Exercise Is Mental Health: What Your Brain Loses When You Stop Moving (Episode #38)

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 Most of us know exercise is good for us. But do we really understand what our brain loses when we stop moving?

Three weeks into ACL recovery — dealing with miserable sleep, gut disruption, and the absence of sweat — Jess is living the science in real time.

In this episode, she breaks down exactly what exercise does for the brain and why losing it creates the perfect storm for mental and emotional struggle. Then she gets honest about what she's actually doing to cope in a season where real movement isn't an option.

In this episode, she covers:

• The neurochemistry of exercise — endorphins, dopamine, cortisol, serotonin, and flow state, and what happens when all of them disappear at once
• Why exercise can be as effective as medication for anxiety — and the science behind it
• Why people who don't exercise regularly might be caught in a dopamine loop that makes starting feel impossible
• What Jess is doing to cope when her primary mental health tool has been taken away — and what you can do, too, should you face a season of life when exercise isn't achievable. 

 Whether you're in a season where exercise isn't possible, struggling to build a consistent routine, or just want to understand what movement is really doing for your brain — this episode will change how you think about exercise as a mental health non-negotiable.

Connect with Jess:

• Instagram: @vitalbalancewithjess 
• Website: jessicatrone.com
• Email: vitalbalancewithjess@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: The content shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, is not a substitute for the advice of medical doctors or practitioners and should not be used to prevent, diagnose, or treat any condition. Consult with a physician prior to beginning any fitness, health, or wellness regimen or routine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Vital Balance with Jess, the podcast for women who want real life strategy, no BS conversations about women's health. I'm your host, Jess. While building my career as an attorney, I struggled with hormone imbalances, anxiety, metabolic dysfunction, and a healthcare system that left me with more questions than answers. So I took matters into my own hands. And here's what I discovered. The real magic happens when you get curious, start asking questions, and listening to your body like it actually knows what it's doing. This podcast isn't about weight loss, physical appearance, or rigid wellness routines. It's about agency. I want you to know just how much control you have over your everyday well-being. And I want you to experience stable energy, predictable moods, a sharp yet calm mind, and a body you can trust. Because when women are well, our homes and communities thrive too. Let's get started. Welcome to Vital Balance. I'm Jess. So I discussed in the last two episodes how I recently underwent ACL reconstruction surgery. And while I don't want that to be the focus of every episode from here on out, because that would be a lot of episodes, I do find that sharing what's going on with me personally and how that relates to health and wellness comes from an authentic and personalized place, which I think or hope makes the content deeper, more relatable, and hopefully more valuable. So while future episodes will not just be about my surgery recovery, a lot of what I'm going through will likely be tied into the content, if that makes sense. I'm now approaching three weeks post-surgery, and I'll be honest, that sounds like a long time to me. Not to mention it has felt like longer than three weeks. Probably because three weeks of living a very different life than you're accustomed to is really challenging. The physical recovery is very slow. I'm trying very hard and I'm very motivated to ditch the last crutch. I'm making very good progress. Actually, right before I came in to record this episode, I did take my first steps without any crutches, eight steps, and it's probably the biggest smile that I've had in a long time. So walking with a very large, heavy brace on an injured leg is difficult, especially because the leg is so weakened as well. So like my quad muscles are so weak in my left leg right now, and my leg just still doesn't feel like mine half the time. So just getting those eight steps without crutches felt like a huge milestone. My progress has been what I consider a little bit slow, just because, you know, I always expect to be ahead of the curve. I don't know why. Um, maybe it's the perfectionist nature in me, but I do think I was a little bit slowed down by the virus that I caught two days after surgery, and it lasted about two weeks. The lingering cough is mostly gone now. And my physical therapist says that I'm progressing at a very normal rate, so I should feel pretty positive about how things are transpiring. Today has been a great day. Yesterday, not so much. I felt very anxious, mostly because I developed what I think is nerve pain in my left foot, and it was just this sort of radiating, stabbing pain off and on all day long. And it's very defeating, especially when you're almost three weeks into recovery and you experience a new pain. You're like, well, I shouldn't be experiencing new pains at this point, right? I mean, if anything, the pain should be decreasing. So that was really defeating. Fortunately, I have not had it today, so I'm hoping it was just a, you know, a very short-lived, temporary thing. But the past few days have been hard. I kind of feel like I'm going through the motions of my days rather than actually living them. I kind of have this like low-level fog, and I'm trying to cultivate patience, but it's just really difficult. I mean, I've had my physical and mental outlets taken away, and so dealing with, you know, I struggle with anxiety, and so it's just, it's been really difficult. So