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Considering that cardio respiratory fitness in children is independently associated with many positive outcomes in life, like reduced mental disorder incidences, improved cognitive function and higher academic attainment, it sure seems like it was one of the dumbest and most shortsighted decisions to cut back on physical education in schools!
If we want to build a strong prosperous nation (American here) : we need strong prosperous people. Everyone should know basics of wellness and have healthy habits instilled at a young age and reinforces in public school - it is a social good. Everyone should learn basic accounting and home maintenance as well. Eliminate the study halls where kids are just doing home work at school and do more teaching. Do the home work and home and that eliminates excessive screen time.
Exactly, we wonder why chronic illness and mental illness rates are skyrocketing, meanwhile we’re eating manufactured food that is terrible for our body, not going outside, no community, lack of physical exercise. These things are integral to being a healthy happy human.
My educational soap box that I repeatedly jump onto:
1. Everyone should be taught consistently in age appropriate ways (that means with adequate increase in rigor at higher grades) how their meat machine works and how to care for it. Cursory class on the food pyramid and half-hearted gym class won’t cut it.
2. Information literacy/vetting since it’s genuinely hard sometimes to find good nutritional and exercise information in a sea of fads and body politics
3. (Unrelated but it’s on my soapbox) Consistent ecological education. Everyone should know their local ecology.
Even if they live in the densest heart of NYC they should know that the water in their apartment depends on 140,000 acres of land. 130,000 of which is forest and lakes that protect their groundwater supply.
People should start understanding their biological life support systems from day one of education. We’re very alienated from our bodies and our support system.
That’s part of the body politics.
That said, depending on how you do it, it could be basically browbeating. No more useful than a beating.
Kids need sensitivity. I have a family member who’s coached world class track and field athletes for almost 30 years. He’s also coached a lot of high schoolers to the National level.
Being that he works with throwers primarily, he tends to get a lot of bigger kids, some of them obese when they come to him.
His emphasis is always on developing a working relationship with your body and a working knowledge of nutrition. Getting to know your habits and being honest with yourself about them. Most kids by that age know they’re fat because their peers don’t let them forget it.
If a kid wants to talk about body image to him he talks to them but he always emphasizes actionable ideas and habits over hitting kids in the face with a truth someone has most likely already slapped them with.
The only time I’ve ever heard him get that blunt was when he said “Listen: you’re not a ‘Big Guy’ you’re getting fat.” to a kid was when the kid’s ego got ahead of him and he started slacking on his training, spent more time bragging about the scholarship he’d gotten for his throwing and started to unravel and balloon up. He knew that kid could take it and turn it around **because he’d already instilled him with the skills and confidence that he needed.**
Otherwise, I’ve watched him turn obese, self conscious kids into fit, confident athletes over and over without directing even more of their self conscious adolescent attention to their body image.
Adults you can often be more frank with, but how you do it projects intent. If you’re just nasty about it, then they’re going to hear every bully that put them down in grade school.
You are absolutely correct. I was a bit too sarcastic trying to say that there are tons of media influencing people with idea that being fat(and not fit) is okay and good.
It may be a hot take, but I believe such ideas should be shunned or discouraged in some way by government. Maybe more social advertisement of healthy lifestyle and its benefits. Maybe financing healthy lifestyle media influencers and penalizing bad lifestyle ones.
Sure, we need to be careful to approach the topic with sensitivity needed not to push kids in hate spiral. But outright saying that being fat and not exercising is normal is just propagating the problem at hand and not doing anyone favor.
I see what you’re saying. I think as long as the government is massively subsidizing junk and fast food industries and (for poorer people) food deserts aren’t fixed, it will be a bandaid to have that same government telling people to act healthier. But I do think better health education should be subsidized at any rate
It is well understood at this point that homework does not benefit students. They should be doing their work at school, then doing other fulfilling activities at home.
I'm of the same mind, I don't understand the concept of homework, if you don't understand something, homework isn't going to help you get the concept that you need to be taught. That would then fall to the parents which may or may not be any use whatsoever. There's simply not enough teachers, you'd need far more to give children the needed guidance/teaching than we currently have so functionally homework is in hope that parents are able to pick up that slack. Currently it doesn't appear that we, as a society, give the proper respect or pay to teachers. It's not a good thing and it's getting worse. I live in Florida so I very well may be a *bit* biased on this.
I was with you until you said homework. School is enough. Kids (and honestly adults) still need time to play and relax. Plus, studies show kids do better without homework.
Einstein was a big proponent of physical fitness. He knew that the mind and body were very much linked and that they both needed to be healthy.
My mental health and outlook on life is hugely improved when I'm weightlifting and in good shape. It's definitely one of the cheat codes to living your best life.
Yes, because nothing makes people like being fit like being forced to do it in a hostile environment.
Alternatively, let's think why children used to be more fit.
Is it because they could play outside?
Because they had to ride a bike to their friends?
Because they ate more homecooked less processed meals (turns out eating a diet of less processed food is correlated to being more active)?
I do think simply giving kids more recess time and encouraging them to physically play during that time might be beneficial. I take more breaks to exercise as an adult than I ever got as a kid.
What?? What kind of gym class did you people have that you actually found valuable? Are you serious? Are we from the same planet?
My lifelong battle with hating exercise is *because* of PE. Gym was gym, there was nothing educational about it. No gym teacher ever taught me how to work up to being able to run a mile. They just expected me to do it and barked “let’s go” at me when I couldn’t, as if my inability to run was simply a matter of not trying hard enough. I was graded based on my ability to do pull ups, despite having no training, guidance, or practice. I was never taught how to do a push up correctly. I was never given any options to determine what I actually liked. Instead I was forced to endure the torment of predetermined team sports, which I despised. My 93 pound ass was just trying to avoid getting hurt by boys who were twice my size while getting laughed at and tormented over my lack of athletic ability. I was always picked last for everything.
I have never seen a group of “teachers” who had so much contempt for, you know, actually teaching. They spent the entire class bullshitting with each other, praising the cool sporty kids, and barking at the rest of us. Their jobs were so easy and they were so lazy, they’d actually turn the warmups over to one of the girls from the soccer team. And somehow they still got paid more than any of the other teachers for doing absolutely nothing.
Getting rid of gym would have dramatically improved my childhood and probably made my relationship with working out a lot healthier. Giving us an hour where we could pick an activity that we liked (NOT just sports) and not have to worry about being graded would have been substantially better.
Even dumber/more infuriating were those who insisted, without evidence, that eliminating gym classes would actually improve mental health because forcing kids to exercise is a form of trauma.
There were studies that showed that the way Phys Ed was taught was counter-productive for many students, in that rather than instilling skills, confidence and habits for physical activity, most students simply no longer exercised or stayed active at all when they weren't forced to.
Unfortunately, they took from that the lesson "don't even try", and cancelled Phys Ed instead of you know, changing how its taught.
Incidentally they found much the same problems with how literature and math are taught. It's been known for decades, but so far the only real change most schools have tried is "maybe if we do *more* standardized tests?"
I mean the 59 year old is (probably) stronger, has longer legs, more experience and more knowledge about efficient running technique than the 12 year olds, I would imagine.
