[arctic-true]

I am pretty confident from my own experience that the study’s conclusion is broadly true. But the study leaves open one obvious alternative explanation: people who have enough free time to exercise regularly (and exercise was used as a stand-in for fitness level, it doesn’t look like they actually measured anything else) could have less stressful and anger-inducing lives overall.

[marginalia_nu]

Anecdotally, I started lifting again a few weeks ago. Took a few years off due to Covid complications, but was previously exercising regularly.

Walked up to the bar stressed about all sorts of things, everything is expensive, car is making weird chafing noises when I make sharp turns, politics, this and that.

Did 3 sets of 5 deadlifts with a 60kg bar. Barely any weight on the bar since I didn't want to annihilate my joints. Regardless, as I finished the sets, all that stress was just gone, and it stayed away for days. I was calmer, clearer, more present.

I don't think I have fewer reasons to be stressed since getting the gym membership, but I sure am less stressed.

Deadlifts in particular, but really any full body lifts have always been a mental state degauss button for me. Doesn't matter how many problems you have before you walk up to that bar, you'll barely remember them when you're done.

[eudamoniac]

Note: deadlifts do not "annihilate" joints. Resistance training strengthens and improves joints. Repetitive impact behavior like running on concrete does annihilate joints though.

[PeterStuer]

Alternatively: People who spent their time regularly exercising instead of arguing on Facebook or X, have lower anger and anxiety.

[usefulcat]

I thought of “people who have enough time to exercise because they don’t have to work multiple jobs in an attempt to scrape together enough to make ends meet”.

[rustyhancock]

And alternatively again, you need to have lower anger and anxiety to engage in excercise!

I'm sure all of this is an inseparable mess.

But it doesn't affect the recommendation does it? Everyone should aim to be physically fit and that involves engaging in cardiorespiratory exercise.

[PaulHoule]

Which introduces variables such as: "believes in righteous anger"

[kace91]

Pretty much everything related to exercise is a direct or indirect positive effect for health.

Stress relief, tiredness leading to better sleep, physiological effects of muscle gain, physiological effects of weight loss, social interaction in shared spaces, exposure to sunlight, push to improve diet in pursuit of fitness goals, better self image, social effects of becoming more physically attractive…

[cryzinger]

Not saying "cardiorespiratory fitness" and "heart rate" are 1:1, because they're certainly not, but beta blockers are a known treatment for certain kinds of anxiety. I can attest that taking low-dose propranolol twice a day (without pulling any other levers related to lifestyle, stress, etc.) has helped me mellow the fuck out, which I sorely needed lol. So I would wager that cardio fitness is itself correlated with anxiety and anger, although in practice it's tangled up with many other factors.

In addition to baseline heart rate, there's also some interesting stuff related to anxiety and heart rate variability. My understanding is that certain types of breathing exercises improve HRV in the short term, which is good for calming down if you're riled up, but people with good cardio health have a better baseline HRV in the first place. (Also, this has always been unintuitive to me, but higher variability is better for anxiety, not lower variability.)

[PaulHoule]

I've been doing my own personal research on HRV and getting to the bottom of it.

The literature is bewildering because of course there are many ways to measure it. If you measure it over the course of the day it is influenced by things like the activities you do. Of course your HRV is going to be higher if you alternate intense activity that raises your heart rate with rest and since activity is so important in it I don't think it is fair to look at a whole day trace.

I think the most important phenomenon is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayer_waves

which are associated with the metric RMSSD as described here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate_variability

This is called "SD1" in my app

https://gen5.info/demo/biofeedback/

You can use that app to increase the amplitude of your Mayer wave, what you do is breathe in when you see the wave going down and breathe in when you see the wave going up. It is a little tricky if your Mayer waves are initially weak and you might feel light-headed and think "I can't breathe" but once it settles in it is a very strong effect.

I have read a number of patents for HRV biofeedback and they all involve much more complex things that you might think would work if you hadn't tried it but that I don't believe would work having tried it.

Funny I have been taking Nebivolol, another beta blocker, and found that it drastically lowers HRV-inferred stress as measured by my Garmin watch -- I can't really say how it affects my app because I wrote it after I started on the drug.

[thefz]

Sample size of 1 but after a stressful day it's very hard to come back with the same mindset once you have left for even a quick run.