there's been a lot of different struggles in my recovery, and it's a daily battle. And I want to tell you exactly why, because I think it's important and because it's a perfect illustration of how interconnected everything in our bodies really is. So let's start with sleep because it is foundational to everything else. And right now, mine is pretty terrible. I have to sleep in this cumbersome, heavy brace that I just described, the same brace I have to also walk in, and it keeps my leg completely straight and flat. I am a side sleeper, and yet I'm stuck on my back in the same position all night, which is uncomfortable on its own, but it's also causing my hips and lower back to ache from the sustained position. And multiple times a night I wake up with my foot throbbing and tingling, which, you know, again, I think is a nerve issue. I'm having some nerve issues, which is adding to my anxiety because, you know, you hear about long-term nerve pain and it just, you know, it's it's not good. The nights right now feel less like sleep and more like a series of short, interrupted catnaps strung together by discomfort. So it's not pleasant. And then there's the current state of my gut health, which I didn't fully anticipate. But between the anesthesia, the pain medications, the trauma of surgery, and the sudden decrease in movement, my digestion has been a mess. I'm very bloated, things aren't moving the way they should, and I'm caught in this frustrating tension of knowing I need adequate protein and nutrients to heal and needing enough fiber to keep things moving, but also being very aware that I am pretty sedentary and not sleeping well, both of which are a recipe for blood sugar dysregulation. So I'm trying to eat in a way that supports recovery without spiking my blood sugar and without consuming too many calories, given how little I'm moving compared to normal. But I also don't want to under-at because, like I said, my body needs plenty of nutrients and protein in order to heal. So this has kind of been its own daily puzzle. And then layer on top of all of that the complete absence of exercise. No sweating, no elevated heart rate, which means I am missing out on those endorphins and dopamine that I am used to on an almost daily basis. Essentially, I'm dealing with poor sleep, gut issues, pain, significantly reduced movement. And this is the perfect storm for mental and emotional struggle. I've always known that exercise makes me feel better mentally. I think most active people know this. And what this recovery has done is strip away my primary mental health tool, actually, several of my mental health tools at once, and leave me to really reckon with what that means and why, at a physiological level, it matters so much. So today that's what we're gonna discuss the relationship between exercise and mental health. What's actually happening in your brain and body when you move, why losing the ability to do it hits so hard, and what I'm doing or trying to do to cope in the meantime. Most people think of exercise as something you do for your body, to lose weight, build muscle, improve cardiovascular health. And yes, all of that is true. But the mental and neurological effects of exercise are just as profound, and in my opinion, not talked about nearly enough. Let me walk you through what's actually happening in your brain when you exercise, because understanding the mechanism makes it a lot easier to understand why not doing it, or in my case, losing the ability to do it, feels like losing a lifeline. Perhaps the most well-known effect of exercise on mood is the endorphin release. Endorphins are neurotransmitters, so chemical messengers in the brain that your body produces during intense physical activity. They bind to the same receptors in the brain as opioids because endorphins are natural painkillers, which is why the post-workout feeling can be genuinely euphoric. You might have pain while you're exercising, but the endorphins are being released to counteract that pain, which is why a lot of people feel much better when they complete their workout. It's often referred to as the runner's high, but it is not exclusive to running. Any sustained, moderately intense exercise can produce it. That post-workout clarity and calm, the feeling where your body is tired but your mind is quiet, that's endorphins. And when I say I miss it, I do, but even more than that, my brain is literally not getting a chemical that it has come to rely on, and that's hard for the body to adjust to. Exercise also stimulates the release of dopamine, which is our brain's primary motivation and reward chemical. Dopamine is what makes us feel driven, focused, and capable. It's what gives us that sense of accomplishment after finishing a hard workout, and it's what makes you want to do it again. When dopamine is low, which it can be when we're sedentary, stress, or not getting enough sunlight or movement, motivation starts to tank. Everything feels harder. Tasks that should feel manageable feel overwhelming. You know you should do something, and yet you just don't. This explains a lot of what I've been experiencing, I think. The motivation piece, feeling like I should be doing things, wanting to do things, and somehow still not being able to make myself do them. It could very well be dopamine dysregulation. I'm not exercise or moving much, so I'm experiencing lower levels of it. Also, up to half of the body's production of dopamine is produced in the gut, and my gut microbiota has definitely changed following surgery, so that could impact it as well. Exercise also plays a critical role in regulating cortisol, which is our primary stress hormone. Physical activity helps the body metabolize and clear excess cortisol. It essentially gives your stress response a healthy outlet. When you're dealing with a stressful situation and you can't exercise, cortisol is more likely to be dysregulated. And chronically elevated cortisol disrupts