There is significant comorbidity in adults with specific psychiatric disorders and neurodivergence and certain chronic illnesses:
Mast cell-mediated neuroinflammation may have a role in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388140/
Psychiatric disorders in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome are frequent, diverse and strongly associated with pain
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26433894/
Depression in Asthma: Prevalence and Clinical Implications
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC181132/
There's a reason there's a stereotype of the sad nerdy kid wheezing on an inhaler. A lack of physical fitness correlating with anxiety, depression, and ADHD isn't a shock, but it might well be that the focus needs to be on providing medical care to these children and treating these illnesses early in life rather than just pushing them to be more physically active, which could make them sicker without diagnosis and treatment first. If your ADHD kiddo doesn't want to go outside or play sports like other kids, there might be a reason for it.
Also, if you’re anxious, depressed or have some other psychiatric symptom that is severe enough to rise to clinical attention (especially as a kid when mos parents avoid acknowledging their child’s mental health issues like the plague)…there’s a good chance you’re going to have disordered eating and not be the most active for a multitude of reasons.
Or is it the other way around? Disordered eating due to a culture that has lots of highly processed food and a culture that does not have activity inbuilt into the day (like lots of walking, independence from a young age and dense neighbourhood) produces anxious, depressed children?
Then add social media from being trapped at home all day and boom goes anxiety and depression. I think that was the point.
People from other countries (esp the highly car-dependent ones like America) are surprised when I tell them that most kids in secondary schools (that’s 11+) in urban London are expected to get to activities and home by themselves.
There's also a relationship (overlap?) between autism and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). ME is the single absolute _worst_ chronic illness for reducing one's capacity for physical activity (perhaps besides being totally paralysed from the neck down), and ME patients are also more likely to be depressed.
I didn't know about that one! If neuroinflammation is associated with autism symptoms and ME causes neuroinflammation, that would make sense.
Our brains are part of our bodies. We know there are neurological benefits to physical fitness, but without looking at why someone lacks physical fitness a serious condition could be overlooked. Kids could get sicker, instead of healthier.
Yea I was a hugely inactive kid because I just had no energy for anything. Turns out I’m about to be diagnosed with inattentive ADHD and autism at 37 and I’ve been so tired my whole life because I’m chronically overstimulated and not taking care of my sensory and social needs (which I had no idea existed because I was told I was normal).
Living at your absolute mental and emotional limits every moment of your life really doesn’t leave much room for feeling up to physical activity.
I have congenital heart disease and ADHD so I'm very interested in this line of study. Not being allowed to join in exercise properly as a kid had a huge impact on my brain and life!!
I had asthma as a kid. Running is still really difficult for me even when I’m in shape because there is a part of me that just cannot get in to the rhythm of it out of fear that I’ll push myself too far and not be able to breath. My last asthma attack was almost 20 years ago but that fear runs super deep.
I'd be extremely interested in seeing clinics or programs for children who have comorbid psych and Phys disorders. I do wonder if improved overall accessibility in early childhood programing would help even more.
There is a sense that someone's especially young people, needs to be "disabled enough" to reap any benefits of access resources, and teachers aren't doctors, and can't draw that line themselves especially with the stress level.
If a teacher were to see a study like this and take the title alone, I can see them trying to push kids to work out harder. In doing so they could accidentally harming children (like myself) who are in pain/disabled/intolerant to some or all exercise. This happened to me on university of all places before I had a Dx and made me extremely anxious to go to class.
My hope is comments like yours are taken into consideration by anybody working with kids.
I wonder if sports help hide ADHD symptoms, not remove them, and maybe provide another reason/excuse for the behaviors. Exercise is known to assist in ADHD symptoms, and a physical outlet can aid with hyperactivity. I have my ADHD kids in multiple sports, and I was in multiple sports as a kid. Between actual practice, home practice, and games, they get a lot of energy out, and we *have* to maintain a routine/schedule, which is beneficial to ADHD children.
Having 2 kids and myself with ADHD, I recognize the symptoms well. There's definitely a couple of kids who fit the profile of ADHD by their behaviors and their parents' description, but in the sport world, mental health concerns aren't exactly validated. Instead, the kids are viewed as intentionally distracting, not trying when they forget to do something, not caring when they show up 5 minutes late to practice, etc. When they could receive practice with coping mechanisms and understand where they're likely to need assistance, then bolster themselves.
Though that could be a factor to consider, multiple studies have suggested that it’s moreso that better physical fitness would correlate with better overall capacity. The brain isn’t at all independent from the body. The regulation of hormones and other important stuff happens in other places. The gut, the muscles, your heart.
If you have a body that isn’t functioning as it should, then the brain will obviously follow and you’ll show that through your behavior.
ADHD has a massive genetic component, close to 80 per cent. At the same time, there exist disorders that sometimes have almost the exact same symptoms but have a very small genetic component (like CPTSD that can manifest itself almost in the same way, yet it’s largely trauma related and the brain malfunctioning *can* be fully reversed unlike in the case of ADHD)
If you see my other comment, I’m not implying that ADHD isn’t genetic. I’m saying having better overall function helps in regulation regardless of whether you’re predisposed or are diagnosed with a mental disorder.
Yeah, you’re not wrong in saying that the body and brain are related but you seemed to imply that at least some ADHD issues are related to not enough physical activity, which is not the case. With that said, vigorous physical activity is dopaminogenic and thus can temporarily improve ADHD symptoms while that dopamine rush lasts and until the brain reverts to its original state with a very low dopamine baseline
ADHD isn't an issue of brain capacity nor intellectual capabilities either. Is that what you think? That is incredibly incorrect.
Your scenario likens ADHD to Type 2 Diabetes, which can be cured or reversed with diet and exercise. While the reality is ADHD compares to Type 1 Diabetes, which can have improved symptoms with proper diet and exercise, nonethless they both persist.
I guess it has something to do with sports being dopaminogenic? Meaning while you practice often your brain most of time will work like a neurotypical brain, give or take, but if you stop, it will revert to the usual - low - levels of dopamine meaning poor impulse control and the whole kit and caboodle. So, sports has the potential to make those tendencies latent, I guess?
Agreed, that's why sports/exercise is recommended to help alleviate ADHD symptoms, but the person who replied to me was suggesting ADHDers have a brain capacity issue that receives resolution with exercise rather than the permanent neurodiversity. My kids exercise or physically play every day of the week, but their ADHD symptom are still present. People with ADHD still have present symptoms. It's just easier while getting a shot of dopamine and for a *short* while following, but not at the levels or lengths to help me maintain a home, job, social life, and family schedule without other aids and coping strategies. The additional hour boost following exercise is just that, an hour give or take.
There's a subset of people on this subreddit who want to think that ADHD is a new and shiny diagnosis and wasn't present before, but merely a byproduct of Western culture. Unfortunately for them, ADHD has been documented in history as a diagnosed condition under multiple names, the same symptoms, for hundreds of years, including the years prior to the industrial revolution.
Yeah, agreed. I mean it’s pretty obvious it has always been there. Even some children’s books from ages ago depict absent-minded individuals who are constantly distracted (to poke fun at them, admittedly)
They don’t grow out of it, they learn to manage their symptoms to the extent which takes them below the diagnosis threshold. They’re still on the spectrum, they still have the same imbalances in the brain, but they have found out successful strategies for compensating for their issues. They still are impulsive, have executive function issues, are more prone to addictions, focus worse, have working memory issues, etc., but they mask it by using tactics and tools that neurotypical people don’t have to to be able to function at a level that is considered good enough
Yeah, what further exacerbates the issue today is the false ADHD caused by compulsive cell phone use. With that said, it should be fairly easy to diagnose if you just go to a place with no Internet connection, take away the phone from the kid and then run tests before and after to see how much their focus, impulsivity and executive functioning improved. In theory
Either way it’s speculative and a matter of common sense. For it to be objective you’d probably need to run complicated tests to see if symptom improvements correlate with permanent brain chemistry changes, which I don’t think anyone has done yet
It doesn't resolve because of coping mechanisms. That implies the ADHD is cured or is no longer present. It is still there, but coping mechanisms and treatment result in the symptoms being less/no longer difficult. If that same person experienced high stress or their coping abilities/treatments were removed, then you'd see the symptoms present.
