McEwen simply states that “Stress is a word used to describe experiences that are challenging emotionally and physiologically.” These stressors may be acute (e.g., hassles) or chronic (e.g., bereavement), small in magnitude (e.g., standing in a long line), or traumatic (e.g., violent attack). There is no universal agreement on the definition of stress. The aim of this review is to fill this gap in the literature and to identify factors that may moderate the relationship, which may help to identify both populations vulnerable to the effects of stress and mechanisms responsible for the relationship. At this time, no paper has attempted to synthesize the evidence both for and against the effects of mental stress on exercise behavior. While related to stress, depression is, nonetheless, a distinctly different construct. A firmly established reverse link for depression and PA suggests that a similar trend may exist for stress and PA.
Despite the well-known effects of exercise on mental health outcomes, a lesser emphasis has been placed on the reverse relationship. Recent evidence suggests that one’s experience of stress may be an important impediment for achieving healthful levels of PA. According to self-report data from the BRFSS, only 48.8 % of US adults meet the minimum level of PA necessary for maintaining good health as determined by the Healthy People 2010 objectives. Approximately 21.9 % of adults in the US participate in light-to-moderate leisure-time PA a minimum of five times per week, and only 11.1 % of adults engage in vigorous leisure-time PA at this same frequency. ĭespite the well-known benefits of PA, the practice of this behavior is very low. Those who exercise suffer from less depression, anxiety, fatigue, and cognitive impairments. There is a similar picture for exercise and mental health outcomes. Interventions designed to increase PA have resulted in profound reductions in physical ailments. Furthermore, those who exercise have fewer incidences of certain types of cancers and more robust immune responses. There is a strong inverse relation between exercise and obesity and diabetes mellitus. Those who exercise have a lower incidence of coronary events and cardiovascular disease. In the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) database, the number of unhealthy days reported by 175,850 adults was inversely associated with PA. The association between physical activity (PA), exercise, and health outcomes is well-established.
Preliminary evidence suggests that combining stress management programming with exercise interventions may allay stress-related reductions in PA, though rigorous testing of these techniques has yet to be produced. Consequently, stress may have a differential impact on exercise adoption, maintenance, and relapse. Habitually active individuals exercise more in the face of stress, and those in beginning stages exercise less. Several other factors may moderate stress and PA relationships, such as stages of change for exercise. This should not be surprising as some individuals utilize exercise to cope with stress. Interestingly, some prospective studies (18.2 %) report evidence that PA was positively impacted by stress (behavioral activation). 85.7 % of higher-quality prospective research (≥7 on a 9-point scale) showed the same trend. Studies examining older adults (>50 years), cohorts with both men and women, and larger sample sizes ( n > 100) were more likely to show an inverse association. a control time point) and (b) chronically stressed populations (e.g., caregivers, parents of children with a cancer diagnosis) that were less likely to be active than controls over time. This was true for research examining (a) PA at periods of objectively varying levels of stress (i.e., final examinations vs. Prospective studies investigating the effects of objective markers of stress nearly all agreed (six of seven studies) that stress has a negative effect on PA. Both objective (i.e., life events) and subjective (i.e., distress) measures of stress related to reduced PA. To more clearly address the question, prospective studies ( n = 55) were considered for further review, the majority of which indicated that psychological stress predicts less PA (behavioral inhibition) and/or exercise or more sedentary behavior (76.4 %). Studies varied widely in their theoretical orientation and included perceived stress, distress, life events, job strain, role strain, and work–family conflict but not lifetime cumulative adversity. The literature search found 168 studies that examined the influence of stress on PA.
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