Abstract
Physical activity has long been considered beneficial to health and regular exercise is purported to relieve stress. However empirical evidence demonstrating these effects is limited. In this study, we compared psychophysiological responses to an acute psychosocial stressor between individuals who did, or did not, report regular physical exercise. Healthy men and women (N = 111) participated in two experimental sessions, one with the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and one with a non-stressful control task. We measured heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, and self-reported mood before and at repeated times after the tasks. Individuals who reported physical exercise at least once per week exhibited lower heart rate at rest than non-exercisers, but the groups did not differ in their cardiovascular responses to the TSST. Level of habitual exercise did not influence self-reported mood before the tasks, but non-exercisers reported a greater decline in positive affect after the TSST in comparison to exercisers. These findings provide modest support for claims that regular exercise protects against the negative emotional consequences of stress, and suggest that exercise has beneficial effects in healthy individuals. These findings are limited by their correlational nature, and future prospective controlled studies on the effects of regular exercise on response to acute stress are needed.
Highlights
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommend that American adults exercise for at least 30 min on most days to improve their health and quality of life (Pate et al, 1995; Haskell et al, 2007)
BASELINE MEASURES Before the tasks began, heart rate was significantly lower among individuals who reported regular exercise [t(80) = 2.2; p < 0.05, mean difference = 6.3 ± 2.9 bpm] and baseline heart rate was significantly negatively correlated with the frequency of exercise per week (r = −0.24; p < 0.05) in the whole group
While subjective mood states did not differ between the groups at baseline, emotional responses to the tasks did differ between the groups; participants who regularly exercised exhibited less of a decline in positive affect after stress than sedentary participants
Summary
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommend that American adults exercise for at least 30 min on most days to improve their health and quality of life (Pate et al, 1995; Haskell et al, 2007). Soon after encountering a stressor, defined as any emotional, physical or psychological threat that perturbs homeostasis, heart rate and blood pressure increase, along with mental alertness and tension, and cortisol is released into the blood from the adrenals (Habib et al, 2001). This multidimensional stress response is extremely beneficial and serves to ready the organism to deal with the imminent threat, when it is improperly activated it can have deleterious effects and contribute to diseases such as atherosclerosis, obesity and depression (McEwen, 2006). This idea has been termed the cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis (Sothmann, 2006)
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