Light exercise reduces risk of depression among women: study

A small amount of exercise — as little as half an hour of moderate physical activity, 5,000 steps or one gym visit a week — reduces the risk of women developing depression, a new study has found.

“The findings [show] one in five cases of depression in women could be prevented if physical activity increases by low to moderate levels,” said study co-author Dr Mosima Mabunda, GM and head of wellness at Vitality South Africa.

Nearly twice as many women as men developed depression during the three years analysed, 2013 to 2105, and the findings could not be generalised to men.

The health and physical activity records of nearly 50,000 Discovery Health and Vitality members in South Africa provided the data for the research, making it one of the first such studies from a middle to low-income country.

UCT’s South African Medical Research Council (MRC) unit on risk and resilience in mental disorders and the school of public health at Harvard University, US, led the study released on Friday.

UCT professor Dan Stein, director of the MRC unit and the UCT Neuroscience Institute, said depression is not like coronavirus, where a vaccine can prevent it.

“If I were speaking to the minister of health, I would say there are a bunch of things we have to do,” said Stein, speaking about the importance of good nutrition, employment, social connection and physical activity, among other things, in preventing and treating depression.

The findings support existing evidence, mostly from Western and high-income countries, that exercise can help protect against depression.

A limitation of the data is that it was based on the records of predominantly high-income individuals.

UCT’s Seranne Motilal and Harvard’s Mike Greyling were the lead authors of the research published in the International Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

These findings show that even a “relatively small amount of activity is good ... every bit counts”.

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