Exercise 'no help for depression', research suggests

[warmness]

It helps soo much! I use to sit on the floor in my room crying everyday.. I gave myself a kick and started exercising.. never looked back! I highly recommend it

[Johnni]

^ I don't think excercise alone will have a big impact on combating depression. I think one of the aspects we forget when people say how good excercise as been for them is that they change their diet also (sometimes whole lifestyle) and do excercise outdoors/gym etc. Diet will affect depression as certain foods impact out anxiety levels. I reckon doing excercise indoors in your own home will not be as good compared to outdoors/gym etc with regards to increasing your mood.
I used to train at home and now the gym and i feel better doing it at the gym. Gets me out of the house for like 2 hrs and i feel a greater accomplishment everytime i go cos its more of a effort to workout in front of ppl rather than do it at home.

[xboxgamer]

I disagree with this study, while not a cure it definately helps. I started going to gym again (hadn't been since college years) a while back its been a great help for me, quite a few positive things have happened since I started.

[iTz0kt0Bu]

^me too, it's frustrating how SA limits our potential sometimes

[Mr. Nobody]

everyone has their own personal experiences of what helps depression and what dosen't

I personally would agree with the the article, but I also don't think it was helpful to word the heading/title the way they did.

I have been very fit and active many times in the past, and I can always remember being very aware of the fact that it didn't help alleviate my SA at all, and it rarely helped my moods,.. long term. ( in short,.. I was fit and active, but also, depressed, basically )

the problem is that it does help you feel a little physically better,.. obviously, but it would need to be comined with many other factors to be a major cause of recovery from depression or anxiety etc.

the trouble also is, is that to ignore it's benefits would be foolish, and to not make it an integral part of your recovery would also be to overlook it's obvious beneficial qualities.

as usual, when it comes to actual, practical experience, there is no easy straightforward answer.
maybe that's the frustration,.: the media often wants or expects a quick, easy answer, but, as I'm sure we all know, stepping out of depression and anxiety etc. seems to be an ongoing affair with many crossroads, twists and turns.

I'm not sure there's any one 'magic silver bullet'

[slrrrrp]

another blog: http://mariawolters.wordpress.com/20...a-ray-of-hope/

[LittleMissMouse]

Originally Posted by clawhammer.

I honestly don't know what you're talking about there, but it seems to have nothing to do with what I've been saying.

I found this excellent quote on about.com that might clarify what I was saying about researchers using people waiting for treatment as a control group:

"In a study dealing with a therapy outcome, a wait list control group is a group that is assigned to a waiting list to receive an intervention after the active treatment group does. A wait list control group serves the purpose of providing an untreated comparison for the active treatment group, while at the same time allowing the wait-listed participants an opportunity to obtain the intervention at a later date.

A wait list control group is often thought to be preferable to a no-treatment control group in cases where it would be unethical to deny participants access to a treatment."

Is that clear enough?

The Declaration of Helsinki and the ICH guidelines have everything to do with what you're saying as these are the fundamental guidelines that stipulate how clinical trials should be run, but obviously if you prefer to use about.com as a source of information on this then fine (personally most pharma companies I work with use DoH and ICH guidelines rather than about.com or wikipedia).

If you perform a clinical trial, then generally, at some point, you expect that either the EMEA or the FDA or PBAC will assess the methods you've used and whether or not these are robust. If you run a shitly designed trial then the FDA/EMEA/PBAC will probably notice this and question your rationale for running a shitly designed trial. If you have a "waiting for treatment" group, then you're pretty much ****ed for a number of reasons, 1) it is unethical to deny patients treatment, period. , 2) it obviously depends on condition, but trials are conducted over a definite time horizon, if you have a "waiting for treatment group" how are you going to deal with that in your statistical analysis plan in terms of time at risk of X-disease compared with your active treatment groups? 3) it introduces bias; EMEA/FDA/PBAC are so obsessed with concealment of treatment allocation - how are you going to deal with that in a waiting for treatment group? 4) the Weber effect - how are you going to deal with that if you have a waiting for treatment group versus a group that you know are receiving active treatment?

[slrrrrp]

Originally Posted by LittleMissMouse

most pharma companies I work with use DoH and ICH guidelines rather than about.com or wikipedia

Most Pharma companies would also use the Doh and ICH guidelines rather than an internet person claiming to be "well acquainted" with them. Cite the relevant parts of the guidelines please.

[warmness]

I didnt even go to a gym to exercise, never even left the house.. just got some dance video games and worked out to them, also some dance exercise workout dvds, got me right into it because its something I enjoy. Im not even good at dancing

[VO2]

Originally Posted by diplodocus

^ so it seems to be a classic case of out of context misquoting. A favourite pastime of bad journalists. Scientists who painstakingly craft and labour over every word of their research papers must be pulling out their hair when some journo gets hold of their abstract and brutalises it into a news grabbing headline/article.

Here we had a comparative study that used people on meds who were suffering from severe depression, (these people evidently fitted the diagnostic criteria for 'severe' as close as possible). Meds if I remember rightly were also used as a measure of improvement (reduction in).

The study does not suggest that people would not benefit from doing exercise, (maybe people with mild depression would), but this study is not about them..it's talking about a specific 'thing' that was studied..and everybody knows that these things have variables that need to be taken into account..and so on..

The study I think kinds of proves what already seems to be the case of other studies..that is, that severe depression tends to be very resistant to different treatments..


It confirms my own case anyway, sport didn't stop me from going under, but therapy and then when I was feeling better (mildly depressed) sport/exercise did help.

There's something about severe depression that just sinks your boat, and meds didn't cure me, but they put the breaks on my severe depression.

Anyway just summing up my own thoughts on the subject a bit really..

[catlover]

Originally Posted by becky1789

It makes me feel good, burns off bad energy, makes me feel better about self. No cure to things, but it helps me. Can't speak for others.

Agreed, and in addition, going to the gym affords an opportunity to interact with real people. (I go to a small gym at regular times and see many of the same people on each visit.)

[slrrrrp]

Originally Posted by VO2

but this study is not about them..it's talking about a specific 'thing' that was studied..and everybody knows that these things have variables that need to be taken into account..and so on..

the "thing" wasn't even exercise they were studying - it was prescribed exercise, that is, it was looking at the effects of telling patients to exercise.

[VO2]

Originally Posted by slrrrrp

the "thing" wasn't even exercise they were studying - it was prescribed exercise, that is, it was looking at the effects of telling patients to exercise.

I was thinking about this.(quote below). But guess i should have read the study a bit more carefully.

Adults presenting with depressing in primary care and receiving the TREAD (TREAtment of Depression with physical activity) intervention in addition to usual care reported increased physical activity compared with those receiving usual care alone, although there was no evidence to suggest that the intervention brought about any improvement in symptoms of depression or reduction in antidepressant use at the four month follow-up point.
http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2758

Edit;One of the study’s researchers, Prof John Campbell, from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, noted that the benefits of exercise can certainly not be discounted. He underscored that “exercise is very good for you, but it’s not good for treating people with what was actually quite severe depression.” Specifically, he noted how “that buzz we all get from moderate intensity of exercise” — the “runner’s high” sort of feeling you can get after a session of physical activity — is not sustained.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/exercise...#ixzz1xPAs0CUF