Moving your body can lighten your mood
The finding suggests that physical activity may play an influential role in regulating mood and could therefore be a viable target for clinical intervention鈥攁 positive finding since physical activity is more easily changed than mood states.
Researchers from the University of Sydney and leading institutions in the US, France, Hong Kong and The Netherlands that increases in physical activity tended to be followed by increases in mood and perceived energy levels.
This beneficial effect was even more pronounced in a subset of the study subjects with bipolar disorder.
The findings challenge prevailing theories of depression proposing that sleep problems, low energy, and low activity levels are the result of depressed mood.
The study, which examined interactions among these factors, suggests the opposite may be true鈥攖hat instability in activity and sleep systems could lead to mood changes.
Treatments that disrupt the body clock may be more likely to cause harm in patients.
Systems regulating sleep, motor activity and mood have typically been studied independently. This work demonstrates the importance of examining these systems jointly rather than in isolation.
"This study exemplifies the potential for combining the use of physical-activity trackers and electronic diaries to better understand the complex dynamic interrelationships among multiple systems in a real-time and real-life context," said senior author, .
"Systems regulating sleep, motor activity and mood have typically been studied independently. This work demonstrates the importance of examining these systems jointly rather than in isolation.鈥
鈥淢odern psychiatry is rapidly abandoning its traditional categories, such as major depression and bipolar disorder, in favour of personalised and more objective modes of assessment,鈥 said study co-author,
鈥淭hese then form the basis for more accurate predictions of illness course and, most importantly, choosing the most relevant treatments.
鈥淭hey are also providing unique insights into probable underlying mechanisms.
鈥淔or bipolar disorder and atypical depression, they strongly support our working proposition that disturbed body clocks are the basic cause of these disorders鈥攁nd that treatments such as physical exercise, light exposure, melatonin-based medicines鈥攏eed to be much more specifically focused on stabilising the daily body clock.
鈥淭reatments that disrupt the body clock, like some of the commonly-prescribed serotonin-based antidepressants may be more likely to cause harm in these patients.
鈥淭his study highlights the way our international consortium with nodes in USA, Europe, Australia, Canada, China and Hong Kong is using highly informative personal data, collected by 聽21st聽century personal technologies, to transform the diagnosis and treatment of the major mood disorders.鈥
Researchers used activity trackers and electronic diaries over a two-week period to collect data on physical activity, sleep duration, subjective mood and energy levels from study participants with bipolar-I disorder, bipolar-II disorder, major depressive disorder, or none of these three disorders.
The participants comprised 242 adults (150 women and 92 men), aged 15 to 84, including 54 people with bipolar disorder and 91 with major depressive disorder.聽