everything is made harder because I'm literally struggling, and so every moment of discomfort progresses at a snail's pace. I've been exercising for...45 seconds?! I know I can't get a training montage that is effortless, but there has to be something that makes me far more able to sit down and struggle through a mental activity for hours than to struggle through a physical activity for 5 minutes, much less the actual time (and repeated time) needed for any improvement. Not that mental exercise is easy - I have plenty of mental tasks I've been procrastinating on - but I have successes there where I have none in the physical arena. I've tried various ways - small frequent things at home, team things, sport-focused, fewer high intensity things, just taking walks. So far the closest success was fencing, where I started to feel some of my aches and muscle pains were satisfying while hurting...but every class was an effort, both to sacrifice the time and to face the pain, and once I dropped I stayed dropped. That was 20 pounds ago so I know trying again would be MORE painful than before. I'm left interested in the result while having no interest in attempting (again) without some reason to think this time will be different.
vanderZwan 8y ago
This surprises me a bit, because I attended a lecture at Karolinska Instituted by Jorge Ruas in 2017 about a series of papers produced by his research group where they actually seem to have figured out why developing more red muscle - which is the endurance muscle, not the kind you produce with weight-lifting - protects against depression. In short, red muscle it produces KAT enzymes that break down kynurenine, which is a substance produced by stress that is associated with all kinds of mental illnesses, like inducing depression, if it remains at elevated levels for longer periods of time. So it protects you from depression by removing one of the substances that causes it. IIRC, kynurenine is then turned into kynurenic acid, which then activates white fat and turns it into "beige fat", a kind of almost-brown fat (so the healthier kind). So it has even more benefits! I asked during the Q&A if they recommend endurance exercise, or weightlifting, and they said that in their tests, it was specifically the muscles that you develop during endurance training that produce this protective enzyme. [0] https://ki.se/en/news/how-physical-exercise-protects-the-brain-from-stress-induced-depression https://ki.se/en/news/how-physical-exercise-protects-the-bra...
- goldenkey 8y ago
  It's a common myth that weightlifting only improves strength, not endurance. It is impossible to have strength and lack endurance. The myth comes from the unintuitive disconnect between muscular people and their actual weight - they clearly have to expend more energy to move larger, heavier body parts. So it may seem like their endurance is impaired but it isn't the case. Tell me this power-squatting cyclist lacks endurance: https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    > It's a common myth that weightlifting only improves strength, not endurance. It is impossible to have strength and lack endurance. You're right of course. What I meant was that I presume it doesn't build red muscle as quickly as other sports. What we need is a comparison of, say, running, cycling, and weightlifting to see if there is a difference in effectiveness. Because if weightlifting works just as well, there might be other factors at play that are worth investigating.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
I am surprised that no one referenced Henry Rollins' essay, The Iron: https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/articles/the-iron-by-henry-rollins/ https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/articles/the-iron-by-henry-... Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind. The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it’s impossible to turn back. The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.
etiam 8y ago
Perhaps this is a good time to dig up an article which presents one mechanism I found interesting a few years back. https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01049-6 https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01049-6 It turns out skeletal muscle is important as metabolic tissue, with implications for brain function among other things. And this story from a few years back was a great read as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748147
exabrial 8y ago
Can confirm this from 100% ancedotal evidence.
RickJWagner 8y ago
I believe it. Weightlifiting has many benefits.
XalvinX 8y ago
Any exercise reduces depression, even just walking or something as simple as doing dishes. The brain needs a lot of oxygen. This is obtained from blood. Which needs to circulate. Which comes from exercise. This is such a no-brainer, how do they even make an article about it?

126 points by vldx 8y ago

To what degree? A simple Google search will reveal plenty of body builders and athletes who have committed suicide despite plenty of weight training. Sure there are other factors influencing their decision, but "just lift weights!" is too general of a prescription to help.

