--- title: Being Fit in Middle Age May Protect Against Depression description: Depression can raise the risk of many diseases—but being fit and exercising enough can lower those risks, as well as the risk of depression. canonical: https://time.com/5322805/exercise-depression-fitness/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-06-27T15:49:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T19:05:02.000Z article:section: Health og:title: Being Fit in Middle Age May Protect Against Depression og:description: Depression can raise the risk of many diseases—but being fit can lower them og:url: https://time.com/5322805/exercise-depression-fitness/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt336b8a5df1ca1f45/6988c13eab6d774fb36ad797/time-health-stock-running-shoes.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5649 og:image:height: 3178 og:image:alt: time-health-stock og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Being Fit in Middle Age May Protect Against Depression twitter:description: Depression can raise the risk of many diseases—but being fit can lower them twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt336b8a5df1ca1f45/6988c13eab6d774fb36ad797/time-health-stock-running-shoes.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Being Fit in Middle Age May Protect Against Depression > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Updated: Dec 12, 2023 7:05 PM UTCPublished: Jun 27, 2018 3:49 PM UTC  Blue sneakers, water and apple on black background. Concept of healthy lifestile and food, everyday training and force of will. Blue sneakers, water and apple on black background. Concept of healthy lifestile and food, everyday training and force of will. Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Updated: Dec 12, 2023 7:05 PM UTCPublished: Jun 27, 2018 3:49 PM UTC About 16 million adults in the U.S., and 350 million people around the world, have [depression](http://time.com/5271244/major-depression-diagnosis-spike/), a major source of physical and mental disability. It affects people’s employment and their ability to socialize and maintain relationships. Now, in a large [study published in _JAMA Psychiatry_](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.1467), researchers say there may be a relatively inexpensive, non-invasive way to combat depression, beginning in middle-age. Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, an author of the study and director of the center for depression research and clinical care at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and his colleagues report that being physically fit can lower the risk of developing depression, and can also lower the risk of developing heart disease and dying early. “Depression doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” says Trivedi, senior author of the paper. “Especially for people who are older, depression has a complicated relationship with other major medical diseases.” People with depression, for example, typically have lower life expectancy, in part because they are at higher risk of other chronic conditions like heart disease, but Trivedi says that exercise, which can improve fitness, might be a way to extend that life expectancy. Trivedi and his colleagues analyzed data from nearly 18,000 people, who were an average age of 50 and enrolled in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study, an ongoing study of the role of exercise on a variety of health outcomes. The data included information on people’s fitness levels, measured based on their exercise habits, as well as their depression diagnoses as later recorded by Medicare claims, their heart-related issues and cause of death where applicable. The researchers followed people in the study for nearly 40 years. They found that those with higher fitness — which generally means people who exercised more or more intensely — had a 16% lower risk of depression when they were older compared to people with lower fitness. The higher fitness group also had a 61% lower risk of dying from heart disease, and, among people who were diagnosed with depression, a 56% lower risk of dying from heart-related problems compared to people with lower fitness. “Exercise not only reduces your risk of heart disease but also improves your depression, so I really see it as a bonafide treatment related to depression,” says Trivedi. **MORE:** [The New Science of Exercise](http://time.com/4475628/the-new-science-of-exercise/) The connection between depression and heart issues has been studied before, and it’s been established that [exercise can improve both depression](http://time.com/5271079/resistance-training-depression/) and lower heart disease risk. But Trivedi says that these results clarify that exercise can help people affected by both depression and heart disease. It’s possible that people who are more fit have lower rates of inflammation, which contributes to both heart disease and depression. But future studies will need to determine if changing fitness levels can actually lower people’s depressive symptoms and heart disease; the current study was not designed to follow such changes in exercise and fitness patterns. Based on these results, however, Trivedi says, “I want primary care physicians to prescribe not only antidepressants but also prescribe a dose of exercise for the treatment of depression.” In previous studies, he showed that exercise can be as effective as antidepressant medications or psychotherapy in treating depressive symptoms. He hopes the current findings encourage more doctors to consider exercise as another potential treatment, alongside medications and psychotherapy, for helping people with depression. **Correction June 29:** The original version of this story misstated that Dr. Madhukar Trivedi led the study. 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