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INTERRUPTING REGULAR EXERCISE WORKOUTS CAN CAUSE NEGATIVE MOOD | |
| Contact: Public Relations Liason: Peter B. Esker, Director, Office of University Affairs Phone: (301) 295-1219 Email: pesker@usuhs.mil Embargoed until: March 4, 2005 |
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Vancouver, BC, Canada - Need a reason to continue your regular aerobic exercise workouts? An interruption in scheduled exercise workouts can cause fatigue and negative mood. That is the finding of a study on the psychological impact of exercise withdrawal conducted by Ali A. Berlin, M.S., Graduate Fellow in the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), Bethesda, MD. Results of the study were presented for the first time at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting, held March 2-5 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The research was designed to assess the psychological consequences of exercise deprivation in regular exercisers. Berlin also set out to test the hypothesis that certain physical symptoms of depression, such as fatigue, would appear prior to the emergence of cognitive and mood symptoms, such as sadness. "This study suggests that depressive symptoms develop when people who normally engage in regular exercise abstain from their physical activities," Berlin said. "The symptoms progress from physical to mood changes, and the appearance of physical symptoms can be used to predict the development of subsequent depressive mood symptoms." The investigation involved 40 regular exercisers, half stopped their exercise workouts and half continued their exercise workouts. All participants completed questionnaires on their mood during the 14-day period of the experiment. These questionnaires assessed different dimensions of mood such as vigor, depression, anxiety, and fatigue. Results showed that those individuals who stopped their exercise workouts developed symptoms of depression. During the first week of exercise withdrawal, feelings of fatigue were present. Subsequently, these feelings of fatigue predicted the development of feelings of sadness during the second week of exercise withdrawal. These findings may be relevant in situations where regularly exercising individuals are confined to be inactive, such as injuries, recovery from medical procedures, but also job-related circumstances such as prolonged travel and even space travel. | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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