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  • Home
  • About us
    • Privacy Statement
    • Trustees
    • Our research
  • Services
    • COVID-19 advice & helpful resources
      • Resources for adults
      • Resources for children, parents & carers
      • Helpful support – telephone and online
    • Our introduction to mental health training – Suffolk’s Needs Met
    • Counselling
    • Eating Recovery Group
    • GreenCare
    • Mums Matter
    • Open Spaces
    • Personality Disorder Service – Waves
    • Suffolk Night Owls – Emotional Support Line
    • Suffolk Work Well
    • Supported housing
    • The Norfolk and Suffolk COVID-19 support service
  • Workplaces
    • I want to support my team’s wellbeing
    • I want my managers to have the confidence and skills to support their teams
    • I want my team to have the confidence and practical skills to support others
    • I want to support Suffolk Mind through fundraising in our workplace
    • Contact our Workplace Wellbeing team
  • Schools
  • Get involved
    • Job vacancies
      • Project Manager
      • Support Worker (Saxmundham)
      • Management Accountant
      • Case Worker (Suffolk Work Well)
      • Support Worker – Cambridge
      • Support Workers (Woodbridge)
      • Care Worker
      • Relief Support Workers
      • Relief Care Worker
      • Employee benefits at Suffolk Mind
    • Volunteer
    • Suffolk PenPals
    • Friends
  • Support us
    • Donate
      • Why regular donations matter
    • Leave a gift
    • Events & challenges
      • 100 Miles for Suffolk Mind
      • 100 Miles for Suffolk Mind t-shirts
    • Corporate Fundraising
    • Giving Pages
    • In memory
    • Greencare – support our Greencare team
    • Sammy the Sea Squirt
      • Purchase the Sammy the Sea Squirt book
      • Sammy the Sea Squirt resources for schools
    • FAQ’s
  • More help
    • Emergency Contacts
    • Emotional Needs & Resources
    • General FAQs
    • Useful Links
    • Support Groups
    • Videos: understanding self-harm and suicide
    • Video: reflective listening
  • News
    • Blog
  • Contact
  • Resources
    • LGBT+ Mental Health
    • Ukraine: Supporting Your Mental Health
    • 20Zz Sleep Better, Be Better
    • Support guide for children and young people
    • EARLY Minds resource cards
    • Emotional Needs and Resources cards
    • Suffolk’s Needs Met course manual
    • Suffolk’s Needs Met course manual & Emotional Needs and Resources cards set
    • The Qur’an & Emotional Health: An Introduction

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Moving helps us to stay physically healthy but mentally healthy too

Ezra Hewing, Head of Mental Health Education at Suffolk Mind, explains the benefits of moving for your mental health.

Getting the right amount of movement each week is important to good mental wellbeing. Whenever we do exercise, our bodies release endorphins to reward us. Endorphins are the body’s pleasure chemicals, making us feel good, encouraging us to keep exercising. However, each time we do some exercise, the amount of endorphins we receive is reduced, which motivates us to do more or try something different; so if you are a finely tuned athlete you will need to do more exercise to get more feel-good rewards. But for most people, just doing thirty minutes of exercise a few times a week is enough to significantly improve mood.

Research shows that regular exercise can be just as effective as medication at lifting depression and reducing anxiety. However, with exercise, you don’t have the potential unpleasant side effects and it can be effective at raising mood much more quickly than medication.

Movement also helps reduce high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. In small amounts, cortisol is useful to gently alert the cells in our body and brain, and activate our defences against injuries and infections. However, if our emotional needs are poorly met, the increased levels of stress cause more cortisol to be released. High levels of cortisol can damage brain cells and cause physical inflammation. It can also inhibit the immune system, making us more vulnerable to bugs and viruses.

If stress goes unaddressed it can trigger a number of physical conditions too, such as high-blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, stomach ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, skin conditions including eczema, and alopecia, and heart conditions. Low intensity exercise, such as going for a brisk walk, reduces cortisol levels.

There may be another reason to be physically active too; brains only exist in animals which need to move. A plant doesn’t have a brain, because it doesn’t need to move; animals on the other hand have brains as we need to plan how we will move to get food, keep warm and stay safe. But if we don’t use the brain to move about, then connections in the brain start to wither away.  Research shows, for example, that if we spend too much time at a desk, or on the sofa, without regular breaks to get up and move about, we are at increased risk of depression. If we don’t use the brain, we lose the brain.

So meeting the need to move, improves our mood by making us feel good, reduces the effects of stress, and protects the brain too.

Author: Ellie Winch

  • Blog
Posted on: 30th September 2020

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