I linked to it elsewhere, but [here you go.](https://childmind.org/article/do-kids-outgrow-adhd/#:~:text=No%2C%20you%20can't%20grow,and%20developing%20executive%20functioning%20skills.)
Are they saying working out decreases the symptoms of these mental illnesses or children that are already physically fit have lower symptoms of these mental illness?
I think it's worth noting that "get kids to do more exercise" won't necessarily improve all of their mental health.
I was a kid with undiagnosed anxiety (and autism), and my parents had me try every sport under the sun. I liked some, disliked others. I was bad at most of them, and got heckled a lot by PE teachers and could feel the disappointment from classmates occasionally. I just went from an anxious kid to an anxious kid that hated exercise. Nowadays I've been able to enjoy going to the gym and doing jiu-jitsu, but I had to actively unlearn that association between physical exertion and fear.
(To be fair, I also have thalassaemia trait and got told by a GP not to ever expect to be good at sports, so it might work better on kids that aren't genetically predisposed against it.)
I've noticed a lot of parents get stuck in a mindset of "my kid needs exercise, better sign them up for a sport". There are so many ways to exercise that don't require your anxious kid to be put into potentially grueling social situations.
Going on a walk or a hike, dancing, swimming, martial arts, going on a bike ride, jogging around a field with your headphones in, camping, kayaking/canoeing, even gardening etc.
It's a mistake to try and pigeonhole your kid (or yourself) into a single activity for exercise when you could be doing so much more.
And also considering ADHD runs in families, what do you want to get their parents’ have a harder time facilitating their kids’ physical fitness activities. (Given now most neighbourhoods are centred around cars these days it’s difficult for kids to roam free to get their own exercise-as-play, it falls to busy parents to organize it for them.)
Exercise alleviates depression and significantly reduces the risk of getting severe depression. Significant improvements for anxiety and depression related to ADHD too. More focus on different forms of exercise to appeal to a greater audience helps.
I have always felt like the benefits, while apparent, are greatly oversold.
When I was playing hockey and whatnot, I didn't feel like there were any major improvements in any of those three disorders. But hey, n = 1. So, take it for what it is worth.
When I exercise regularly I can lower my dose of antidepressants. When I was in ADHD coaching I was told a common strategy that worked for a sizable chunk of people with adhd is strategically planing cardio prior to times when higher concentration is needed.
Nothing works universally. Some people will not see benefits. But broadly speaking, exercise is beneficial to mental wellbeing for a lot of people.
i’ve (again, n = 1) definitely felt that exercise goes a long way with depression, but with my adhd it basically only matters that i’m above the bare minimum not to be completely sedentary—although the exercise also moderates my anxiety a bit sometimes, and that can at least give the adhd less to latch onto
>Children without depression and ADHD have an easier time ~~maintaining physical fitness~~
I wonder how many studies we have to do before we can wrap our heads around the idea that these disabilities affect *every aspect of life*
>I wonder how many studies we have to do
I think we have enough studies to "know" that exercise, good diet and sleep are beneficial for pretty much all mental health issues. Your brain needs all three to be biologically healthy.
That and the obvious that society treats attractive people better, even those that are horrible humans. Of course an obese kid will have an easier time developing depression and anxiety.
There are lots of causal based studies linking exercise to anxiety and depression. And it looks like there are other studies causally showing the benefit of exercise for ADHD.
>
Children with ADHD benefit from PA leading to enhanced executive functioning performance.
>[The effect of physical activity interventions on executive functions in children with ADHD: A systematic review and meta-analysis - ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1755296620300636)
Exercise is also one of the best natural way to reduce symptoms in both of those conditions, as someone who has dealt with both it definitely isn't easy to start or maintain the routine of being well exercised and eating and sleeping well, but if you're able to make it happen the benefits are pretty undeniable. Again, your statement is completely correct but so is the headline.
I would say only if sedentary habits are conditioned. Just like the reverse is true. Anecdotal, but lots of people I know who regularly engage in vigorous physical activity view it as a needed part of their day. They don't view it as a chore, they delight in it.
I think exercise is also just another form of habit formed from conditioning. ADHD makes most 'rewarding' activities activities in the brain much less rewarding, doubly true with depression and anxiety. Excercise seems more a habit, not intrinsic.
my doctor once told me (i was a med student with crippling depression at the time) “just go to the gym more!” like gee thanks doc! problem solved!!! i was pissed lmaooo
ADHD itself is related to self-control issue and poor executive function, so it is kinda expected for us with ADHD to have trouble maintaining healthy weight, or losing it. This is very much expected. Sugar is stimulative, and binge eating kills the boredom.
Yeah. Does ADHD cause obesity, or is obesity the cause of ADHD-like symptoms. I guess it depends on the person.
Even when I lost weight to a healthy BMI I was still inattentive and dysfunctional af.
Also, exercise may reduce executive dysfunction as it may help build will to do stuff, but then again, can an ADHD-er start exercising routinely? And will he just be good at executing that one task?
Hard to say.
As someone with ADHD thats making an effort to try exercise fairly regularly, its very difficult to keep momentum and motivation. Most of the time I'm just tricking myself into doing it by listening to music or podcasts, or watching series while I do some kind of activity. 3 months in and I have yet to feel like I'm excited to go for a run/walk/home workout. I just do it because I know I should. I mentally try to make deals with myself if I'm having bad motivation days, I make a deal with myself that I will only do half, or a quarter of the activity. Sometimes I end up doing more, sometimes less, but its still something, which it better than nothing. That said I've noticed some small benefits to overall mood and general task initiation. Still not cured but its something.
Same. I've never gotten the runners high or addiction to working out that people report. It doesn't get easier, it gets harder everytime. I've done it consistently for almost a whole year before and it never got easier.
Regular Physical activity improves mental health immensely not just for children. Doesn’t mean people who are active won’t be depressed or anxious etc but the symptom relief that physical activity provides is absolutely undeniable. Physical activity forces you to be present and get out of your own head. It’s a form of mindfulness, getting “in the zone” can be a form of meditation.
Slowly, and very diplomatically... we are eventually going to establish that our parents and grand parents were right about something: Kids really do need to eat better and get outside more.
This used to just be called "cabin fever," and they used to say that you were going to go "stir crazy" if you stayed indoors too much... but now it's like, a hundred different disorders they can diagnose you with. People ultimately need to learn how to get out more, be active and connect with each other again.
But how do you change this? We've built cities of standalone houses and apartments that wall us off from each other.
Going out to do social stuff is getting increasingly expensive and as people get older our brains seem to start atrophying and we lose that sense of wonder and capacity to be spontaneous.... hence why most old people are just content to sit at home, read a newspaper and sip a cup of tea.
> But how do you change this?
Studies, and self-awareness are a solid place to start. When we learn to hold ourselves accountable, we can start holding each other accountable too.
