How Physical Stress Can Relieve Mental Stress
Physical exertion is the key to reducing mental strain
When we feel stressed, we are often told to relax or find things that help distract ourself from the stressors in our life.
However, have you ever thought that putting your body under physical strain can help reduce the mental stress that you’re experiencing?
By physical stress, I mean physical activity. Any form of exercise is a form of stress on the body — you’re physically exerting yourself.
Some activities are more straining than others — going for a walk doesn't require a lot of effort but doing a high-intensity interval training session is a lot more demanding, yet both activities will have significant effects.
As an assistant psychologist, working with stressed and concerned people, I always encourage some form of exercise to help reduce their stress and worry — whether it’s playing a sport, dancing, walking, running, yoga, they can all help.
Essentially, physical stress, through exercising can be relaxing too — it can have an impact on us chemically and cognitively which can decrease the mental stress we experience.
Let’s take a look at how this occurs!
Physical Strain Leads To Mental Relief
Let’s just touch on the evidence for a second.
Researchers in 2019 reviewed 26 different studies, that were examining the effects of physical activity on mental health. They found physical activity was associated with a reduction in depressive symptoms, in young people.
Further evidence found that participating in cycling had the greatest calming effect on college-aged women — this was because exercise provided a time-out from daily worries.
Both studies highlight that physical activity (which is physical stress) can result in a mental relief. This raises the question — how does this occur?
How Physical Strain Reduces Stress
The explanations range from chemical changes in our body to more cognitive changes on how it changes our thinking — both ways can have a significant impact in reducing mental stress.
1. Chemical Changes
Physical activity creates a chemical buzz in our body, which influences our emotions.
Firstly, putting our bodies under physical stress results in the production of endorphins. Endorphins are responsible for reducing pain, increasing pleasure, and reducing stress.
They are also responsible for giving us that feeling of pure exhilaration, also known as ‘runner’s high’. In other words, we are bound to feel great after exercise.
In addition to endorphin production, exercise can also affect cortisol — the stress hormone.
When your body perceives stress, cortisol is released into the bloodstream. There’s nothing wrong with this and is actually our body’s adaptive response to stress.
The problem comes when there is too much cortisol for too long.
Evidence indicates that exercising at low intensities such as a walk or light jog can decrease cortisol levels.
Also, higher intensity exercise can actually increase cortisol. This spike can help us as once this spike in cortisol occurs, our cortisol levels can stabilise after exercise, explains Dr Christofides, an endocrinology expert.
In summary, the physical stress exercise creates can reduce our mental stress because of endorphin production, making us feel better and its influence on cortisol, either by reducing it or helping it return to normal levels.
2. Cognitive Changes
An even bigger impact of exercise is its ability to influence our thinking which can improve our ability to tackle mental stress.
When you exercise and you start to notice improvements — this could be a bit of weight loss, muscle gain, improved diet, increased stamina, smaller waist, enhanced strength, this will all affect your mind.
Your self-image, self-esteem, and self-confidence improve because of these effects. As these factors increase, it affects how we perceive stress.
Research published in the Journal of Health Psychology, found lower self-esteem predicted greater stress severity.
This occurs because of the way we cognitively appraise situations. The greater self-esteem and self-confidence we have, the more likely it is that we will see ourselves as having the ability to cope with a stressful situation because we see ourselves as having the necessary resources within us to overcome the stress.
In short, because of the physical stress put on us by exercise, we are going to see improvements that can increase our self-esteem. This enables us to think to ourselves that we can tackle and deal with the mental stressors put in front of us.
What Exercise is Best to Relieve Stress?
The short answer is that there is no ‘best’ exercise that will help reduce the mental stress we experience.
At the end of the day, we are all different and find pleasure in different things. Whichever exercise you find most exciting and enjoyable will be the best option as you’re going to enjoy it and you’ll stick to it.
If you struggle to get active, have a look at my 4 tips to help get active.
If you’re looking to get into doing some form of exercise to help with stress, start off with a walk or jog for 20–30 minutes 3 times a week. It’s not a massive commitment and it’s not too strenuous on the body.
But if you know you like doing a particular sport, interval training, going for a long run, lifting weights etc, then stick to that.
Final Comments
The mental stressors that we go through can be a nightmare. We can either ignore the stress (which is harmful to our mind and body) or we can try different things to help alleviate some of this stress.
Physical stress, in the form of exercise, is a great way to help reduce that mental stress you’re experiencing because:
- It produces endorphins which help to reduce pain, stress, and increase pleasure.
- It can affect the stress hormone cortisol by lowering it, or by helping it return to normal levels after a small spike.
- It can produce changes in self-esteem and confidence which will help with how we process stress. We are more likely to think that we have the resources to cope with stress and tackle it.
The next time you’re feeling that mental strain, try some physical activity. Put your body under a bit of physical stress and trust me you’ll be reaping the rewards after!