🧠🧘A new #McMaster study on exercise during the pandemic identifies a troubling paradox: many respondents who said they wanted improve their mental health via exercise also identified poor mental health as a barrier to doing so. Fortunately there are solutions. [1/14]
https://twitter.com/TheAgenda/status/1389966355127013377
The director of McMaster's NeuroFit Lab, @jenniferheisz, started the study after the first pandemic lockdown disrupted her triathlon training. Heisz was too stressed to work out at her normal level and worried some may forgo exercise altogether.
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… [2/14]
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… [2/14]
Between April 23 and June 30, her team surveyed1,669 study participants about their physical-activity and mental health. Some 55 per cent of respondents said their mental health had gotten worse or much worse during the pandemic. [3/14]
Respondents also reported being less active during the pandemic. “This was really impacting their mental health. We found that those who were able to maintain their activity level were doing better,” Heisz says. (See this @TheAgenda interview: ) [4/14]
People's reasons for and barriers to exercising changed as well. Stress reduction, anxiety relief, and improved sleep increasingly became motivators during the pandemic. More people reported a lack of motivation, no access to facilities and increased anxiety as barriers. [5/14]
Heisz says there’s a simple reason that people who want to exercise more to relieve anxiety or stress often can’t: mental and physical stresses stack on top of one another and lower your overall stress tolerance, affecting how much exercise you can do. [6/14] 
St. Catharines resident Abbey Morris is familiar with the interplay between exercise and mental health. Before she was diagnosed with anorexia, she would compulsively exercise to the point of burnout. Now she teaches yoga to people recovering from eating disorders. [7/14]
Morris likes that the NeuroFit Lab’s study asked people why they exercise, something she doesn’t think happens enough. “A lot of people are exercising not because they enjoy it, but because they feel guilty if they don’t,” she says. [8/14]
Heisz stresses the importance of “giving yourself permission to play” — focusing on moving to feel good rather than to get strong. Her team created a mental-health and exercise toolkit to help people change the way they think about exercise: neurofitlab.ca/assets/neurofi… [9/14]
It recommends scheduling workouts to relieve the stress of decision-making, lowering their intensity (Heisz says people can still obtain mental-health benefits from lower-intensity exercise), and keeping in mind that some exercise is better than none. [10/14]
But the study identified another barrier to exercise: income. People with less reported experiencing greater declines in exercise and mental health. @EasyThePianoMan of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, says he’s heard of those problems from community members. [11/14]
Less income often means less access to greenspace, he says. “If we’re able to structure roads and apartment buildings in ways that space is given to people, then they will be able to engage in physical activity that at least will help address mental health." [12/14]
Morris says people who struggle with their workout space should do what they can to get comfy. Most important, she says, is committing to exercise, even if not for long. “If I really don’t want to do something, I always try and commit myself to at least five minutes.” [13/14]
By lowering her training intensity, Heisz was able to work through her stress and prepare for that triathlon, completing one solo. “A lot of people underestimate the benefits movement has for mental health. It’s top of the list.”
Read more here: tvo.org/article/covid-… [14/14]
Read more here: tvo.org/article/covid-… [14/14]
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