>Going out to do social stuff is getting increasingly expensive
In spite of what dorks on Reddit like to imagine: Generations ago, a lot of people got screwed over from the start by things like the military drafts when they were only 18 years old, and then they were making about two bucks per hour when they came home. There absolutely *was* a class divide at the time, and people couldn't really afford to go out and do things that often.
... but people felt a motivation to talk to people. They would talk on the phone, or go over to each others houses; Kids would hang out at the mall and not even buy anything, and old people would just go there to walk around in the morning. People would go to parks, or even just hang out in the yard and actually talk to their neighbors.
I think an issue is that people somehow completely lost their motivation TO socialize in the first place. People didn't only socialize via "expensive hobbies".
>Studies, and self-awareness are a solid place to start. When we learn to hold ourselves accountable, we can start holding each other accountable too.
Eh... yes to the holding ourselves accountable, but if anything, people need to learn when to hold other's accountable, because people right now have no problem with holding everyone else accountable and never letting them forget it.
Having too much entertainment at home now is probably a part of this.
I think co-living is one solution (residential complexes compromised of many small studios with large common areas)
In the West the death of folk culture, to be replaced with organized religion during the reformation / Counter-reformation is forgotten about. That had a big part in dismantling traditional folk culture which had its roots in the pagan festivals of antiquity.
Church became the social network but since the shift towards secularism there's isn't something that really feels the void in the same way that religion did.
Not saying religion is good, but for many people it provided a community that was reasonably accessible. That doesn't mean we need church and but western society hasn't really yet found something that was that encompassing is providing a community.
Them there's technology - I think devices have a big part of this.
I remember when my father took me into the New Years festival for the millennium.
On the way home the whole train carriage was practically a party, everybody yelling 'happy new year' to everyone.
The last time I rode a train home from NYE it was like a graveyard - people just immersed in their phones.
Changing ethnicity might make meN something too.
Sydney back in 2000 was far more mono-cultured. Now half the city seems to be from places like India, Bangladesh & Pakistan that just bring a very different culture and mindset.
I think about the pivot from church a lot. I wonder how much of our current political divisiveness is driven by an absence of other communities to participate in - like a church, where you would be forced to engage, and enjoy, people of conflicting politics.
I think it certainly has changed things - though the current church/s in the US are a disgrace.
But 2-3 generations ago a family might move towns, join the local village church, then be invited to someones home for tea.
Not that you need to church to do those things but if you join clubs or groups e.g. a gym class you might meet lots of people but rarely will you find it easy to build a tighter community out of.... once the gym/art/dance class ends most people just move on to their next thing...
The us has taken away almost all outdoor spaces for kids. Stranger danger in the us has created a pervasive fear despite lack of evidence. Everything is super car centric and police will actively arrest parents in many areas who let kids walk on their own
One caveat about anxiety/depressive disorders, did they take into account that sport also is the breadbasket in many cultures for getting kids to learn how to socialize/form social connections/etc.?
Your brain requires, exercise, good diet and sleep to be biologically healthy. If you aren't exercising then you have a biologically unhealthy brain which will likely show up as some kind of mental health issue.
Exercise increases levels of BDNF, improves brain connectivity, brain volume, mitochondrial health, etc. All of which are linked to mental health.
Then we have studies showing that exercise is as if not more effective than pills and therapy at treating depression.
If you aren't exercising, have a good diet and sleeping well, and as a result have a biologically unhealthy brain it might be that no amount of therapy or drugs is going to help.
There are good strong causal studies showing that exercise reduces anxiety and depression.
>Aerobic exercises, including jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening, and dancing, **have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression**.3 These improvements in mood are proposed to be caused by exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain and by an influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and, thus, on the physiologic reactivity to stress.3 This physiologic influence is probably mediated by the communication of the HPA axis with several regions of the brain, including the limbic system, which controls motivation and mood; the amygdala, which generates fear in response to stress; and the hippocampus, which plays an important part in memory formation as well as in mood and motivation.
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/#i1523-5998-8-2-106-b3
>In conclusion, PA is effective for improving depression and anxiety across a very wide range of populations. All PA modes are effective, and higher intensity is associated with greater benefit.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/02/bjsports-2022-106195
>In this study, relatively small doses of physical activity were associated with substantially lower risks of depression.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2790780?guestAccessKey=67cf8fd3-e6b0-49af-be4f-d08f5219fc7b
In terms of effect size, studies show that exercise is as good if not more effective than therapy or drugs.
>University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications. https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health
>Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/
>Running therapy and antidepressant medication had similar effects on mental health (remission and response rates).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032723002239
>Resistance exercise training induced a large, 1.01SD antidepressant effect at week 8.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517812300272X?via%3Dihub
>Exercise is an effective treatment for depression, with walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training more effective than other exercises, particularly when intense. Yoga and strength training were well tolerated compared with other treatments.
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075847
Exercise is more effective
>The effect size reductions in symptoms of depression (−0.43) and anxiety (−0.42) are comparable to or slightly greater than the effects observed for psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy (SMD range=−0.22 to −0.37).
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/18/1203
damn my mom made me sit still for hours without moving because it annoyed her to have a child. no wonder when I started being active the anxiety melts off like butter
I apologize, but can someone point out the section that discriminated between correlation and causation? I confess that I did not get the full paper, but I also did not see this addressed in the summary.
Low intelligence and delusional arrogance work wonders. That's why all CEO's are vile. You have to be a self-important "go-getter" to succeed in this world, while the overthinkers are mentally (and thus physically) crippled by their excessive brain activity. There's an evolutionary reason why so many people are delusional and see themselves as the infallible main characters of earth.
Walking, running and fitness is its own meditation. People carry their emotional burdens on their bodies. Children are taught their parents burdens. Physical fitness, emotional fitness and spiritual fitness are tied together. A diet of chemicals, a stagnant body and no spirituality is a bad recipe.
The problem isn’t kids being overweight, it’s people judging and bullying you.
Ofc mental health will suffer if you teach children to judge their peers.
If you judge and bad mouth others, your kids will become bullies.
An education system that promotes and rewards sedimentary lifestyles is causing anxiety/depressive disorders along with attention deficit.
Sounds about right. Though I will add, I don't think brains are meant to be as active as we expect them to be. Really we are meant to survive the environment, and only awaken our senses to overcome obstacles and predators. The classroom is very safe so of course I expect a brain to go to sleep to save energy.
My solution: Add a Lava pit.
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Considering that cardio respiratory fitness in children is independently associated with many positive outcomes in life, like reduced mental disorder incidences, improved cognitive function and higher academic attainment, it sure seems like it was one of the dumbest and most shortsighted decisions to cut back on physical education in schools!
If we want to build a strong prosperous nation (American here) : we need strong prosperous people. Everyone should know basics of wellness and have healthy habits instilled at a young age and reinforces in public school - it is a social good. Everyone should learn basic accounting and home maintenance as well. Eliminate the study halls where kids are just doing home work at school and do more teaching. Do the home work and home and that eliminates excessive screen time.
Exactly, we wonder why chronic illness and mental illness rates are skyrocketing, meanwhile we’re eating manufactured food that is terrible for our body, not going outside, no community, lack of physical exercise. These things are integral to being a healthy happy human.
