A: It's real all right.

The study, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, comes from Duke University. Professor of medical psychology, Dr. James Blumenthal led the research. 153 women and 49 men, suffering from depression were divided into four groups. The first did aerobic exercise in a group setting. The second got an actual antidepressant drug. The third group did aerobics at home. And the fourth group got a placebo that looked just like a Zoloft pill. After 16 weeks everybody did better than the placebo group but here's the kicker. While 47% of the real Zoloft group no longer had depression, 45 % of the group exercisers were also no longer depressed. Almost dead even!

It was found that aerobic exercise, like brisk walking, swimming, biking and aerobic dance, works best. It seems to affect the body's levels of mood lifting neurochemicals like norepinephrine and serotonin.

So if you'd rather exercise your depression away, it's worth a try. You may get fit in more ways than one.

Send your Moving Free(r) with Mirabai questions to: exercise@movingfree.com

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