It’s been heard on the radio and spoken in times of struggle, “don’t worry, be happy.” However, it is not always easy to remind yourself. Even in these challenging times, there are ways we can help manage our stress. Different forms of exercise, such as swimming, have been proven to provide strong, lasting benefits for our mental and physical health.
The Struggle of Mental Health
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), symptoms of anxiety and depression have significantly increased in the United States during April to June of 2020, compared to the same time in 2019. Additionally, over 30 percent of U.S. adults reported struggling with anxiety and/or depression in late June 2020.
Mental Health and Swimming
Depression varies from person to person, it comes in many different forms and there are myriad triggers and reasons for feeling hopeless and helpless. Just as causes of depression vary, so do cures, but exercise has been shown to help.
Swimming is particularly effective for all ages and all physical abilities at reducing stress, depression and anxiety for many reasons:
1. Swimming releases endorphins
Exercise can reduce stress and produce feel-good hormones and chemicals in our brains, like serotonin and endorphins. As a good form of exercise, swimming can release these powerful chemicals in your brain that energize your spirits and make you feel good.
2. Swimming gets the whole body moving
Mental health illnesses, such as depression, are positively impacted through getting the body moving with activities like swimming. Swimming is a proven way to work your entire body and cardiovascular system. For example, just one hour of swimming can burn almost as many calories as running.
In addition, using swimming to burn calories and get the whole body moving will help you get better sleep at night – which means you’ll have more energy in the day.
3. Swimming gives feelings of relaxation and positivity
The long muscle movements and deep breathing required in swimming, much like in yoga, stimulate the brain to promote nerve cell growth and release endorphins and other stress-reducing hormones.
Additionally, swimming promotes changes in the brain, including neural growth and new activity patterns that create feelings of calm.
4. Swimming gets you away from screens
According to a study from Concordia University, survey responders who depended on screens for entertainment and social media had up to 19 percent more emotional stress. These days, screens and notifications are hard to avoid, but setting time aside to unplug and get moving is becoming increasingly important. Swimming is a great way to take a break from the stimulation of calls, texts, news alerts, social media updates and “urgent” emails.
5. Swimming is inclusive to all ages and abilities
Since swimming is a non-weight bearing exercise it allows even those with painful joints, disabilities or injury to exercise weightlessly and without pain. From home or at an aquatic facility, hydrotherapy is a great way to use physical therapy practices to accelerate rehabilitation or ease chronic pain. By leveraging a feeling of weightlessness, hydrotherapy enables swimmers to perform exercises that might be too difficult to do outside of the water.
Clear Comfort works with leading hydrotherapy pool, spa and hot tub manufacturers to provide the healthiest, freshest and easiest swimming experience with the least amount of toxic chemicals.
Next time you are feeling down, stressed out or anxious, go for a swim and see if it helps.
Prioritizing strong mental health is as important as physical health and exercise can improve both. Invest time today to release endorphins and boost overall mood by jumping in the pool.
* Originally published on: May 13, 2015
There’s always going to be stress in life, so we need to be prepared to deal with it – and to teach our kids how to, too. April is Stress Awareness Month, and at Goldfish Swim School we want parents and kids alike to know how beneficial swimming is to reducing stress so everyone can have a GOLDEN experience!
Here are 8 Ways Swimming Reduces Stress:
1. It makes you happy.
Prolonged physical activity releases endorphins in the brain, which send out feel-good signals – and it reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. Therefore, swimming back and forth across the pool a few times gets the blood pumping and naturally floods your body with a happy feeling.
And taking swim lessons at Goldfish Swim School gives kids even more reasons to be happy! Our instructors use integrity, compassion and trust to encourage students. The feeling of accomplishment upon mastering a new skill and the award ribbons certainly gives kids many reasons to celebrate!
2. It takes out aggression.
When kids get worked up, they haven’t yet learned all the tools adults have to get their aggression out. While swimming, the motions of working harder to pull their own body across the water – while simultaneously focusing on kicking and breathing – allows kids the ability to harness their aggression into a safe physical activity and release their stress.
3. It helps you sleep.
Our bodies need to be active. As any parent knows, kids have a harder time falling asleep at night when they aren’t tuckered out. And if kids are dealing with stress, they can find it even more difficult to sleep. Swimming gives the entire body a workout, allowing body AND mind to rest and get a good night’s sleep.
4. It reduces depression and anxiety.
Kids have to deal with so much these days and throwing depression and anxiety into the mix can make anyone feel overloaded. Thankfully, swimming helps reduce depression and anxiety. Why? It has to do with the release of those endorphins, but the physical exercise while floating in the water also allows muscles to relax – and most importantly, the practiced breathing while swimming calms the body and mind.
5. It promotes relaxation.
What makes you relax? Turning off your thoughts? Feeling physically comfortable? Calm breathing? Swimming offers a chance for all of that, and more!
One of the biggest factors in relaxation is having controlled, calming breathing that turns off all thoughts running around in your head — and luckily, swimming does that without you even thinking about it! Plus, the feel of the water flowing and the sound of the small waves adds even more to the relaxation factor.
6. It increases focus.
Swimming takes a lot of coordination, not only physically, but mentally. There’s focus on leg kicks and arm pulls, and breath control – which doesn’t leave much space to focus on anything else. Swimming helps kids maintain focus in the pool and out of it – even for kids who have ADHD. It’s one of those things that gives you extraordinary results you weren’t even expecting.
7. It can increase blood flow to the brain
One study has shown that exercising in water can improve “cerebral blood flow” compared with exercise on land. This is a good sign that water exercise is good for brain health and development.
8. Water is calming
It has long been understood that being in the presence of water can help with relaxation. Swimming is a great way to spend more time around water and enjoy benefits like lowered blood pressure and improved mood.
