Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 170 No. 4, 2/22/2010, AIM AbstractExercise can reduce anxiety among patients with a chronic illness according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers reviewed 40 articles published in scholarly journals from January 1995 to August 2007 using the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Scientific Database, supplemented by additional searches through December 2008 of the following databases: Google Scholar, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science.
The study focused on sedentary adults with a chronic illness were selected. Researchers included both an anxiety outcome measured at baseline and after exercise training and random assignment to either an exercise intervention of 3 or more weeks or a comparison condition that lacked exercise. Researchers independently calculated the Hedges d effect sizes from studies of 2,914 patients and extracted information regarding potential moderator variables. Random effects models were used to estimate sampling error and population variance for all analyses.
Study findings• Exercise training reduced anxiety symptoms by an average of 29%.• Exercise training programs lasting no more than 12 weeks, using session durations of at least 30 minutes, and an anxiety report time frame greater than the past week resulted in the largest anxiety improvements.
