Although many people don’t know very much about depression, most know that it is a mental illness based on feelings of sadness and inadequacy and lack of energy. About 20 percent of teens will experience depression before they even reach the age of 18 and 15 percent will experience some sort of depression in their youth. Exercise and meditation or forms of these, have been proven beneficial towards anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. We think of exercise and meditation as completely different things that a usually performed separately from each other, but the New York Times writer Gretchen Reynolds recently found out that performing these two work outs together can be more effective. According to Reynolds, both exercise and meditation affect the same part of the brain. Researchers were so curious to learn more about the two exercises connection with the prefrontal cortex that they began an experiment last month that was published in Translational Psychiatry. Exercise and simple breathing techniques are the most common natural treatments prescribed for mood disorders, including depression. They are both proven remedies that help lower the amount of depressive symptoms. If we can perform these together and get even better results than when we perform them separately, why would we not? The article claims that the use of running and meditation are together the best treatment, but it could be any form of exercise or meditation. Even a short walk around the block followed by a few minutes simply focused on breathing and closing in on the moment can help to reduce the feelings of depression and anxiety.

• http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/meditation-plus-running-as-a-treatment-for-depression/?_r=0