Ease stress at Goldfish Swim School
There are plenty of reasons your child should learn to swim, and reducing stress is a great one! Head over to a Goldfish Swim School location near you to check out our WOW! customer service and sign up today!
If you’ve ever felt refreshed, relaxed. and ready to tackle the day after a swim, you’re not alone.
A 2012 survey of nearly 1,200 swimmers aged 16 to 45 around the world conducted by swimwear manufacturer Speedo investigated how swimmers felt about their sport. According to the survey:
- 74 percent of respondents said swimming helps release stress and tension.
- 68 percent of respondents said being in the water helps them feel good about themselves.
- 70 percent of respondents said swimming helps them feel mentally refreshed.
But there’s more to these findings than just a self-reported sense of relaxation or calm. Indeed, science is beginning to unravel some of the mental health benefits of swimming, and some researchers are investigating whether swimming could eventually become an actual treatment protocol for depression and anxiety.
Take, for example, a recent case study published in British Medical Journal Case Reports about a 24-year-old British woman named Sarah who has major depressive disorder and anxiety. Medications made her feel “off” and groggy, so with the encouragement and supervision of Chris van Tulleken at the University College London, Sarah began exploring cold water swimming as a form of hydrotherapy.
After the first session, Sarah noted symptom improvement, and over the next several weeks, she continued swimming regularly in open water. Before long, she was able to taper off her medications and two years later she was still drug-free and managing well with her swimming-as-medicine protocol.
Although investigation is still ongoing as to whether pool swimming can offer the same benefits as open water swimming, the fact remains that humans want to be close to water.
In his bestselling 2014 book “Blue Mind: How Water Makes You Happier, More Connected and Better at What You Do,” Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist, detailed the psychological effect being in or near water can have. In short, he wrote that water soothes the human psyche and provides cognitive and emotional benefits that may be difficult to quantify exactly but are nevertheless very real.
Researchers at the University of Exeter in the U.K. are continuing to investigate exactly how water helps boost mental health and recently found that something as simple as watching a video of the ocean while exercising on a stationary bicycle might elevate your mood. It seems logical then to suggest that swimmers who get their workout in the water are cutting right to the chase on this benefit.
But why and how can some people find such powerful benefits from swimming? Here’s what we know so far about how swimming supports good mental health.
A Boost in “Feel-Good” Brain Chemicals
Exercise boosts production of beneficial chemicals in the brain and body that can significantly alter how you feel. Endorphins, in particular, are a group of hormones in the brain and nervous system that stimulate cells’ opiate receptors, which can cause an analgesic, or painkilling, effect. That’s right—runner’s (or in this case swimmer’s) high is your body’s own built-in painkiller.
In addition, swimming seems especially adept at influencing mood by increasing the number of certain neurotransmitters in your brain, namely serotonin, noradrenalin, and dopamine. These “feel-good” brain chemicals are boosted by vigorous physical activity and also increase steroid reserves, which allows you to become more resilient to stress.
A Boost in Brain Cells
In addition to hormones and brain chemicals that can help you better regulate mood, aerobic exercise has also been shown to increase the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein in your brain and spinal cord that promotes the survival, growth, and maintenance of neurons. John Ratey, a Harvard psychiatrist and author of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” has described BDNF as being like “Miracle-Gro for your brain.”
Exercise, and swimming specifically, helps your brain increase its levels of BDNF. A number of studies in animals—rats and fish, specifically—have shown a clear correlation between swimming as exercise and increased levels of BDNF in your brain. These higher levels can have wide-ranging effects on cognition, memory, and mood regulation.
Boosting BDNF levels via exercise is also being investigated as a potential means of preventing or slowing the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia and age-related cognitive decline, all of which have depression as a symptom.
A Boost in Social Contact
For many swimmers, there’s a very important social element to swimming as well. Humans are an innately social species, and interacting with friends and loved ones is a key means of combating loneliness. Social contact is also being investigated as a means of combating age-related cognitive decline, depression, anxiety, and a host of other brain-based problems.
What’s more, swimming with a group, such as a Masters club, builds in accountability that can make sticking to your training regimen a little easier and more enjoyable.
A Boost In Sleep Quality
Sleep is one of the most important things you can do for your overall health and wellness every day. But according to a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, stress may interfere with sleep. That 2013 survey found that on average, American adults report sleeping 6.7 hours per night, which is less than the minimum recommendation of seven to nine hours of sleep per night.
“In addition, 42 percent of adults report that their sleep quality is fair or poor, and 43 percent report that stress has caused them to lie awake at night in the past month,” the APA noted. Adults who sleep fewer than eight hours a night reported having higher stress levels and symptoms of stress in the preceding month.
But one of exercise’s most amazing benefits is how it can help you get better rest at night. Exercise helps you fall asleep more quickly and stay asleep longer, according to an article on Johns Hopkins Medicine’s website.
It’s not entirely understood exactly how exercise boosts sleep quality, but “moderate aerobic exercise increases the amount of slow wave sleep you get. Slow-wave sleep refers to deep sleep, during which the brain and body have a chance to rejuvenate. Exercise can also help to stabilize your mood and decompress the mind,” both of which can help make you feel more ready for sleep when the time comes to go to bed, Charlene Gamaldo, medical director of Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep at the Howard County General Hospital, is quoted as saying in the article.
Swimming is a great way to increase your body’s capacity for high-quality sleep, which in turn can help you feel less stressed out. When you work hard during the day and expend a lot of energy, naturally you’ll probably feel more tired later than if you just sat around all day.
And we’re not talking about hours on end of exercise, either. The Johns Hopkins Medicine article notes that “people who engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise may see a difference in sleep quality that same night.”
Bottom line: When you exercise more, you sleep better, and that can help alleviate stress and anxiety.
