{{B}} Research Shows Walking Can Lift Depression{{/B}}
New research by German scientists shows that author Charles Dickens was onto a good thing1 when he took long, brisk walks to relieve periodic bouts of depression. The author of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield would walk for hours in the 1860s as an antidote to intense feelings of sadness which alternated with restless euphoria.{{U}} (46) {{/U}}
Aerobic exercise like rapid walking can be more effective at lifting depression than drugs, reported the scientists led by Dr. Fernando Dimeo. {{U}}(47) {{/U}} The team found that in 10 of these patients drugs had failed to bring any substantial improvement. The team devised an exercise regime for the group that involved walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes every day. {{U}}(48) {{/U}} The intensity of the training programme was stepped up4 as the heart rate adapted. A measurement of depression severity was taken at the start and the end of the programme, and patients were asked to rate their own mood regularly over a 10-day period. The researchers in Berlin found that after 10 days of the course six patients felt "substantially less depressed". {{U}}(49) {{/U}} Two were slightly less depressed, while four others remained unchanged. Depression levels overall fell by a thirds and on the self-assessed scores by 25 per cent, said the researchers whose findings appeared in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The study was small but the extent of the improvement was said by scientists to be impressive. {{U}}(50) {{/U}}
Nineteenth century doctors would have called Dickens's condition melancholia since the psychological condition of depression was unknown. Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd says the author's son Charles remembers his father's "heavy moods of deep depression" and many times of "intense nervous irritability", something modern psychologists would certainly recognize.
A. The number included five who had not found any relief using drug treatment.
B. Long and brisk walks are not necessarily beneficial to every person.
C. They studied 12 people with severe depression that had lasted an average of nine months.
D. The outcome indicated a clinical benefit which could not be .obtained with pharmacological treatment currently available, they said.
E. This is also the advice that experts from the Free University in Berlin are giving today.
F. According to the regime, intense activity lasting three minutes was alternated with walking at half speed for three minutes.