Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article is an excellent reminder that sedentary lifestyles are toxic to the human mental state. It also nearly started me off on a well-deserved angry rant, because that's what happens every time I see the phrase "treatment-resistant depression."
Let's start with that and then move along to the main point of the article, shall we? (As a quick reminder, autistic people have very much higher than average rates of depression and anxiety. Myself included, naturally.)
Ready? Okay. There is no "treatment-resistant depression." That is a bullshit category invented by ignorant derps wearing blinders. What they actually mean when they say that idiotic phrase is "depression that we can't medicate away after trying dozens of pharmaceuticals."
Did you spot the key word there, pharmaceuticals? That's literally the only "treatment" people try. If it doesn't respond to a barrage of pills (and God save you from the side effects of all those drugs), it must be untreatable!
Wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong WRONG. Ughhhh.
Hi, I'm an autistic human with low grade depression. It used to be a lot worse, and it used to dip into major depression when I was very stressed (like at finals time, or crunch time at work). Then I did a few years of LENS (a type of neurofeedback), got help with my nutrition, became more active, and developed hobbies that involve being outside sometimes.
Now I'm doing significantly better and it's not because I took some fancy new drug. It's because I stopped abusing my body, and as a result, it and my brain are doing better.
Can every case of depression be fixed 100% by changing these things? Of course not. Sometimes biochemistry does need intervention. Sometimes that means a lifetime of pills. Sometimes it just means you need that for a few months while you do the work to face the traumas causing the depression. However, you can definitely improve your overall health, and that means your brain will do better, too. The severity of the depression may lessen. You may feel better overall.
And that is exactly what this study shows. I tend to call it movement, rather than exercise, because you don't have to go jogging or do some kind of formal exercise. I play a freaking video game for a half hour most days, go for a walk in the park with my spouse once a week, and go outside to forage for wild food whenever there's something in season.
I do not "go for a run" or "do this many of X exercise, this many Y exercise, that many Z exercise." I don't go to the gym. All of these things are valid ways to get movement into your life, but you honestly don't need to be that fancy. Just going for a walk helps. Especially if you can walk in a green space, like a local park or hiking trail.
My rant kind of bled into the main point here, which is that humans are animals. If you trap an animal in a 5 by 5 space, feed it nutritionless garbage, and don't allow it to play or enjoy itself, it's going to be a miserable and sick. If you wouldn't do that to an animal, don't do it to yourself, either.
Because yeah, humans absolutely tend to do better when they get movement. Maybe you won't qualify to lose the depression diagnosis, but wouldn't it be nice to feel better?
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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