rubbingalcohol 8y ago
Not smoking doesn't mean you won't get lung cancer. Eating enough fiber doesn't mean you won't get heart disease. Are you seriously suggesting that the intent of this article was to say that lifting weights will make all your problems go away?
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  The title of the article literally says "Study confirms lifting weights reduces depression". I am questioning if it is by a meaningful amount. For example, a gauze pad will stop your bleeding by a considerable amount....
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Do we have quantitative research into other forms of physical activity? You're right, athletes still commit suicide, but marathon runners still drop dead of heart attacks too - does that mean the general consensus that running is good for your heart is a bad one?
- DanBC 8y ago
  We have ltos of research on exercise and mental health. Exercise is important, but it's probably not so useful as a treatment for mental ill health.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I guess that depends on a bunch of factors - if it's a mild acute depression why wouldn't exercise be useful? Absolutely, long term chronic deep depression needs different therapy, but exercise may very well be a sort of chicken soup for a the blues. I know it's helped me immeasurably, and enabled me to cope with my anxiety disorder and its co-morbid depression to the point where I no longer require medication.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      But for mild acute depression almost anything works about as well as anything else. The only things that stand out are some talking therapies (CBT especially, because there's lots of research) and medication. The disadvantage if pushing exercise, without providing an accessible course of exercise, is that people find it hard to do and that increases their feelings of guilt and wortlessness.
cwbrandsma 8y ago
There are a number of body building supplements with some wild side effects. And if you look at body builders, at the elite levels...that just isn't healthy what they do to themselves to get ready for a show. Getting down to less-than 5% body fat, that isn't good for you. But, going to the gym and lifting weights, and eat like a normal person...that is fine.
jasonkostempski 8y ago
Maybe steroids increase depression more than weight lifting reduces it?
matheusmoreira 8y ago
Reducing the risk of depression does not mean eliminating it. In medicine, 0% and 100% don't exist.
mr_overalls 8y ago
It's amazing how many people seem to lack even an intuitive understanding of correlation (i.e., "X tends to cause Y"), and think that providing a (usually anecdotal) counterexample negates the relationship/trend. Alice: Smoking tends to cause cancer. Bob: My aunt Wanda smoked for years and lived to be 89. Alice: Exercise is good for you. Bob: My cousin started jogging and found out he had cancer the next month. Alice: The global climate is warming. Bob: The weather in my hometown was unusually cold yesterday. Alice: Childhood vaccinations prevent many deaths. On the whole, they provide a net benefit. Bob: A child in a nearby town had a severe allergic reaction to a chicken pox vaccine; children would be better off just getting the disease. This kind of innumeracy is distressingly common.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  Logic is not something most people seem to care a whole lot about.
- mmt 8y ago
  >This kind of innumeracy is distressingly common. I would say it certainly doesn't help that science reporting essentially never gives the numbers that matter, nor explains what they mean. > Covering 33 randomized clinical trials with 1,877 participants That's an average of under 57 participants per clinical trial, which seems a bit sparse to me. Still, that's not my point so much as that those are the only numbers about the study in the article. Where is the mention of statistical significance or uncertainty? It's also difficult to teach, since I don't think we're naturally geared for intuiting about numbers bigger than we might encounter in nature. Also, anecdotes about people we know personally are more likely to resonate with us than mere statistics about faceless strangers (not that it explains why a few hundred Anthrax vaccine deaths of strangers would have been more objectionable than the routine tens of thosands of annual road deaths of strangers).

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

It good to see a focus on weightlifting, and I'm glad to see that research like this is proving the same sort of benefit. It seems as though it's kind of faux pas to focus on strength when other options like cardio are available. The standard for physical excellence these days has become the marathon, triathlon, or iron man, where I think that a long term focus on strength training is it's own unique reward, and it's own unique challenge, taking years and years of hard work and focused dedication to achieve peak performance, as opposed to a marathon where (a quick google says) one can achieve with 20 weeks of training.

faitswulff 8y ago
It seems like a false distinction to me? Sure, you can complete a marathon in 20 weeks of training, but you can also squat a barbell on your first try at the gym. As someone who has done both, you can dedicate years to the pursuit of either practice. Either way, you will likely be better off. But I will agree that more research on the health benefits of casual strength training is always welcome.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  You're absolutely right, it's a bit of a false distinction, and there are years of benefits one can see in either discipline. I just find that with strength there are obvious aesthetic changes for years, it seems to offer its most visible rewards on a much longer timeline.
cwbrandsma 8y ago
I've had arthritis in my knees since I was 18. All those running things just ain't happening. But I can lift. Lifting helped me get thru a pretty bad case of burn out.
- dingaling 8y ago
  Swimming is also excellent exercise with arthritis though for knees you would avoid breaststroke. It gives a cardio workout rather than just strength training.

