People are becoming more aware of the need to focus on teenage mental health. While many factors affect the complex issue of mental health, fitness is one of those that can be dealt with more easily. Technology has created a generation where sitting with a screen in front of your face is considered having a social life. It’s created more stress on teenagers at a time when physical activity has decreased. Physical activity burns off the hormones of stress and makes people feel less depressed and anxious.
There’s a mind-body connection.
Besides burning stress hormones, exercise helps improve the gut microbiome. The microbiome includes the trillions of microbes, both beneficial and harmful, that are part of the digestive system. Some beneficial microbes affect mood. There is a microbiota-gut-brain axis that affects mood and thinking patterns. Exercise can increase the microbes that help prevent depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and eating disorders.
Building strength and endurance builds confidence.
When teens work out and build strength, it improves their posture. Improved posture can build self-esteem. When people, teens or otherwise, have good posture, it makes them look more confident, so people treat them differently. They treat them as though they are more confident. Teens learn what they live. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and they become more confident. Improved confidence can help eliminate anxiety and depression.
Studies show that exercise can help reduce depression and anxiety.
Many studies have shown that exercise can help reduce anxiety and depression. It’s so well-known it’s used as an adjunctive therapy for depression and anxiety. It is as effective as many of the drugs used and the only side effects are beneficial ones. It makes sense to include it as a preventative, as well. Including physical activity in the lives of every teen could help prevent undetected mental health issues and treat existing, detected ones.
- Physical activity as part of every teen’s life can improve both mental and physical health. Striving toward fitness goals can help teens to develop the mental strength to reach other goals.
- Both physical activity and diet are vital to maintaining teen mental health. They determine the physical health and affect the microbiome that directly affects the brain.
- Adequate sleep aids in determining a teen’s mental health. Exercise improves the quality of sleep and makes it easier for teens to fall asleep. The better quality of sleep a teen achieves, the better the mental health.
- There’s a direct link between the rise in obesity and the rise in teen mental health issues. Changes in dietary habits and decreases in physical activity have added to the obesity epidemic.
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