Friday, April 25, 2008

Mood lifting - Growing evidence suggests that exercise is as good for your mental health as it is for your physical well-being

Monday mornings, Theo Baars's exhausting depression often tries to seduce him into just staying in bed. But then, he says, a staffer at Appleton House, a residence for people with psychotic disorders at McLean Hospital, comes into his room and says, insistently, "You want to go work out."

So Baars, a 22-year-old surfer and musician, drags himself to McLean's new gym and sweats through a half hour of presses and curls. And then, he finds, he doesn't want to go back to bed. And more: His confidence is pumped up. His thinking tends to be less delusional, more reality-based.

"Working out helps me get my self back," he said.

Baars's personal experience reflects longstanding wisdom that is now gaining the added heft that comes from carefully conducted research. Exercise, the studies increasingly suggest, may be as good for your brain as it is for your body, whether you are mentally ill or not.

As Cambridge psychiatrist and author Dr. John Ratey puts it, if exercise could be bottled, it would be the greatest blockbuster drug ever. "Exercise is medicine for the brain," he said.

READ MORE @ BOSTON GLOBE