DanBC 8y ago

The effect isn't good when you properly design the study. > In this meta-analysis of 33 clinical trials including 1877 participants, resistance exercise training was associated with a significant reduction in depressive symptoms, with a moderate-sized mean effect. Total volume of resistance exercise training, health status, and strength improvements were not associated with the antidepressant effect; however, smaller reductions in depressive symptoms were derived from trials with blinded allocation and/or assessment. This repeats many findings. Exercise seems to work as a treatment for depression until you start using good quality study design when the benefits over placebo reduce.

iooi 8y ago
> The effect isn't good when you properly design the study. Not sure if you meant to say "isn't as good', since that has a very different meaning and it's what's actually stated in your quote: > smaller reductions in depressive symptoms

Wonnk13 8y ago

I think there's some truth to this. I get a very different "high" after a session of lifting heavy vs 90 minutes of running or cycling. I feel like with weight lifting I get more a testosterone high and much less of an endorphin high.

busterarm 8y ago
I found it somewhat dangerous to play with cortisol levels like this though. I had to keep lifting, at worse, every other day. If I rested for two days, on the second day I was completely miserable. Like non-functional, despondent, etc. When I injured myself and couldn't lift for months, I fell into the worst depression of my life.
- rc_hadoken 8y ago
  You had to keep lifting? You make it sound like a side effect. Do you think its possible you are conflating "lifting" with "exerting energy"?
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Does it matter? That's missing the forest for the trees a bit, isn't it?
    - rc_hadoken 8y ago
      Ye-yes..I think it does matter. It's possible I have no idea what you mean by your post above. I just don't think there is a problem with "having to keep lifting."
      - busterarm 8y ago
        The whole point of what I was saying had nothing to do with lifting and everything about being careful if you're going to do something radical to alter your mood if you're a depressive. My advice would have been the same if I had said to be careful about abruptly stopping a medication. My lifting injury was related to my sciatic nerve. I could barely walk for months and sitting or standing for any length of time was a challenge. Taking on any other kind of physical activity was out of the question. The effect on my mood and the depressive episode stopping my workouts triggered was a pretty significant problem. If you're a depressive and you suddenly start doing something majorly physically-taxing, get really good training and be very, very careful. But I had great programming and an industry-leading coach and I still got hurt.

dsr_ 8y ago

In my experience, people who are significantly depressed can't make time in their lives for exercise. One of the indicators that they are coming out of a depressive period is that they return to exercise routines that the abandoned on the downslope. So -- I strongly suspect survival bias here. It might even be true that weightlifting is an effective treatment for depression, but it would be awfully hard to get a negative result because you can't get depressed people to do it.

skellera 8y ago
Anecdotal but I did not exercise before and exercise did more than any medications did for pulling me up. It has made me truly believe that a healthy body can help make a healthy mind.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  I find that good exercise (particularly in the evening) helps tremendously with sleep, and that really, really helps with everything else.
- slothtrop 8y ago
  I've had a similar experience, such that at my healthiest my depressive lows are nowhere near what they once were.
- keyle 8y ago
  I completely agree. I've always said that I go to the gym to keep sane.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  Also anecdotal but I get depressed when I can't exercise (usually because of injury, weather or sickness). The longer that lasts, the more depressed I get. It has a very noticeable effect on me, to the point that honestly I can't understand how people who don't exercise manage to stay above water.
  - 8y ago

peterwwillis 8y ago

"Resistance exercise training significantly reduced depressive symptoms among adults regardless of health status, total prescribed volume of RET, or significant improvements in strength. Better-quality randomized clinical trials blinding both allocation and assessment and comparing RET with other empirically supported treatments for depressive symptoms are needed." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2680311 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst... I can't read the full paper, but it seems like "weightlifting"/"lifting weights" may not have been the only exercise throughout the 33 studies. It also seems like any kind of resistance exercise, regardless of how you did it or how well it worked, made people less depressed. If that's true, you could lift 2-lbs weights for 10 minutes and feel better.

DanBC 8y ago
But notice the important caveat: > however, smaller reductions in depressive symptoms were derived from trials with blinded allocation and/or assessment.
cellularmitosis 8y ago
That's only true if lifting 2-lbs weights for 10 minutes was actually represented in the study.

andrewla 8y ago

This is one of those cases where my instinct is to believe the result because I agree with the basic conceit. Given the state of replication in social sciences, though, I'm inclined to be very skeptical of the paper at first blush, given that it is a meta study [1]. Especially since many of the studies cited in the meta studied show no effect or a negative effect, and it's completely possible that additional studies showing no effect or a negative effect were never published or even terminated early because null results are uninteresting. [1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2018-gordon.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2018-gordon.pdf

