by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
Do we need expensive pills with many side effects and lengthy psychotherapy to deal with the widespread disease of depression? Recent studies show that physical exercise is usually a better antidepressant – effective, well-tolerated, safe, and unbeatably cheap.
For more than 300,000 years, when Homo sapiens is not sleeping or eating, it is almost constantly on the move. It runs and walks, hunts, fights, climbs, bends, digs and carries, throws, chops and plows, builds and shapes with bare hands.
It is only since the 20th century that humans have spent most of their waking hours sitting down – and use means of transport rather than their own feet to move around.
And it is only since the 20th century that depression has become a widespread mental disorder. The WHO estimates that 5% of all adults worldwide are now affected by it – 9.5 million of them in Germany alone.
Is this temporal connection a pure coincidence?
Not at all, as should have become clear since the turn of the millennium at the latest, even those contemporaries who do not believe anything that cannot be read in a peer-reviewed journal. In 2000, US doctors reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine on a four-month study with 156 depressed patients. Randomly assigned to three groups, one received sertraline, an SSRI. (1) Others followed instructions on physical exercise. The remaining third combined both. After 17 weeks, the pill and exercise groups were in a similar mental state. But six months later, only 30% of the patients in the exercise group were still depressed – compared to 52% in the sertraline group. (2)
In 2012, an evaluation of nine high-quality studies showed that physical exercise is no less effective for depressed seniors than SSRIs and psychotherapy. (3) This finding was confirmed the following year by a Cochrane review for sufferers of all age groups. (4)
The best antidepressant: not a pill, but exercise
But that’s not all. In 2024, the largest study to date on the subject found that physical activity is not just equivalent to antidepressants – it is significantly superior. It can be twice as effective. This is demonstrated by an evaluation of 218 studies with a total of 14,170 participants. The effect was most pronounced with walking, jogging, yoga and strength training in groups rather than individually – ideally two to three times a week. But swimming and cycling also help.
Why is that? Physical exercise helps against depression on several levels (5):
It has a neurochemical effect: endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline are released in the brain – natural mood enhancers that can alleviate depressive symptoms they ensure a good mood and well-being.
It activates: people who exercise regularly are less tired and listless. Being physically active makes depressed people more vital, alert, and active. This makes it easier for them to manage everyday tasks.
It improves neuroplasticity: Exercise promotes the growth of new nerve cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is often reduced in size in depression. This is accompanied by a reduction in clinical symptoms.
It makes you stronger internally: Strength training, in particular, leads to quick successes that positively affect your self-concept and increase your self-esteem.
It brings people together: Sports activities offer opportunities to make social contacts – an essential aspect of coping with depression.
It improves sleep – this also has a positive effect on your mood.
It distracts you from negative thoughts and breaks brooding tendencies.
It reduces stress: exercise lowers cortisol levels, thereby reducing the physical stress response.
This does not only apply to mild depression; according to numerous studies, exercise is at least as effective as psychotherapy or antidepressants for moderate depression. And in severe cases? Even then, being physically active helps considerably – most of the time.
Not a panacea – but effective enough to make Big Pharma nervous
The depressive crises of prominent athletes show that exercise is not a panacea: from Japan’s tennis star Naomi Osaka, swimming ace Michel Phelps – the most successful Olympian of all time – and Formula 1 king Lewis Hamilton to top footballers Andres Iniesta and Gianluigi Buffon and the celebrated US basketball player Dennis Rodman. Some saw suicide as the only way out, like football goalkeeper Robert Enke in 2009. The enormous pressure that top athletes are under in a high-performance society, constantly in the media spotlight, obviously weighed more heavily on them than the neurochemical benefits of intensive physical activity.
Such exceptions do not change the fact, of course: the best antidepressant is usually not a pill, but exercise. This is extremely depressing news for the pharmaceutical industry and its shareholders – they can only hope that the state of research, which is damaging to business, does not spread among too many doctors and patients before purchased counter-studies refute it. The global annual turnover of antidepressants is currently 18 billion US dollars, and by the end of this decade, it is expected to grow to more than 37 billion US dollars. (6) Where would we be if depressed people suddenly started getting their butts up en masse for free and without side effects instead of continuing to become dependent on synthetic drugs – and possibly dying prematurely as a result? (7)
(Harald Wiesendanger)
More on the subject in Harald Wiesendanger: Devil’s Stuff. Why we should almost always keep our hands off psychotropic drugs. Teufelszeug. Warum wir von Psychopharmaka fast immer die Finger lassen sollten.
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Notes
(1) Serotonin-Wiederaufnahmehemmer, kurz SSRI, sind eine Klasse von Antidepressiva. Gemeinsam ist ihnen, dass sie Serotonin-Transportproteine im Zentralen Nervensystem blockieren; dadurch erhöht sich die Konzentration von Serotonin in der Gewebsflüssigkeit des Gehirns.
(2) M. Babyak u.a.: “Exercise treatment for major depression: maintenance of therapeutic benefit at 10 months “, Psychosomatic Medicine 62/2000, S. 633-638, https://doi.org/10.1097/00006842-200009000-00006 , https://journals.lww.com/bsam/abstract/2000/09000/exercise_treatment_for_major_depression_.6.aspx
(3) C. Bridle u.a.: “Effect of exercise on depression severity in older people: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials “, British Journal of Psychiatry 201/2012, S. 180-185, https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.111.095174 , https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/effect-of-exercise-on-depression-severity-in-older-people-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis-of-randomised-controlled-trials/C74183D9390FFC542E611A3698B8E39B
(4) G. M. Cooney u.a.: „Exercise for depression“, Cochrane Database Systematic Review 9/2013, CD004366, doi:10.1002/14651858.CD004366.pub6, https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004366.pub6/full
(5) Siehe https://www.viactiv.de/gesundheitswissen/die-wirkung-von-bewegung-auf-die-psyche, https://www.habichtswald-privat-klinik.de/magazin/wie-sport-bei-einer-depression-helfen-kann, https://www.netdoktor.de/news/wie-sport-bei-depressionen-hilft/, https://www.mdr.de/wissen/medizin-gesundheit/sport-gegen-depressionen-100.html, https://www.klinik-friedenweiler.de/blog/sport-depression-auswirkungen-effekt-therapieformen/, https://www.netdoktor.de/news/wie-sport-bei-depressionen-hilft/, https://www.habichtswald-privat-klinik.de/magazin/wie-sport-bei-einer-depression-helfen-kann
(6) https://www.mordorintelligence.com/de/industry-reports/antidepressants-market, https://www.researchnester.com/de/reports/antidepressants-market/4469, https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/de/reports/global-antidepressants-market
(7) 12,6 Millionen Todesfälle in der westlichen Welt seit der Jahrtausendwende gehen auf psychiatrische Drogen zurück; unter den über 65-Jährigen sind es 500.000 pro Jahr. https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2435, https://www.techtimes.com/articles/52727/20150513/expert-warns-antidepressants-and-other-psychiatric-drugs-doing-more-harm-long-term.htm