I think if a person is 'feeling down', exercise helps make a person feel better. If I'm feeling neither up nor down, exercise can put me in a really good mood. If I am depressed, it doesn't make any difference at all, or it makes me feel worse by being an extra burden or challenge.
Exercise changes the blood chemistry, which is a good thing - short-term. Long term, it prevents disease, also a good thing. Enough to make me believe it's worth the terrible effort and sacrifice of time.
It makes a person feel better physically though, and gives more of a fighting chance - because being unfit makes a person tend to illness and illness tends to cause depression, or depression can cause illness in a horrible catch-22.
So I believe exercise is worth doing. I just don't believe it's easy.
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Date: 2006-10-18 02:17 pm (UTC)Exercise changes the blood chemistry, which is a good thing - short-term. Long term, it prevents disease, also a good thing. Enough to make me believe it's worth the terrible effort and sacrifice of time.
It makes a person feel better physically though, and gives more of a fighting chance - because being unfit makes a person tend to illness and illness tends to cause depression, or depression can cause illness in a horrible catch-22.
So I believe exercise is worth doing. I just don't believe it's easy.