Regular Exercise Eases Depression

Exercising regularly acts as an anti-depressant and helps ease stressed mental condition to an extent, a recent U.K. based study suggests.

The study published in 'The Cochrane Library' showed that exercising has "moderate" effects on treating depression. According to the statistics, around 120 million people suffer from depression.

For the study, the researchers examined 39 trials that included 2,326 participants suffering from the mental condition. The scientists assessed these participants on the basis of their symptoms.

"Our review suggested that exercise might have a moderate effect on depression," said one of the authors of the review in a press release, Gillian Mead of the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, UK. "We can't tell from currently available evidence which kinds of exercise regimes are most effective or whether the benefits continue after a patient stops their exercise programme. "When we looked only at those trials that we considered to be high quality, the effect of exercise on depression was small and not statistically significant," Mead added. "The evidence base would be strengthened by further large-scale, high quality studies."

The experts said that exercising was a natural treatment and it changed hormone levels that were responsible for depression.

Previous studies have shown benefits of exercise for depression but the current study provided sufficient evidence to support the views of past researches. However, the study authors said more trials will be required to find a stronger connection between physical activity and reduced depression.