sleep, an issue I'm already dealing with. It suppresses the immune system, increases anxiety, impairs memory and concentration, and contributes to hormonal imbalance. I've talked about cortisol extensively in previous episodes. It's one of the most influential hormones in the body, and exercise is one of the most powerful tools we have for keeping it in check. And here's the cruel irony of my current situation. Surgery and recovery are themselves significant stressors. So my cortisol is likely already a little elevated just from the physical trauma and the emotional strain. And the thing I would normally use to regulate that cortisol is something I can't do. So the stress builds and the buffer is gone. Now I want to talk specifically about anxiety because this is perhaps the biggest issue for me right now. Exercise is one of the most powerful tools for managing anxiety. When I am moving regularly, sweating, getting my heart rate up, playing tennis especially, my anxiety is manageable. When I'm not moving, like right now, it begins to increase. And the science backs this up in a pretty significant way. Multiple studies have found that regular exercise is not just helpful for anxiety, it can be as effective, if not more, than medication for reducing anxiety symptoms in some people. Exercise reduces the brain's reactivity to stress. It increases GABA, a calming neurotransmitter in the brain. It reduces levels of adrenaline and cortisol, and it produces that endorphin and serotonin release we already talked about, both of which have direct anti-anxiety effects. I've talked about progesterone in previous episodes as the calming hormone, the one that supports GABA receptors and helps us feel emotionally stable. Exercise supports that same system. It's essentially doing some of the same neurochemical work that progesterone does, which is part of why losing exercise hits so hard for women whose hormones are already under pressure. Right now, without exercise, my anxiety doesn't have its tried and true, reliable outlet. The nervous system activation that movement would normally discharge just stays in my body. And I feel it in the low-level tension I carry through the day, in the hyper focus on my recovery progress, and in the way small things feel bigger than they should. Exercise also has a profound effect on sleep quality. Regular physical activity helps regulate the body's circadian rhythm, reduces the time it takes to fall asleep, increases deep slow wave sleep, and reduces nighttime wakefulness. In contrast, poor sleep elevates cortisol, suppresses dopamine and serotonin, reduces emotional resilience, impairs concentration, and makes the already difficult things feel insurmountable. Sleep deprivation and mental health are so deeply intertwined that it's almost impossible to address one without the other. In my case, the sleep issues go well beyond just the absence of exercise. I can't get comfortable lying down, at least not for long periods of time. Like I said, I am a side sleeper and I'm currently unable to sleep on my side because of the brace. And sleeping flat on my back for weeks has my hips and low back aching. And I wake up multiple times a night because of that, but also the throbbing and tingling in my foot. And when we can't sleep, recovery feels impossible. Our mood becomes impossible to regulate, brain fog sets in, and irritability becomes the default state. Not to mention, it's also hard to regulate our blood sugar, which is why I then have to turn my focus a lot to what I'm consuming, what I'm eating. Even if everything else was falling into place, like I wasn't dealing with the trauma of surgery and I was able to exercise, the lack of sleep alone would be enough to destabilize me mentally. That's how it is for the vast majority of people. That's how important sleep is. There's one more piece I want to talk about, and it's one that doesn't get discussed as much as endorphins or dopamine, but I think it might actually be what I miss most. And that is a state of flow. So a flow state is the experience of being completely absorbed in a challenging activity where you're unaware of time, your self-consciousness drops, you're fully present, fully engaged, fully focused on what you're doing. Tennis for me is how I enter a state of flow. It requires enough focus and skill and split-second decision making that my brain has no bandwidth left to think about other things, worry about anything, ruminate, even think about my to-do list. For an hour or two on the court, all the noise in my brain is silenced. It's one of the few activities in my life that produces that so reliably. And I also enjoy it and have fun doing it. And I don't have it right now. And I won't have it for a long time. Finding something that produces that same feeling is genuinely harder than it sounds. I want to zoom out for a moment because everything I just described isn't unique to ACL recovery. Not by any means. This applies to anyone who has lost access to their primary form of movement or exercise, whether from injury, illness, burnout, a chaotic season of life, postpartum recovery, or just simply falling out of a routine. But it also applies to people who never really exercised, right? I'm hoping that by listening to this, you will realize just how much better your mental health could be if you engage in exercise. The mental health consequences of physical inactivity are real, measurable, and significant. Research consistently shows that sedentary behavior is associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety. And yet most people don't view it that way. We talk about exercise as something we do for our bodies, for weight management, for cardiovascular health. We rarely talk about it as something we do for our mental and emotional well-being. And the consequence of that framing is that when life gets hard and time gets short and capacity gets thin, exercise is one of the first things to go, when