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Experience

Experience January/February 2025

Exercise Is a Boon for Your Mental Health

Gary Fry

Summary

  • Studies show an association between moderate physical activity and enhanced cognition. This can lead to a reduction in the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.
  • Lawyers have the highest rates of depression and anxiety of any career, and substance abuse rates within the legal profession are significantly higher than in the general population.
  • Studies show that loneliness and social isolation are associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death.
Exercise Is a Boon for Your Mental Health
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The health benefits of regular exercise for our bodies are well known. Literally thousands of studies have shown that the more you move, the lower your risks for cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, certain kinds of cancer, and joint pain. Daily exercise also helps to control high blood pressure, boost energy, and promote better sleep.

Regular exercise is also vital for our mental health. It can relieve the symptoms of anxiety and depression, help to enhance cognitive function, and, in a social setting, provide an antidote to loneliness, according to mental health studies.

Depression and Anxiety

Lawyers have the highest rates of depression and anxiety of any career, and substance abuse rates within the legal profession are significantly higher than in the general population. A 2022 ALM Intelligence Survey, cited in One Legal (10.17.24), found that 35 percent of lawyers report suffering from depression, while 64 percent experience high levels of chronic anxiety.

Moreover, a troubling number of lawyers surveyed have experienced suicidal ideations, that is, thoughts (active or passive) of taking their own lives. These findings suggest a crisis, to say nothing of a dysfunctional system, and would have been unimaginable in 1966, when I began to practice law. The world changes, and not always for the better.

But there’s still good news. Regular exercise, besides other lifestyle choices, can help prevent the onset of “major depressive disorder” and “generalized anxiety disorder,” the clinical terms in the mental health professional’s diagnostic tool, “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition,” for the mood disorders we commonly call depression and anxiety.

Besides talk therapy and medication, exercise can also alleviate the symptoms of mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety. Exercise takes the mind off worries and makes us think about something else. In some cases, it may even prevent the return of mild depression and anxiety once we’re feeling better.

While the links between depression, anxiety, and exercise aren’t entirely clear to medical science, working out and other forms of moderate physical activity release feel-good brain chemicals, like serotonin and dopamine, which elevate mood, reduce stress levels and make us feel happier. But when we’re badly depressed or in the grip of anxiety, we’re hardly in the mood for the gym.

Fortunately, a wide range of physical activities will get the blood circulating and the heart pumping. Lifting weights, running, playing basketball, and other vigorous activities are terrific, but if you’re not up to strenuous exercise, less intensive activities like gardening, washing the car, or just walking around the block will boost your mood.

I have skin in this game. Depression and anxiety run in my family. Depression took—a euphemism—my mother and sister, and nearly my son Michael when he was in graduate school. My impromptu phone call to him intercepted his plan.

My own mood disorders surfaced shortly after I had been elected student body president of my high school and was certain of admission to a top university. With everything seemingly “going for me,” I started my senior year with thoughts of ending it all. For many years on, I shuffled between darkness and despair. “If I’m doing so well, why do I feel so bad?” I wondered.

I was nearing the edge of the abyss when Peter, a fellow lawyer who also suffered from severe depression, diagnosed me over lunch at his private club. Luckily for me, through talk therapy and the anti-depressant Zoloft, his psychiatrist set me on the road to recovery. (Here I should add that Peter served on the Editorial Board of Experience for many years, himself a contributor of wonderful articles to the magazine.)

What kept me going until Peter invited me to lunch? Exercise. When I finished law school, I joined the YMCA (now the “Y”), where I regularly exercised until my wife and I left Phoenix for the slower pace of rural life. There, I found a gym and continued my routine.

Over the years, I have also been a runner. While I rarely experienced the rush known as “runner’s high,” I found running along Arizona’s irrigation canals very calming. It was a sedative that never failed to quell, however briefly, my demons. Although exercise alone cannot cure severe depression, it inoculated me against the urge to throw in the towel.

Loneliness

The U.S. Surgeon General recently announced an epidemic of loneliness in America. At any one moment, he told the nation, one out of every two adults is experiencing an alarming level of isolation and loneliness, seriously affecting their physical and mental health.

