Devlin Brown at the water cooler: Taking care of your body also takes care of your mind

This has been a hard, relentless year. I am struggling to find the motivation, never mind the energy to exercise. Do you have any advice?

It’s a vicious cycle, I know. This year, someone very close to me died suddenly and unexpectedly. And amid phases of trauma, mourning, sadness, disbelief, anger, more disbelief, I didn’t want to do anything, never mind prepare meals or work up a sweat.

As offensive as a film can be, and symptomatic of the 1990s, an obese character in one of the Austin Powers films said: “I eat because I am unhappy and I am unhappy because I eat.” Certainly, during phases in my life it has been a case of: I don’t exercise (or eat well) because I am unhappy and I am unhappy because I don’t exercise (or eat well).

Johannesburg psychologist Martin Scheepers has told me on more than one occasion when contributing to stories for Business Day that exercise is fundamental in his holistic work with patients. Moving, he said, is vital for a healthy mind and he asks his patients to exercise at a level and intensity appropriate to them.

It was encouraging because there’s no shortage of resources that speak to the value of exercise in supporting mental health. It’s just that, to a layman at least, movement is always presented as a valuable add-on, and not really essential.

In July, Deakin University’s Food and Mood Centre released the findings of a study conducted during the pandemic. The researchers randomly assigned 182 people with mild or moderate depression to either lifestyle therapy or cognitive behavioural therapy. 

Each lifestyle session was conducted by a dietitian and exercise specialist who gave participants science-backed exercise routines and eating guidelines based on a modified Mediterranean diet. The therapy sessions were conducted by psychologists.

According to The Guardian, the study’s lead author, Prof Adrienne O’Neil, said everything about the two interventions were matched equally: frequency; length; setting; and group sizes. At the end of eight weeks, the lifestyle group experienced a 42% reduction in depressive symptoms and the psychotherapy patients enjoyed a 37% reduction. The one was as good as the other.

A weakness is that the study sample was small and was skewed in favour of females. More research is needed but it is obviously food for thought. The Guardian quotes O’Neil: “Unlike other areas of medicine, like cardiology, endocrinology or diabetes care, where lifestyle modifications are really the cornerstone of self management, they have traditionally been perceived in mental health and psychiatry as being an add on.

“But in more recent years and with the publication of this trial, we can be more confident now that they belong at the heart of good psychiatric care.”

A Harvard Medical School article called “Nutritional psychiatry: your brain on food” says: “studies have compared ‘traditional’ diets, like the Mediterranean diet and the traditional Japanese diet, to a typical ‘Western’ diet and have shown that the risk of depression is 25%- 35% lower in those who eat a traditional diet”. 

In another Harvard Medical School article title “How simply moving benefits your mental health”, the author writes: “Regular exercise such as cycling or gym-based aerobic, resistance, flexibility, and balance exercises can also reduce depressive symptoms. Exercise can be as effective as medication and psychotherapies.”

Of course, no-one is suggesting that lifestyle should trump professional care. That is nonsensical. Similarly, it would be irresponsible for anyone to suggest that someone suffering from depression can simply self-manage their symptoms by eating well and exercising at the expense of medication and visiting their doctors.

We know, through science, that a healthy lifestyle that includes eating properly and exercising, supports a healthy mental state. What an exciting realisation. It doesn’t replace professional intervention, it just turbo charges our journey towards happiness.

The best advice is to clean up your diet, and even if you just start by going for a walk, start exercising. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who knows? You might soon say: I exercise because I’m happy and I’m happy because I exercise.