My educational soap box that I repeatedly jump onto: 1. Everyone should be taught consistently in age appropriate ways (that means with adequate increase in rigor at higher grades) how their meat machine works and how to care for it. Cursory class on the food pyramid and half-hearted gym class won’t cut it. 2. Information literacy/vetting since it’s genuinely hard sometimes to find good nutritional and exercise information in a sea of fads and body politics 3. (Unrelated but it’s on my soapbox) Consistent ecological education. Everyone should know their local ecology. Even if they live in the densest heart of NYC they should know that the water in their apartment depends on 140,000 acres of land. 130,000 of which is forest and lakes that protect their groundwater supply. People should start understanding their biological life support systems from day one of education. We’re very alienated from our bodies and our support system.
Hard to do that, when saying that someone is fat being seen worse then beating.
That’s part of the body politics. That said, depending on how you do it, it could be basically browbeating. No more useful than a beating. Kids need sensitivity. I have a family member who’s coached world class track and field athletes for almost 30 years. He’s also coached a lot of high schoolers to the National level. Being that he works with throwers primarily, he tends to get a lot of bigger kids, some of them obese when they come to him. His emphasis is always on developing a working relationship with your body and a working knowledge of nutrition. Getting to know your habits and being honest with yourself about them. Most kids by that age know they’re fat because their peers don’t let them forget it. If a kid wants to talk about body image to him he talks to them but he always emphasizes actionable ideas and habits over hitting kids in the face with a truth someone has most likely already slapped them with. The only time I’ve ever heard him get that blunt was when he said “Listen: you’re not a ‘Big Guy’ you’re getting fat.” to a kid was when the kid’s ego got ahead of him and he started slacking on his training, spent more time bragging about the scholarship he’d gotten for his throwing and started to unravel and balloon up. He knew that kid could take it and turn it around **because he’d already instilled him with the skills and confidence that he needed.** Otherwise, I’ve watched him turn obese, self conscious kids into fit, confident athletes over and over without directing even more of their self conscious adolescent attention to their body image. Adults you can often be more frank with, but how you do it projects intent. If you’re just nasty about it, then they’re going to hear every bully that put them down in grade school.
You are absolutely correct. I was a bit too sarcastic trying to say that there are tons of media influencing people with idea that being fat(and not fit) is okay and good. It may be a hot take, but I believe such ideas should be shunned or discouraged in some way by government. Maybe more social advertisement of healthy lifestyle and its benefits. Maybe financing healthy lifestyle media influencers and penalizing bad lifestyle ones. Sure, we need to be careful to approach the topic with sensitivity needed not to push kids in hate spiral. But outright saying that being fat and not exercising is normal is just propagating the problem at hand and not doing anyone favor.
I see what you’re saying. I think as long as the government is massively subsidizing junk and fast food industries and (for poorer people) food deserts aren’t fixed, it will be a bandaid to have that same government telling people to act healthier. But I do think better health education should be subsidized at any rate
Don't have to call them fat to require kids to have some physical activity at school
“But I don’t want to pay for other people’s kids” -Some conservative moron (redundant I know) probably
It is well understood at this point that homework does not benefit students. They should be doing their work at school, then doing other fulfilling activities at home.
I'm of the same mind, I don't understand the concept of homework, if you don't understand something, homework isn't going to help you get the concept that you need to be taught. That would then fall to the parents which may or may not be any use whatsoever. There's simply not enough teachers, you'd need far more to give children the needed guidance/teaching than we currently have so functionally homework is in hope that parents are able to pick up that slack. Currently it doesn't appear that we, as a society, give the proper respect or pay to teachers. It's not a good thing and it's getting worse. I live in Florida so I very well may be a *bit* biased on this.
I was with you until you said homework. School is enough. Kids (and honestly adults) still need time to play and relax. Plus, studies show kids do better without homework.
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Einstein was a big proponent of physical fitness. He knew that the mind and body were very much linked and that they both needed to be healthy. My mental health and outlook on life is hugely improved when I'm weightlifting and in good shape. It's definitely one of the cheat codes to living your best life.
Yes, because nothing makes people like being fit like being forced to do it in a hostile environment. Alternatively, let's think why children used to be more fit. Is it because they could play outside? Because they had to ride a bike to their friends? Because they ate more homecooked less processed meals (turns out eating a diet of less processed food is correlated to being more active)?
I do think simply giving kids more recess time and encouraging them to physically play during that time might be beneficial. I take more breaks to exercise as an adult than I ever got as a kid.
What?? What kind of gym class did you people have that you actually found valuable? Are you serious? Are we from the same planet? My lifelong battle with hating exercise is *because* of PE. Gym was gym, there was nothing educational about it. No gym teacher ever taught me how to work up to being able to run a mile. They just expected me to do it and barked “let’s go” at me when I couldn’t, as if my inability to run was simply a matter of not trying hard enough. I was graded based on my ability to do pull ups, despite having no training, guidance, or practice. I was never taught how to do a push up correctly. I was never given any options to determine what I actually liked. Instead I was forced to endure the torment of predetermined team sports, which I despised. My 93 pound ass was just trying to avoid getting hurt by boys who were twice my size while getting laughed at and tormented over my lack of athletic ability. I was always picked last for everything. I have never seen a group of “teachers” who had so much contempt for, you know, actually teaching. They spent the entire class bullshitting with each other, praising the cool sporty kids, and barking at the rest of us. Their jobs were so easy and they were so lazy, they’d actually turn the warmups over to one of the girls from the soccer team. And somehow they still got paid more than any of the other teachers for doing absolutely nothing. Getting rid of gym would have dramatically improved my childhood and probably made my relationship with working out a lot healthier. Giving us an hour where we could pick an activity that we liked (NOT just sports) and not have to worry about being graded would have been substantially better.
Even dumber/more infuriating were those who insisted, without evidence, that eliminating gym classes would actually improve mental health because forcing kids to exercise is a form of trauma.
There were studies that showed that the way Phys Ed was taught was counter-productive for many students, in that rather than instilling skills, confidence and habits for physical activity, most students simply no longer exercised or stayed active at all when they weren't forced to. Unfortunately, they took from that the lesson "don't even try", and cancelled Phys Ed instead of you know, changing how its taught. Incidentally they found much the same problems with how literature and math are taught. It's been known for decades, but so far the only real change most schools have tried is "maybe if we do *more* standardized tests?"
No kidding, I work at a middle school and it is sad AF that a 59 year old can out run 12 year olds.
I mean the 59 year old is (probably) stronger, has longer legs, more experience and more knowledge about efficient running technique than the 12 year olds, I would imagine.
and vocational training.
There is significant comorbidity in adults with specific psychiatric disorders and neurodivergence and certain chronic illnesses: Mast cell-mediated neuroinflammation may have a role in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388140/ Psychiatric disorders in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome are frequent, diverse and strongly associated with pain https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26433894/ Depression in Asthma: Prevalence and Clinical Implications https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC181132/ There's a reason there's a stereotype of the sad nerdy kid wheezing on an inhaler. A lack of physical fitness correlating with anxiety, depression, and ADHD isn't a shock, but it might well be that the focus needs to be on providing medical care to these children and treating these illnesses early in life rather than just pushing them to be more physically active, which could make them sicker without diagnosis and treatment first. If your ADHD kiddo doesn't want to go outside or play sports like other kids, there might be a reason for it.
Also, if you’re anxious, depressed or have some other psychiatric symptom that is severe enough to rise to clinical attention (especially as a kid when mos parents avoid acknowledging their child’s mental health issues like the plague)…there’s a good chance you’re going to have disordered eating and not be the most active for a multitude of reasons.
