« Is Michael Moore Lying? The Wall Street Journal doesn't think so. Watch WSJs mini-Sicko! | Main | BrandweekNRX Visitor Stats »

November 30, 2007

Excercise works just as well as antidepressants, according to new study

You may have noticed that exercise boosts your mood.

And you may have heard of “endorphins” and “runner’s high.”

Not surprisingly, in the last couple decades, there has been great interest in looking at the mental health value of exercise. Until recently, however, most studies investigating exercise in the treatment of depression have not been conducted with the same level of scientific rigor as the clinical trials used to bring anti-depressant medications to the market.

Limitations of previous studies have included the absence of a control group, individuals not randomly assigned to study groups, and testing the effects of exercise on individuals who were not suffering from a mood disorder. But now there is very interesting news.

A recent placebo-controlled study published in the September issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine compared exercise to a common antidepressant medication in a group of individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and found that exercise was as effective as the drug at alleviating symptoms of the disorder.

In this study, 202 depressed adults were randomly assigned to one of four groups: one that received the antidepressant sertraline, one that worked out in a supervised group setting three times a week, one that worked out at home, and one that received a placebo pill.

After 4 months of treatment, 41% of the participants achieved remission, defined as no longer meeting the criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD) and a HAM-D score of <8. Patients receiving active treatments tended to have higher remission rates than the placebo controls: supervised exercise = 45%; home-based exercise = 40%; medication = 47%; placebo = 31% (p = .057). All treatment groups had lower HAM-D scores after treatment; scores for the active treatment groups were not significantly different from the placebo group (p = .23).

Conclusions: The efficacy of exercise in patients seems generally comparable with patients receiving antidepressant medication and both tend to be better than the placebo in patients with depression.

Placebo response rates were high, suggesting that a considerable portion of the therapeutic response is determined by patient expectations, ongoing symptom monitoring, attention, and other nonspecific factors.

Source:

Psychosomatic Medicine, September 2007; Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise. Robert E. Thayer, Ph.D., Oxford University Press, 2001.

Posted on November 30, 2007 |

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834519bc269e200e54f92da338833

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Excercise works just as well as antidepressants, according to new study:

Comments

巨人倍増


I would be visiting your blog regularly. Thanks for sharing good blogs.


巨人倍増:http://www.001kanpo.com/product/12.html
威哥王:http://www.001kanpo.com/product/55.html
花痴:http://www.001kanpo.com/product/237.html

Posted by: 巨人倍増 | May 13, 2011 at 06:43 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

 
© 2010 Brandweek. All rights reserved. Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy Additional Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.