ergothus 8y ago

This is a topic I'm interested in, because I have NO interest in exercise. Do I think it would help my health? Yes, outside of some absurd circles, absolutely. Do I think it would improve my self-confidence? Probably, if I stuck with it, but I sincerely doubt that I would because of the heavy incentives against it. Am I just being obstinate and stubborn if I acknowledge it would likely help but am still not doing it? I have no safe answer to that question. "No" is clearly wrong, but "Yes" dismisses the problems. Here's my problem: Exercise is extremely uncomfortable. It's hot, humiliating, and painful. If I push through that...it's 10 seconds later and I'm more hot, more humiliated (even with no one else around) and in more discomfort. I can push through again, but my brain is well aware of what to expect. There's no "endorphin high", no sense of satisfaction. Those are at least many days off in even the smallest of quantities (for me at least - people that cheerfully tell me of their "good pain" just make me feel more misunderstood/disregarded/ a failure). All the benefits are theoretical and in future, with benefits that equal the costs even further out, while all the costs and pain are up front. Humans are bad at managing such equations - I certainly am. Even this awareness is a sense of failure. Am I making excuses, or do I really feel more pain and less "good pain" than other people? Either answer is not good for me. And these are what my brain focuses on while suffering. Listen to music? Read a book? Watch a movie? Everything is made harder because I'm literally struggling, and so every moment of discomfort progresses at a snail's pace. I've been exercising for...45 seconds?! I know I can't get a training montage that is effortless, but there has to be something that makes me far more able to sit down and struggle through a mental activity for hours than to struggle through a physical activity for 5 minutes, much less the actual time (and repeated time) needed for any improvement. Not that mental exercise is easy - I have plenty of mental tasks I've been procrastinating on - but I have successes there where I have none in the physical arena. I've tried various ways - small frequent things at home, team things, sport-focused, fewer high intensity things, just taking walks. So far the closest success was fencing, where I started to feel some of my aches and muscle pains were satisfying while hurting...but every class was an effort, both to sacrifice the time and to face the pain, and once I dropped I stayed dropped. That was 20 pounds ago so I know trying again would be MORE painful than before. I'm left interested in the result while having no interest in attempting (again) without some reason to think this time will be different.

vanderZwan 8y ago

This surprises me a bit, because I attended a lecture at Karolinska Instituted by Jorge Ruas in 2017 about a series of papers produced by his research group where they actually seem to have figured out why developing more red muscle - which is the endurance muscle, not the kind you produce with weight-lifting - protects against depression. In short, red muscle it produces KAT enzymes that break down kynurenine, which is a substance produced by stress that is associated with all kinds of mental illnesses, like inducing depression, if it remains at elevated levels for longer periods of time. So it protects you from depression by removing one of the substances that causes it. IIRC, kynurenine is then turned into kynurenic acid, which then activates white fat and turns it into "beige fat", a kind of almost-brown fat (so the healthier kind). So it has even more benefits! I asked during the Q&A if they recommend endurance exercise, or weightlifting, and they said that in their tests, it was specifically the muscles that you develop during endurance training that produce this protective enzyme. [0] https://ki.se/en/news/how-physical-exercise-protects-the-brain-from-stress-induced-depression https://ki.se/en/news/how-physical-exercise-protects-the-bra...

goldenkey 8y ago
It's a common myth that weightlifting only improves strength, not endurance. It is impossible to have strength and lack endurance. The myth comes from the unintuitive disconnect between muscular people and their actual weight - they clearly have to expend more energy to move larger, heavier body parts. So it may seem like their endurance is impaired but it isn't the case. Tell me this power-squatting cyclist lacks endurance: https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  > It's a common myth that weightlifting only improves strength, not endurance. It is impossible to have strength and lack endurance. You're right of course. What I meant was that I presume it doesn't build red muscle as quickly as other sports. What we need is a comparison of, say, running, cycling, and weightlifting to see if there is a difference in effectiveness. Because if weightlifting works just as well, there might be other factors at play that are worth investigating.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

I am surprised that no one referenced Henry Rollins' essay, The Iron: https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/articles/the-iron-by-henry-rollins/ https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/articles/the-iron-by-henry-... Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind. The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it’s impossible to turn back. The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

etiam 8y ago

Perhaps this is a good time to dig up an article which presents one mechanism I found interesting a few years back. https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01049-6 https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01049-6 It turns out skeletal muscle is important as metabolic tissue, with implications for brain function among other things. And this story from a few years back was a great read as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748147

exabrial 8y ago

Can confirm this from 100% ancedotal evidence.

RickJWagner 8y ago

I believe it. Weightlifiting has many benefits.

XalvinX 8y ago

Any exercise reduces depression, even just walking or something as simple as doing dishes. The brain needs a lot of oxygen. This is obtained from blood. Which needs to circulate. Which comes from exercise. This is such a no-brainer, how do they even make an article about it?