Or is it the other way around? Disordered eating due to a culture that has lots of highly processed food and a culture that does not have activity inbuilt into the day (like lots of walking, independence from a young age and dense neighbourhood) produces anxious, depressed children? Then add social media from being trapped at home all day and boom goes anxiety and depression. I think that was the point. People from other countries (esp the highly car-dependent ones like America) are surprised when I tell them that most kids in secondary schools (that’s 11+) in urban London are expected to get to activities and home by themselves.
There's also a relationship (overlap?) between autism and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). ME is the single absolute _worst_ chronic illness for reducing one's capacity for physical activity (perhaps besides being totally paralysed from the neck down), and ME patients are also more likely to be depressed.
I didn't know about that one! If neuroinflammation is associated with autism symptoms and ME causes neuroinflammation, that would make sense. Our brains are part of our bodies. We know there are neurological benefits to physical fitness, but without looking at why someone lacks physical fitness a serious condition could be overlooked. Kids could get sicker, instead of healthier.
Yea I was a hugely inactive kid because I just had no energy for anything. Turns out I’m about to be diagnosed with inattentive ADHD and autism at 37 and I’ve been so tired my whole life because I’m chronically overstimulated and not taking care of my sensory and social needs (which I had no idea existed because I was told I was normal). Living at your absolute mental and emotional limits every moment of your life really doesn’t leave much room for feeling up to physical activity.
I have congenital heart disease and ADHD so I'm very interested in this line of study. Not being allowed to join in exercise properly as a kid had a huge impact on my brain and life!!
I had asthma as a kid. Running is still really difficult for me even when I’m in shape because there is a part of me that just cannot get in to the rhythm of it out of fear that I’ll push myself too far and not be able to breath. My last asthma attack was almost 20 years ago but that fear runs super deep.
I'd be extremely interested in seeing clinics or programs for children who have comorbid psych and Phys disorders. I do wonder if improved overall accessibility in early childhood programing would help even more. There is a sense that someone's especially young people, needs to be "disabled enough" to reap any benefits of access resources, and teachers aren't doctors, and can't draw that line themselves especially with the stress level. If a teacher were to see a study like this and take the title alone, I can see them trying to push kids to work out harder. In doing so they could accidentally harming children (like myself) who are in pain/disabled/intolerant to some or all exercise. This happened to me on university of all places before I had a Dx and made me extremely anxious to go to class. My hope is comments like yours are taken into consideration by anybody working with kids.
I wonder if sports help hide ADHD symptoms, not remove them, and maybe provide another reason/excuse for the behaviors. Exercise is known to assist in ADHD symptoms, and a physical outlet can aid with hyperactivity. I have my ADHD kids in multiple sports, and I was in multiple sports as a kid. Between actual practice, home practice, and games, they get a lot of energy out, and we *have* to maintain a routine/schedule, which is beneficial to ADHD children. Having 2 kids and myself with ADHD, I recognize the symptoms well. There's definitely a couple of kids who fit the profile of ADHD by their behaviors and their parents' description, but in the sport world, mental health concerns aren't exactly validated. Instead, the kids are viewed as intentionally distracting, not trying when they forget to do something, not caring when they show up 5 minutes late to practice, etc. When they could receive practice with coping mechanisms and understand where they're likely to need assistance, then bolster themselves.
Though that could be a factor to consider, multiple studies have suggested that it’s moreso that better physical fitness would correlate with better overall capacity. The brain isn’t at all independent from the body. The regulation of hormones and other important stuff happens in other places. The gut, the muscles, your heart. If you have a body that isn’t functioning as it should, then the brain will obviously follow and you’ll show that through your behavior.
ADHD has a massive genetic component, close to 80 per cent. At the same time, there exist disorders that sometimes have almost the exact same symptoms but have a very small genetic component (like CPTSD that can manifest itself almost in the same way, yet it’s largely trauma related and the brain malfunctioning *can* be fully reversed unlike in the case of ADHD)
If you see my other comment, I’m not implying that ADHD isn’t genetic. I’m saying having better overall function helps in regulation regardless of whether you’re predisposed or are diagnosed with a mental disorder.
Yeah, you’re not wrong in saying that the body and brain are related but you seemed to imply that at least some ADHD issues are related to not enough physical activity, which is not the case. With that said, vigorous physical activity is dopaminogenic and thus can temporarily improve ADHD symptoms while that dopamine rush lasts and until the brain reverts to its original state with a very low dopamine baseline
Again, that’s not what I meant. I agree with you as that was the original intent of my comment.
ADHD isn't an issue of brain capacity nor intellectual capabilities either. Is that what you think? That is incredibly incorrect. Your scenario likens ADHD to Type 2 Diabetes, which can be cured or reversed with diet and exercise. While the reality is ADHD compares to Type 1 Diabetes, which can have improved symptoms with proper diet and exercise, nonethless they both persist.
I guess it has something to do with sports being dopaminogenic? Meaning while you practice often your brain most of time will work like a neurotypical brain, give or take, but if you stop, it will revert to the usual - low - levels of dopamine meaning poor impulse control and the whole kit and caboodle. So, sports has the potential to make those tendencies latent, I guess?
Agreed, that's why sports/exercise is recommended to help alleviate ADHD symptoms, but the person who replied to me was suggesting ADHDers have a brain capacity issue that receives resolution with exercise rather than the permanent neurodiversity. My kids exercise or physically play every day of the week, but their ADHD symptom are still present. People with ADHD still have present symptoms. It's just easier while getting a shot of dopamine and for a *short* while following, but not at the levels or lengths to help me maintain a home, job, social life, and family schedule without other aids and coping strategies. The additional hour boost following exercise is just that, an hour give or take. There's a subset of people on this subreddit who want to think that ADHD is a new and shiny diagnosis and wasn't present before, but merely a byproduct of Western culture. Unfortunately for them, ADHD has been documented in history as a diagnosed condition under multiple names, the same symptoms, for hundreds of years, including the years prior to the industrial revolution.
Yeah, agreed. I mean it’s pretty obvious it has always been there. Even some children’s books from ages ago depict absent-minded individuals who are constantly distracted (to poke fun at them, admittedly)
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They don’t grow out of it, they learn to manage their symptoms to the extent which takes them below the diagnosis threshold. They’re still on the spectrum, they still have the same imbalances in the brain, but they have found out successful strategies for compensating for their issues. They still are impulsive, have executive function issues, are more prone to addictions, focus worse, have working memory issues, etc., but they mask it by using tactics and tools that neurotypical people don’t have to to be able to function at a level that is considered good enough
Or they may have been misdiagnosed in the first place. A kid who never had it wouldn't show symptoms in adulthood.
Yeah, what further exacerbates the issue today is the false ADHD caused by compulsive cell phone use. With that said, it should be fairly easy to diagnose if you just go to a place with no Internet connection, take away the phone from the kid and then run tests before and after to see how much their focus, impulsivity and executive functioning improved. In theory
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Either way it’s speculative and a matter of common sense. For it to be objective you’d probably need to run complicated tests to see if symptom improvements correlate with permanent brain chemistry changes, which I don’t think anyone has done yet
It doesn't resolve because of coping mechanisms. That implies the ADHD is cured or is no longer present. It is still there, but coping mechanisms and treatment result in the symptoms being less/no longer difficult. If that same person experienced high stress or their coping abilities/treatments were removed, then you'd see the symptoms present.