it should probably be one of the last. This recovery has taught me that in a way no amount of research ever could, because I'm living the absence of it and experiencing the results firsthand. I'll be honest. When thinking about and journaling about this issue recently, a question kept surfacing. How do people who don't exercise regularly function well? And I don't mean that as a judgment. I mean it as a genuine, somewhat bewildered question because right now I am living what it feels like to not move and not sweat, and it's really difficult for me. So how do people sustain that long term? Perhaps these are habits established early on in life. I grew up playing sports. I started tennis and basketball around age seven or eight. And some of my most vivid memories I have of playing tennis are finishing a match on an outdoor court in the summer heat with the kind of humidity where you could literally wring out your tennis skirt when you're done playing. And that feeling of being completely wiped out in the best way possible. That physical exhaustion was satisfying in a way that nothing else quite replicated. And same with basketball games. They left me just as drenched and just as spent. So part of me wonders whether it's familiarity, whether people who grew up doing that just have a deeply ingrained relationship with physical exertion that people who don't grow up in that way simply never developed. But I don't think that's the whole story. Because I know plenty of people who did play sports as kids and don't exercise consistently as adults. And I think a lot of that can be contributed to resistance. Exercise is hard. It requires effort. It requires showing up when you don't feel like it. Not doing it is easier. And if you've been sedentary long enough that your baseline is low energy and being unaccustomed to all those beneficial neurotransmitters and other benefits we just discussed, the resistance to starting feels pretty great. Because the very neurochemistry that would make you want to exercise is suppressed by not exercising. So it's a loop that is hard to break. I understand the resistance to some extent. There are plenty of days I don't feel like lifting weights. I will almost always want to play tennis or hike, activities that are fun to me rather than like work. But traditional gym workouts, I mean, honestly, I could do without them most of the time. The difference is that I do them anyway because I know what they're doing for me that I can't see or feel directly in the moment. The muscle mass I'm building keeps me metabolically healthy. That in turn affects my hormones, my insulin sensitivity, my mood, my body weight, my longevity. The short-term endorphins are real, but the long-term structural benefits are what keep me showing up even when I don't want to. What this recovery has done is give me a visceral understanding of what I've always known intellectually. Exercise isn't optional for me. Not just because I'm a disciplined person, but because without it, I don't function well. And I think if more people understood, like really understood, what movement does for their brain and their hormones and their mood and their sleep, the resistance would feel a lot less powerful and controlling. Okay, so now that you know just what exercise does for humans mentally and emotionally, what do we do if it's not an option in our current season of life? Or perhaps we aren't able to do as much as we want or are prevented from engaging in the type of exercise we prefer. I am still in the process of figuring this out, just like everything else in this recovery. So typically, when I describe what exercise is and why you should do it, why it's beneficial for health, I would then have an how to section on how to make exercise part of your daily routine, part of your life, how to incorporate it. To start, if it's not something you're doing, or how to keep you motivated to exercise on a regular basis, and that is actually going to be next week's episode. So I do hope you tune into that, but I am gonna veer just a little bit here on the how-to and give some alternatives for exercise that can provide some of the benefits of exercise if you are in a season of life where you aren't able to make it a routine. I've narrowed it down to five strategies. This is by no means an exhaustive list, though. And even if you are able to exercise fully at this stage of your life, these five strategies are still great things to add to your routine if you're able to or to incorporate in some way with exercise. So, number one, walking. Something that is so simple, yet something a lot of us don't do enough of, right? Humans were designed to walk. We were not designed to sit all day. I mean, what did people do before vehicles or before horses and buggies? There's a reason people are encouraged to track their daily steps. 10,000 steps is what most people say, and that's actually an arbitrary number, but studies show that getting around 8,000 steps per day has beneficial outcomes for our health. So right now, I can't even walk 8,000 steps, but I can walk with a crutch, right? At least I'm not in a wheelchair and I can stand and stretch my legs, and I'm grateful for that. It's all about perspective, right? But the whole point in saying that is that even low-intensity movement produces some endorphin and dopamine release as opposed to just sitting and not moving your body. It supports cortisol regulation and helps with sleep, especially if the walk is outside in nature. Number two, journaling. I touched a little bit on journaling in the last two episodes, but I want to go a little deeper on why it actually works because I think it's easy to dismiss it as boring or something that wouldn't really have an appreciable difference on our health. Journaling, specifically expressive writing, where you write about your thoughts and feelings rather than just events, has been shown in research to decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, improve