Depression and anxiety: Exercise eases symptoms.
Depression symptoms often improve with exercise. Here are some realistic tips to help you get started and stay motivated. 

You have anxiety or depression — and exercise seems like the last thing you want to do. But once you get motivated, exercise can make a big difference.

Exercise helps prevent and improve a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. Research on anxiety, depression and exercise shows that the psychological and physical benefits of exercise can also help reduce anxiety and improve mood.

The links between anxiety, depression and exercise aren't entirely clear — but working out can definitely help you relax and make you feel better. Exercise may also help keep anxiety and depression from coming back once you're feeling better.

How does exercise help depression and anxiety? Exercise probably helps ease depression in a number of ways, which may include:

• Releasing feel-good brain chemicals that may ease depression (neurotransmitters and endorphins)
• Reducing immune system chemicals that can worsen depression
• Increasing body temperature, which may have calming effects

Exercise has many psychological and emotional benefits too. It can help you:

• Gain confidence. Meeting exercise goals or challenges, even small ones, can boost your self-confidence. Getting in shape can also make you feel better about your appearance.
• Take your mind off worries. Exercise is a distraction that can get you away from the cycle of negative thoughts that feed anxiety and depression.
• Get more social interaction. Exercise may give you the chance to meet or socialize with others. Just exchanging a friendly smile or greeting as you walk around your neighborhood can help your mood.
• Cope in a healthy way. Doing something positive to manage anxiety or depression is a healthy coping strategy. Trying to feel better by drinking alcohol, dwelling on how badly you feel, or hoping anxiety or depression will go away on their own can lead to worsening symptoms.

What kind of exercise is best? The word "exercise" may make you think of running laps around the gym. But a wide range of activities that boost your activity level help you feel better. Certainly running, lifting weights, playing basketball and other fitness activities that get your heart pumping can help. But so can gardening, washing your car, or strolling around the block and other less intense activities. Anything that gets you off the couch and moving is exercise that can help improve your mood.

You don't have to do all your exercise at once, either. Broaden how you think of exercise and find ways to fit activity into your routine. Add small amounts of physical activity throughout your day. For example, take the stairs instead of the elevator. Park a little farther away at work to fit in a short walk. Or, if you live close to your job, consider biking to work.

 Next time you're about to blow, hop on the treadmill instead. Find out how and why working out will calm you down.

Getty Exercise is a great stress reliever, so it's a good thing I do a lot of it. When I run or cycle, I’m away from computers and phones and kids and the media telling me the world is going to explode 30 minutes from now. I use this time to let my mind wander. I sometimes generate article ideas or come up with lines that seem witty at the time. Other times I fantasize about getting my book published and ditching the kids with grandma to take my wife someplace tropical. Conversely, when I lift weights or go downhill skiing, my mind is totally occupied with thoughts of "Don’t drop that weight on your face" or "Don’t ski into that tree."

What my mind is not thinking of are things that stress me out; it provides a needed break from life’s little problems.

Beyond simple logic, there’s also science.

A 2006 study in The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences explained, more or less, how back when a horde of saber-toothed tigers wandered into the cave, we got stressed out and this elicited the “fight or flight” response. We either grabbed our spears and went all caveman on the invaders, or tried really hard to run faster than someone else so as not to be the one turned into tiger kibble.

These days we still get plenty stressed, and often it’s protracted. Think about it. Tiger comes into cave. Kill tiger or run away from tiger. Within minutes it’s over. But what if the boss sends you an email about your repeated failures, and reminds you of next week’s performance review? It’s not over quickly; it drags out. You sit and stew, and maybe send a snotty email to someone. This isn’t exactly unleashing your inner cavewoman, and that’s bad.

According to the above-mentioned study, the stress causes your adrenal glands to go berserk to mobilize energy resources, and you need to burn that stuff off. If you don’t then it leads to bad things like insulin resistance, storing of visceral (belly) fat, and suppression of gonadal, growth and thyroid hormones. All this stuff serves to put you at much higher risk of heart attack.

Another interesting study came out of Norway in 1996, looking at fibromyalgia patients and comparing aerobic exercise with mental stress management techniques. The researchers found that aerobic exercise “was the overall most effective treatment, despite being subject to the most skeptical patient attitude prior to the study.” So the patients didn’t think exercise would work, but it did anyway. I wonder if the researchers said, “Nyah! Nyah!”

The American Psychological Association has weighed in on this subject as well, asserting that, “physically active people have lower rates of anxiety and depression than sedentary people.” However, this isn’t necessarily coming from the old myth about endorphins: “So far there's little evidence for the popular theory that exercise causes a rush of endorphins. Rather, one line of research points to the less familiar neuromodulator norepinephrine, which may help the brain deal with stress more efficiently.”

However, it may not be just chemical: “exercise seems to give the body a chance to practice dealing with stress,” The APA says. “It forces the body's physiological systems - all of which are involved in the stress response - to communicate much more closely than usual.”

So, the next time your blood pressure spikes and you feel like twisting the head off some Voodoo dolls, instead of sitting their and practicing some deep breathing exercises, go for a different type of heavy breathing: push yourself at something physical and you’ll burn off stressful feelings and calories at the same time.