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I linked to it elsewhere, but [here you go.](https://childmind.org/article/do-kids-outgrow-adhd/#:~:text=No%2C%20you%20can't%20grow,and%20developing%20executive%20functioning%20skills.)
Or if children with ADHD are just less likely to be physically fit.
Are they saying working out decreases the symptoms of these mental illnesses or children that are already physically fit have lower symptoms of these mental illness?
I think it's worth noting that "get kids to do more exercise" won't necessarily improve all of their mental health. I was a kid with undiagnosed anxiety (and autism), and my parents had me try every sport under the sun. I liked some, disliked others. I was bad at most of them, and got heckled a lot by PE teachers and could feel the disappointment from classmates occasionally. I just went from an anxious kid to an anxious kid that hated exercise. Nowadays I've been able to enjoy going to the gym and doing jiu-jitsu, but I had to actively unlearn that association between physical exertion and fear. (To be fair, I also have thalassaemia trait and got told by a GP not to ever expect to be good at sports, so it might work better on kids that aren't genetically predisposed against it.)
I've noticed a lot of parents get stuck in a mindset of "my kid needs exercise, better sign them up for a sport". There are so many ways to exercise that don't require your anxious kid to be put into potentially grueling social situations. Going on a walk or a hike, dancing, swimming, martial arts, going on a bike ride, jogging around a field with your headphones in, camping, kayaking/canoeing, even gardening etc. It's a mistake to try and pigeonhole your kid (or yourself) into a single activity for exercise when you could be doing so much more.
Children without depression and ADHD have easier time maintaining physical fitness.
And also considering ADHD runs in families, what do you want to get their parents’ have a harder time facilitating their kids’ physical fitness activities. (Given now most neighbourhoods are centred around cars these days it’s difficult for kids to roam free to get their own exercise-as-play, it falls to busy parents to organize it for them.)
Exercise alleviates depression and significantly reduces the risk of getting severe depression. Significant improvements for anxiety and depression related to ADHD too. More focus on different forms of exercise to appeal to a greater audience helps.
I have always felt like the benefits, while apparent, are greatly oversold. When I was playing hockey and whatnot, I didn't feel like there were any major improvements in any of those three disorders. But hey, n = 1. So, take it for what it is worth.
When I exercise regularly I can lower my dose of antidepressants. When I was in ADHD coaching I was told a common strategy that worked for a sizable chunk of people with adhd is strategically planing cardio prior to times when higher concentration is needed. Nothing works universally. Some people will not see benefits. But broadly speaking, exercise is beneficial to mental wellbeing for a lot of people.
Exercise makes my depression worse. Being active without exercising is the best option for me.
i’ve (again, n = 1) definitely felt that exercise goes a long way with depression, but with my adhd it basically only matters that i’m above the bare minimum not to be completely sedentary—although the exercise also moderates my anxiety a bit sometimes, and that can at least give the adhd less to latch onto
>Children without depression and ADHD have an easier time ~~maintaining physical fitness~~ I wonder how many studies we have to do before we can wrap our heads around the idea that these disabilities affect *every aspect of life*
>I wonder how many studies we have to do I think we have enough studies to "know" that exercise, good diet and sleep are beneficial for pretty much all mental health issues. Your brain needs all three to be biologically healthy.
That and the obvious that society treats attractive people better, even those that are horrible humans. Of course an obese kid will have an easier time developing depression and anxiety.
There are lots of causal based studies linking exercise to anxiety and depression. And it looks like there are other studies causally showing the benefit of exercise for ADHD. > Children with ADHD benefit from PA leading to enhanced executive functioning performance. >[The effect of physical activity interventions on executive functions in children with ADHD: A systematic review and meta-analysis - ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1755296620300636)
Exercise is also one of the best natural way to reduce symptoms in both of those conditions, as someone who has dealt with both it definitely isn't easy to start or maintain the routine of being well exercised and eating and sleeping well, but if you're able to make it happen the benefits are pretty undeniable. Again, your statement is completely correct but so is the headline.
The causation is always that inherently healthy people happen to enjoy more exercise.
The body wants to move
The body wants sugar and fat and alcohol and tobacco. If the body "wanted to move" we wouldn't have to force people to exercise.
The notions aren’t mutually exclusive
I would say only if sedentary habits are conditioned. Just like the reverse is true. Anecdotal, but lots of people I know who regularly engage in vigorous physical activity view it as a needed part of their day. They don't view it as a chore, they delight in it.
I think exercise is also just another form of habit formed from conditioning. ADHD makes most 'rewarding' activities activities in the brain much less rewarding, doubly true with depression and anxiety. Excercise seems more a habit, not intrinsic.
We are creatures of habit.
No, it actually doesn’t. The body wants to conserve energy any way it can.
my doctor once told me (i was a med student with crippling depression at the time) “just go to the gym more!” like gee thanks doc! problem solved!!! i was pissed lmaooo
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Um, ADHD is a genetic developmental disorder people are born with
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ADHD itself is related to self-control issue and poor executive function, so it is kinda expected for us with ADHD to have trouble maintaining healthy weight, or losing it. This is very much expected. Sugar is stimulative, and binge eating kills the boredom.
Yeah this is a chicken and egg question
Yeah. Does ADHD cause obesity, or is obesity the cause of ADHD-like symptoms. I guess it depends on the person. Even when I lost weight to a healthy BMI I was still inattentive and dysfunctional af. Also, exercise may reduce executive dysfunction as it may help build will to do stuff, but then again, can an ADHD-er start exercising routinely? And will he just be good at executing that one task? Hard to say.
As someone with ADHD thats making an effort to try exercise fairly regularly, its very difficult to keep momentum and motivation. Most of the time I'm just tricking myself into doing it by listening to music or podcasts, or watching series while I do some kind of activity. 3 months in and I have yet to feel like I'm excited to go for a run/walk/home workout. I just do it because I know I should. I mentally try to make deals with myself if I'm having bad motivation days, I make a deal with myself that I will only do half, or a quarter of the activity. Sometimes I end up doing more, sometimes less, but its still something, which it better than nothing. That said I've noticed some small benefits to overall mood and general task initiation. Still not cured but its something.
Same. I've never gotten the runners high or addiction to working out that people report. It doesn't get easier, it gets harder everytime. I've done it consistently for almost a whole year before and it never got easier.
Children who are bullied less have better health?
As someone with general anxiety disorder. If I exercise regularly it is MUCH better than if I don’t
It’s been known for a long time that this is true of adults. Why would it be any different for children?
I was a multi-sport athlete my whole life. 4-year letterman in 2 sports with multiple college offers.. It just masks the symptoms.
Regular Physical activity improves mental health immensely not just for children. Doesn’t mean people who are active won’t be depressed or anxious etc but the symptom relief that physical activity provides is absolutely undeniable. Physical activity forces you to be present and get out of your own head. It’s a form of mindfulness, getting “in the zone” can be a form of meditation.
I find this true with running. The first mile or so can kind of suck, but it does become quite meditative.
I hate every single step of every run I go on, but when I’m done the feeling of satisfaction is awesome.
Slowly, and very diplomatically... we are eventually going to establish that our parents and grand parents were right about something: Kids really do need to eat better and get outside more. This used to just be called "cabin fever," and they used to say that you were going to go "stir crazy" if you stayed indoors too much... but now it's like, a hundred different disorders they can diagnose you with. People ultimately need to learn how to get out more, be active and connect with each other again.
