Linking Movement and the Way People Feel [Podcast Series]
[:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Jacob Meyer
Dr. Jacob Meyer is Associate Professor of Exercise Psychology in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He is also Director of the Wellbeing and Exercise Laboratory.
[1:14] Movement and impact on feelings
“But one of the things that people are the most excited about is exercising because they feel different, or moving because it changes the way that they're thinking and feeling.”
[2:25] Movement and immediate mental health benefits
“And one of the cool things about sort of the mental health benefits, depending on what the movement is and how people engage and all sorts of things, but that you can feel it right away, even while you're exercising in many cases.”
[3:50] Linking movement and the way people feel
“But getting more into it, there's a whole world of research on linking movement and the way that people feel. And so, as I dug into it, I got more and more energized by both what we know, and then also sort of frustrated by the fact that we're not doing much with what we know in terms of integrating exercise and movement into mental health care in particular. ”
[6:08] Exercise and prevention and treatment
“So I think there's a lot of space also to figure out exactly how it's working. So both how does it prevent things? Then also, how, from a like psychobiological perspective, how does it help to treat things too?”
[8:13] Gaps in the research on movement and mental health
“So there's certainly some probably causal link here between moving and mental health, that the more we're moving, the better the mental health. But we still don't know a lot of like what is the mechanism that's causing it? We know it's not endorphins, although that's a common thing that's out there. So what are the neurotransmitter or neuromodulator systems that are causing this relationship to exist? We don't have those pieces totally figured out yet.”
[11:00] Resistance training and depression
“And so, one of the projects that we have going on right now is called the RESIST Trial, and it's looking at two different doses of resistance training as a potential method for treating major depression in adults with major depression.”
[14:30] Integrating exercise into healthcare
“So exercise has become sort of a mainstay in two areas of healthcare, and now the question is, is how do we break it into more areas? How do we get through those barriers? And so I think we could learn from those places as opportunities.”
[15:53] Overcoming barriers to integrating exercise into mental health care
“So the sort of like the fragmented nature of the way that we address and approach mental health in general means that there's no one spot where we could say, okay, well, what if we put sort of like a we think about behavioral health by meaning behavior, like movement, and we put movement opportunities and exercise facilities and physiologists into one component of one setting of care. That might help some people, but the problem is that the settings of care that people are actually addressed at are so variable for mental health concerns that there's not an obvious place to go.”
[19:37] Exercise prescription for mental health
“But I'm really interested in trying to parcel out like what are the pieces of the prescription that are the most important and that actually matter for the way that people feel afterwards. We know a ton about how do we get people's marathon time or even 5K time faster. The question is, how do we get people to feel better, and what are the components of that prescription that's so important?”
[22:47] COVID-19 pandemic and physical activity
“I'm often thinking about how do we help people who are active or who have mental health concerns increase their activity? But this was an interesting case where we could see what happens when people decrease their activity. Does mental health track? And normally, like you wouldn't do this as a study, right? You're not like let's tell everyone to go home and not move, but we could naturally view this sort of worldwide experiment that was happening and see that yes, as one might predict, the mental health moved alongside it in a negative way…”
[29:40] Motion Impacts Emotion Conference
“The Motion Impacts Emotion conference is really the brainchild of Adel Korkor and the foundation that he runs that tries to bring more awareness to the benefits of movement within mental health in general, in kids, in adults, in schools, in community settings, in healthcare settings, in really powerful ways.”
