A natural depressant is being sedentary. 

We’re designed to be active. 

Over the weekend I met a woman at a funeral who is well into her eighties.  She mall walks two miles a day leaving her “girlfriends” winded at the closest Starbucks kiosk.  She told me she jumped from a cliff using a glider ten years ago when she was “only” in her late seventies.

I was so impressed with her enthusiasm level – and remember, this was at a funeral imagine what she is like on a happier occasion – that I went looking for evidence that exercise was the bromide we have all be searching for.

In a 2007 study in Psychosomatic Medicine, some 202 people with major depression – not just the blues – were divided into three groups.

One group was randomly given the antidepressant Zoloft, another received supervised home exercise programs and the rest got a placebo.

After four months, the exercisers were just as likely to enter a remission as the group taking medication.

We know exercise improves our mood so to not take full advantage of increased daily activity is like turning down a free gift.

As Ellen DeGeneres says “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”

But wherever she is, she’s healthy and happy.

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