Studies show that loneliness and social isolation are associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. Older adults who have lost a spouse or lifelong friends and whose social circles are shrinking are especially vulnerable. I am 83, and many from my own generation are gone. It is not easy to replace them.

As I get older, I find that my interactions with people at the pharmacy, the doctor’s office, and Walmart are just as vital to my emotional well-being as the ones I experience with my family and old friends. Psychologists call these “weak or peripheral ties,” in contrast to one’s close relationships.

Weak ties not only provide moments of emotional warmth, but they also offer fresh perspectives and new experiences that enrich our lives. These encounters may also compensate for the loss of close ties and even give us greater emotional satisfaction than our own family members do at times.

When old age finally caught up with my wife and me, we moved to New Hampshire to be closer to her extended family and potential caregivers. While Karen returned to her birthplace, I was yanked from my native soil. I missed old friends and knew no one in my new town. Feeling lonely and down, I realized I had to do something before I cascaded.

I joined the local “Y.” And there I began forming weak ties with the staff and members of all ages and backgrounds. I also developed a new exercise regimen, and within weeks, I was feeling better about my life and less lonely. Chatting with someone while I am getting my heart rate up is pleasant and energizing. Any site offering the opportunity for shared physical activity—gym, pickle ball court, golf course—will do the job.

Two for the price of one is not a bad return on investment. Three actually. I am now friendly with a gentleman I met at the Y who has developed and presented workshops on aging and dementia for many years. He graciously shared with me some of his own research on the benefits of exercise on cognition. Serendipity.

Cognitive Decline

An estimated 7.0 million Americans aged 65 and older have Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes a gradual loss of memory, cognitive skills, and eventually the ability to carry out daily activities. AD is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for approximately 75 percent of cases. The risk of developing dementia increases with age.

Studies show not only an association between moderate physical activity and enhanced cognition, including better performance on tests measuring processing speed, memory, and executive function but also a reduction in the risk of developing dementia, including AD. According to the Alzheimer’s Society’s analysis of 16 studies, reported in Stanford Center On Longevity’s Stanford Lifestyle Medicine (5.28.2024), participants who engaged in moderate physical activity experienced a reduction in risk of developing dementia (generic) by 28 percent and, specifically, AD by 45 percent.

The ideal routine for preventing, or delaying the onset of, AD would be a combination of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, like running or swimming, plus resistance/strength training, such as weightlifting. The aerobic phase should include interval (sprint) training. One would aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week and two days of strength training. This, obviously, is not possible for everyone.

But even light-intensity physical activity, like a walk through the neighborhood, routine household chores, or a trip to the grocery store, is associated with a reduced risk of developing dementia, however slight, and with better cognitive function in older adults, reports JAMA Network Open 2021, according to Harvard Health Publishing/Harvard Medical School (April 1, 2022).

Still, it does matter whether you walk up the stairs or take the elevator. Every little bit counts, and the more intense the exercise, the less likely you are to develop AD. The association becomes stronger with higher-intensity exercise and certain types of training, particularly resistance training. Studies show that improvements in memory and cognitive health are not always sustained once regular exercise stops.

It is estimated that nearly half of all Alzheimer’s cases might have been prevented or delayed by lifestyle changes that incorporate healthful habits such as exercise. Adults with higher levels of fitness in childhood have higher levels of cognition in middle age, studies indicate.

This underscores the importance of lifelong commitment to exercise for better brain health. For maximum results and personal safety, any exercise program should be tailored to one’s fitness level, overall health, and achievable goals.

“Your brain is part of your body and is going to benefit from anything you do that is good for your general health,” says Dr. Sandra Weintraub, a neurologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who explores the connection between exercise and cognition. If it’s good for the heart, it’s also good for the brain.

Remember Pascal’s famous wager? The wager is the philosophical argument advanced by Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher, that people are essentially gambling on whether God exists. Pascal concludes it is better to bet that God does exist because there is much to gain and so little to lose.

And the same is true of exercise. Roll the dice and reap the benefits!