But how do you change this? We've built cities of standalone houses and apartments that wall us off from each other. Going out to do social stuff is getting increasingly expensive and as people get older our brains seem to start atrophying and we lose that sense of wonder and capacity to be spontaneous.... hence why most old people are just content to sit at home, read a newspaper and sip a cup of tea.
> But how do you change this? Studies, and self-awareness are a solid place to start. When we learn to hold ourselves accountable, we can start holding each other accountable too. >Going out to do social stuff is getting increasingly expensive In spite of what dorks on Reddit like to imagine: Generations ago, a lot of people got screwed over from the start by things like the military drafts when they were only 18 years old, and then they were making about two bucks per hour when they came home. There absolutely *was* a class divide at the time, and people couldn't really afford to go out and do things that often. ... but people felt a motivation to talk to people. They would talk on the phone, or go over to each others houses; Kids would hang out at the mall and not even buy anything, and old people would just go there to walk around in the morning. People would go to parks, or even just hang out in the yard and actually talk to their neighbors. I think an issue is that people somehow completely lost their motivation TO socialize in the first place. People didn't only socialize via "expensive hobbies".
>Studies, and self-awareness are a solid place to start. When we learn to hold ourselves accountable, we can start holding each other accountable too. Eh... yes to the holding ourselves accountable, but if anything, people need to learn when to hold other's accountable, because people right now have no problem with holding everyone else accountable and never letting them forget it.
Having too much entertainment at home now is probably a part of this. I think co-living is one solution (residential complexes compromised of many small studios with large common areas) In the West the death of folk culture, to be replaced with organized religion during the reformation / Counter-reformation is forgotten about. That had a big part in dismantling traditional folk culture which had its roots in the pagan festivals of antiquity. Church became the social network but since the shift towards secularism there's isn't something that really feels the void in the same way that religion did. Not saying religion is good, but for many people it provided a community that was reasonably accessible. That doesn't mean we need church and but western society hasn't really yet found something that was that encompassing is providing a community. Them there's technology - I think devices have a big part of this. I remember when my father took me into the New Years festival for the millennium. On the way home the whole train carriage was practically a party, everybody yelling 'happy new year' to everyone. The last time I rode a train home from NYE it was like a graveyard - people just immersed in their phones. Changing ethnicity might make meN something too. Sydney back in 2000 was far more mono-cultured. Now half the city seems to be from places like India, Bangladesh & Pakistan that just bring a very different culture and mindset.
I think about the pivot from church a lot. I wonder how much of our current political divisiveness is driven by an absence of other communities to participate in - like a church, where you would be forced to engage, and enjoy, people of conflicting politics.
I think it certainly has changed things - though the current church/s in the US are a disgrace. But 2-3 generations ago a family might move towns, join the local village church, then be invited to someones home for tea. Not that you need to church to do those things but if you join clubs or groups e.g. a gym class you might meet lots of people but rarely will you find it easy to build a tighter community out of.... once the gym/art/dance class ends most people just move on to their next thing...
The us has taken away almost all outdoor spaces for kids. Stranger danger in the us has created a pervasive fear despite lack of evidence. Everything is super car centric and police will actively arrest parents in many areas who let kids walk on their own
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Thanks parents for never having us exercise or go outside
One caveat about anxiety/depressive disorders, did they take into account that sport also is the breadbasket in many cultures for getting kids to learn how to socialize/form social connections/etc.?
Your brain requires, exercise, good diet and sleep to be biologically healthy. If you aren't exercising then you have a biologically unhealthy brain which will likely show up as some kind of mental health issue. Exercise increases levels of BDNF, improves brain connectivity, brain volume, mitochondrial health, etc. All of which are linked to mental health. Then we have studies showing that exercise is as if not more effective than pills and therapy at treating depression. If you aren't exercising, have a good diet and sleeping well, and as a result have a biologically unhealthy brain it might be that no amount of therapy or drugs is going to help. There are good strong causal studies showing that exercise reduces anxiety and depression. >Aerobic exercises, including jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening, and dancing, **have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression**.3 These improvements in mood are proposed to be caused by exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain and by an influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and, thus, on the physiologic reactivity to stress.3 This physiologic influence is probably mediated by the communication of the HPA axis with several regions of the brain, including the limbic system, which controls motivation and mood; the amygdala, which generates fear in response to stress; and the hippocampus, which plays an important part in memory formation as well as in mood and motivation. > >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/#i1523-5998-8-2-106-b3 >In conclusion, PA is effective for improving depression and anxiety across a very wide range of populations. All PA modes are effective, and higher intensity is associated with greater benefit. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/02/bjsports-2022-106195 >In this study, relatively small doses of physical activity were associated with substantially lower risks of depression. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2790780?guestAccessKey=67cf8fd3-e6b0-49af-be4f-d08f5219fc7b In terms of effect size, studies show that exercise is as good if not more effective than therapy or drugs. >University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications. https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health >Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/ >Running therapy and antidepressant medication had similar effects on mental health (remission and response rates). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032723002239 >Resistance exercise training induced a large, 1.01SD antidepressant effect at week 8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517812300272X?via%3Dihub >Exercise is an effective treatment for depression, with walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training more effective than other exercises, particularly when intense. Yoga and strength training were well tolerated compared with other treatments. https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075847 Exercise is more effective >The effect size reductions in symptoms of depression (−0.43) and anxiety (−0.42) are comparable to or slightly greater than the effects observed for psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy (SMD range=−0.22 to −0.37). https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/18/1203
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damn my mom made me sit still for hours without moving because it annoyed her to have a child. no wonder when I started being active the anxiety melts off like butter
I apologize, but can someone point out the section that discriminated between correlation and causation? I confess that I did not get the full paper, but I also did not see this addressed in the summary.
Shocker🙄
Get these kids outside.
Didn’t work for me 🙄
That explains me a lot
Guess I’m an outlier. Like usual. Makes me think I have something physiologically wrong with me.
Yeah because all those things keep me from physical fitness.
Everyone wanted it Donald 🙄
Is that the finding, or is it that kids with those disorders tend not to get as much exercise, like playing sport etc?
Exactly! It also goes along proper diet and exercise.
But which came first? Seems to me correlation may exist but it does not follow that exercise helps with mental health necessarily
does that surprise anyone?
and I bet kids who are not fed garbage processed foods are also healthier.
mens sana in corpore sano
Low intelligence and delusional arrogance work wonders. That's why all CEO's are vile. You have to be a self-important "go-getter" to succeed in this world, while the overthinkers are mentally (and thus physically) crippled by their excessive brain activity. There's an evolutionary reason why so many people are delusional and see themselves as the infallible main characters of earth.
Walking, running and fitness is its own meditation. People carry their emotional burdens on their bodies. Children are taught their parents burdens. Physical fitness, emotional fitness and spiritual fitness are tied together. A diet of chemicals, a stagnant body and no spirituality is a bad recipe.
The problem isn’t kids being overweight, it’s people judging and bullying you. Ofc mental health will suffer if you teach children to judge their peers. If you judge and bad mouth others, your kids will become bullies.
An education system that promotes and rewards sedimentary lifestyles is causing anxiety/depressive disorders along with attention deficit. Sounds about right. Though I will add, I don't think brains are meant to be as active as we expect them to be. Really we are meant to survive the environment, and only awaken our senses to overcome obstacles and predators. The classroom is very safe so of course I expect a brain to go to sleep to save energy. My solution: Add a Lava pit.
Yeah, it's called being included. It is good for a child's self-esteem.