working memory, and even support immune function and cortisol levels. The reason for this is a mechanism called effect labeling. The act of putting feelings into words activates the prefrontal cortex and reduces activity in the amygdala, which is the brain's threat detection center. In other words, naming what you feel calms your nervous system. It takes something overwhelming and abstract and gives it structure and language, which makes it feel more manageable. When I can't burn off mental energy physically, I have to process it some other way. Journaling gives my thoughts somewhere to go. And it's creating a record of this season that I think I'll be grateful to have someday, even if right now it's mostly a record of struggle. Number three, sunlight and fresh air. This one is really important. I want to talk about both from a science perspective and from my own direct, very recent experience, because the difference has been striking. In the first several days after surgery, we had warm, sunny weather. My husband would help me get outside and I would just sit in the sun for a couple hours. And I felt, relative to everything I was dealing with, pretty good. Not great, but pretty good considering the anesthesia and pain meds and the reactions I had to them. Then we had about a week of cold, windy, snowy weather. Well, it didn't snow all week, but it was cold and windy. I barely got outside, and my mental state deteriorated noticeably. My anxiety increased and I was much more agitated, and I don't think it was a coincidence. Here's the science behind why. Sunlight exposure regulates our circadian rhythm, which is responsible for hormone production. Everything from cortisol, insulin, to melatonin, as well as neurotransmitters like serotonin. On the days I don't get outside at all, I feel it. So I am starting to realize it should be a non-negotiable. It was more of a non-negotiable for me before my surgery when I was, you know, forced to walk my dog every morning, right? That's why dogs are so good for us. But sunlight is a physiological input our brains genuinely need. Number four, finding something that keeps you mentally occupied. So I think this one is a really practically important strategy. Deliberately finding something that keeps your mind engaged and gives you a sense of purpose during the time that you would normally be moving. For me, this has been this podcast. Writing and recording these episodes, even from the couch, even imperfectly, even when I wasn't sure anyone wanted to hear what I had to say, has given me something to show up for. It has given the downtime direction. And direction, even in small doses, does something meaningful for motivation and mood. I've also been using this time to genuinely reflect on my business, to think about where I want it to go in the next year, what I want to do more intentionally. And this stillness has created space for that kind of thinking that the busyness of normal life rarely allows. And while I don't have all the answers yet, the reflection itself has felt productive in a way that just sitting passively doesn't. So whatever this looks like for you, whether it's a creative project, reading more often, uh maybe a new skill that you've wanted to learn, which is actually what I plan to do next. Um, multiple people have told me that I need to take up crocheting. So I'll let you know how that goes. Or maybe you have a business idea that you've been too busy to develop. I would encourage you to move forward with that. Not as a distraction from what you're going through, but as something that gives the season a sense of meaning and purpose, even when physical movement isn't possible. The brain needs engagement just as much as the body needs movement. Give it something worthwhile to do. And lastly, number five, be honest about what you're feeling and remind yourself the season of life is temporary. This one might sound simple, but it's actually the one I find hardest. When people ask how I'm doing, my instinct is to say, fine, or I'm getting there, hanging in there. And while that's true, it's not the whole truth, right? The whole truth is that I am struggling, and I think sometimes just admitting that matters. Suppressed emotions don't disappear. There are physical consequences to unprocessed emotions. Three weeks feels like a long time when it comes to recovery, but nine to twelve months sounds impossibly long. But I know intellectually, even when I don't feel like it emotionally, that this season will end. I will feel those post-workout endorphins again. On the hard days, I try to hold on to that. Not as a way of dismissing what I'm currently feeling, but as a reminder that feelings are not facts and that temporary suffering, no matter how uncomfortable, is still temporary. If you're in a season right now where your primary outlet, whether that's physical or mental, is unavailable, that you're not alone and that this too shall pass. Hopefully the strategies I just discussed will provide some temporary relief. Trust me, I don't have it all figured out because I'm not on the other side of this yet. But I'm in the middle of it, doing my best, having hard days and okay days. But I'm still here, I'm still showing up, and I hope my experience might resonate with someone. And if it does, if any part of this episode makes you feel less alone in your struggle, then it was worth it. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

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SPEAKER_01 30:28

Thanks so much for tuning in to Vital Balance with Jess. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world if you would leave a review, share it with a friend, or hit subscribe so you never miss a dose of real talk on women's health. Remember, you have more control over your health than you've been told, and sustainable change is possible. Keep listening to your body and showing up for yourself. I'll see you next time.