When you wake up and begin to plan your day, how much do you factor in time for exercise? Perhaps you’re saddled with obligations, not only for work, but also for childcare, housekeeping, and/or the many little nuisances that can invade your waking hours. A dedicated time for physical activity seems like a luxury that you might get around to at the end of the day, maybe.

You know that logically you should exercise and that there are myriad benefits to putting your body through various forms of being in motion. You’re not happy with yourself for not finding time for it in your schedule, but you feel you have no choice.

As stressed and frantic as you feel at times about your hectic life, has it ever occurred to you that exercise could do more than build your bodily strength and vitality? Could it be worth carving out those chunks of time to get up and move?

According to Central China Normal University’s Fei Tian and colleagues (2024), there is reason to believe that physical activity could indeed play an important role in combatting not only the development of chronic health problems but also depression. Prior research supporting this possibility used observational methods to show an overall association between physical activity and depression but failed to zoom in on the precise nature of this relationship. What was lacking was the demonstration that changes in physical activity could be linked with changes in depressive symptoms. Furthermore, these studies failed to control for initial levels of depressive symptoms in the samples. They also did not sufficiently represent low- and middle-income countries, limiting the generalizability of the findings.

Before turning to the details of the Chinese study, it’s a good idea to take a step back and try to understand why exercise could have this beneficial effect. The authors did not specifically address this issue, but........

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