A short dialogue (from a YouTube video by Joy Kong, MD) arguing that exercise/movement is the most effective antidepressant and describing how clinicians often skip recommending it before prescribing pharmaceuticals. One speaker recounts a clinician advising patients to walk 30 minutes daily and return in a month, with many patients avoiding medication after trying this intervention.
We talk often to our patients and on our podcast that there is no better antidepressant ever invented than exercise or movement. Ever. There is nothing ever that is better.
No, we were not taught that. We're not taught to have patients walk, do some regular exercise before you go into getting hit by pharmaceuticals on rare occasion. Only know one doctor that did that said you walk for 30 minutes every day and then come back in a month and see me again. If you're still not getting better, then I'm going to give you medication. And almost everybody no longer needed medication. We have forgotten just how movement, even something as simple as that, activates lots of genes and that can have profound effects for your hormones and for peptide production. It changes how your body is repairing itself.
