When we think about anxiety and depression, most people do not think about exercise as a remedy. We mostly think about medication, therapy, and another way that can help us feel better. However, the Behavioral School of psychology explains that our lifestyle and body movement has a very vital role in our mental health.
According to the behavioral school of psychology, if you change the lifestyle of an individual and implement some physical changes, this introduces discipline in his life.
As a result of this discipline, the body learns and adapts to stay in a routine. This also means you stay busy and you positively exert your negative energy. With the help of exercise, you will also be able to have less time for negative thoughts and you will stay active.
There are so many more benefits of high-intensity interval training that can be traced back to mental and physical health. Overall, you can use any exercise but with the help of HIIT, the effects are better and you will see improvement quickly as well. Most people do not realize that high-intensity interval training has so many other benefits as well.
With the help of this article, we will discuss all the benefits that are connected to HIIT as well as some of the ways that help people with anxiety and depression. Apart from this, HIIT has so many physical benefits that we will discuss in this article. All these things collectively will help you decide why HIIT will be best for you.
What is HIIT?
High-intensity interval training is one of the most popular exercise regimes nowadays. Within HIIT your overall exercise is divided into a section which is generally called a circuit. You can have the same circuits with the same arrangement of exercises or you can have multiple circuits with a different arrangement of exercises.
After a high-intensity circuit that can consist of somewhere between a few seconds to a few minutes, you will have a small period of rest. This resting period can be of a few sections to a minute.
According to experts, HIIT-based training is much more effective because each rep has accelerated the metabolism and once you go to rest, it tries to slow down.
However, once you start exercising again, the body needs the initiation energy again. As a result, you end up burning more calories and the weight, as well as fat shedding rate, is more than any other exercise.
Most people use isolation exercises but for HIIT most fitness gurus prefer combination exercises that target more than one group of muscles so your whole body stays engaged.
Why does HIIT Work?
For a very long time, it was believed that you will only reap the benefits of exercise if you keep it at medium intensity and continue doing it every day with full focus over a long time.
However, there is so much research that says your body can either choose intensity, duration or distance. This means that you can replace medium intensity with high intensity and this way you will be able to burn the same number of calories as you will burn in double the amount of time.
Another very important thing is that HIIT has both aerobic and anaerobic exercises so this helps in engaging both energy supplying systems at the same time. This way you will be able to lose more calories.
Connecting HIIT with mental health
As discussed earlier, there are a lot of different things in our body that connect the use of exercises with a healthy brain. This is the reason most kids are encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities. A recent study shows that staying active not only helps you increase your lifespan but also helps in boosting the happy hormone.
This is the same reason most people feel an instant rush or feel accomplished after they complete an exercise. The happy hormone of serotonin in the body is realized right after the exercise and this makes you feel good and encouraged. When it comes to HIIT exercise especially, study shows that it is very effective for depression.
Mainly depression is linked with lethargy, oversleeping, not engaging in work, and feeling unaccomplished. With the help of HIIT exercise, you can trigger GABA and glutamate, two very important neurotransmitters that will help you lift your mood. For someone who is depressed, these neurotransmitters will help in feeling better.
Apart from anxiety and depression, HIIT training has proven to be effective for schizophrenia, bipolar, and other mood-related disorders. According to a study by Harvard Health, the level of BDNF protein that regulates mood improves.
With mood regulation and brain function, this protein works very effectively as well. Most people who do not link mental health with physical health do not understand that every part of your lifestyle impacts your mental health. The food you eat, the way you complete your daily tasks and the overall work you do are all important.
Even if you are not into exercise but you perform physical activities more than any other individual, your physical activity will help you improve the level of happy hormones.
Benefits of HIIT for Mental Health
HIIT training is not all about the physical health benefits it has so many mental health benefits as well. Some of these have been listed below:
· HIIT exercise improves blood circulation which helps with nourishing the brain and heal the damaged cells
· HIIT exercise is good for anxiety and depression
· HIIT training helps with controlling OCD
· HIIT training is good for memory and increases creative thinking
· HIIT exercises help with controlling emotions and calming down in intense situations.
· HIIT exercise helps with maintaining healthy emotions without straining day to day life
· HIIT exercise is very good for bipolar disorder as well
Benefits of HIIT for Physical Health
When it comes to physical health, you will see improvement in a lot of domains. Some of the benefits related to HIIT has been listed:
· HIIT helps with blood sugar level
· It controls the blood pressure
· It is good for a heart condition
· It has an anti-aging effect
· It helps with balancing the body hormones
· It helps in losing weight and shedding fat
· It helps in shaping the body and gaining muscle
· It is good for increasing blood circulation
· It is very good for getting into shape within a limited time
Bottom Line
To sum it all up, HIIT is not just good for physical health and strength building. It also helps with mental health. Most people do not realize that negative and positive energies have an impact on our bodies. Our bad emotions, sadness, anger, and frustrations, and the emotion that we cannot bottle up.
To live a healthy life, we need a positive way to exert this energy or use this energy in a better way. Where most people fail, HIIT exercise comes to the rescue. From mental strength building to physical health improvement, you will see some of the best impacts on your body.
It also helps with promoting a very positive style of living rather than switching to a negative tone. You will see that with the help of HIIT your body will go through a detailed behavioral therapy that will eventually benefit you.
