Tip For 50% Better Mental Health

Even people who only followed this tip a little had 50% better mental health.

Even people who only followed this tip a little had 50% better mental health.

Compared with inactivity, even ‘mild’ levels of physical activity are linked to 50% better mental health, a new study finds.

The more exercise people performed, the more protected they were against mental disorders, the research also found.

The conclusions come from a Spanish study of 1,422 people living in Madrid.

They were asked about how much exercise they did and their general state of health, both mental and physical.

The results showed that people who did low or high levels of physical exercise both had better mental health than those who were relatively inactive.

Both low and high levels of exercise were also linked to more than 50% reductions in the risk of suffering mental illness compared with the inactive.

The study was published in the journal Revista de Psycologia del Deporte (Romo et al., 2015).

Personality image from Shutterstock

Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book "Making Habits, Breaking Habits" (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks.

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