I'll contribute my anecdote. When I sought counselling in 2013 the only regular appointment I could get was on a Saturday morning, 11am. So I'd get up and do P

I'll contribute my anecdote. When I sought counselling in 2013 the only regular appointment I could get was on a Saturday morning, 11am. So I'd get up and do Parkrun[0], get home, shower, and head out to see the counsellor. I'd cheerfully regale how utterly, paralysingly miserable and borderline suicidal I'd been all week. All the current stuff I was failing to deal with, and all the past stuff I just couldn't stop ruminating on. The withdrawal, the isolation, the intrusive thoughts, the insomnia. After a couple of weeks they asked: why aren't you ever depressed when you turn up here? You're making jokes, you have energy, you're able to describe all these symptoms yet aren't actually displaying a single one. What's going on? I said, well, on a Saturday morning I do Parkrun and ... oh. Oh! OH!!! And thus the penny dropped. There's an absolute correlation over the medium/long term, for me, between how much exercise I do and how happy I am (or rather, how little I experience depression). These days, 11 years on, I'm out at sunrise or earlier 4+ days a week. It doesn't have to be running, but I'm yet to find anything preferable. [0] https://www.parkrun.com/ https://www.parkrun.com/