There’s a common wisdom we all seem to naturally abide by when we’re in a panic. Take some deep breaths. Relax, maybe practice mindfulness techniques. It’s the stuff designed to keep your brain from spiraling. A new study suggests the correct approach might be the exact opposite.
Researchers at the University of São Paulo found that deliberately pushing the body into high arousal through intense exercise reduced panic attacks more effectively than traditional relaxation training. In a head-to-head trial, 72 patients with panic disorder were assigned either progressive muscle relaxation or brief, high-intensity running sprints, three times a week for 12 weeks.
Six months after treatment began, patients in the exercise group experienced about half as many panic attacks as those in the relaxation group and showed significantly lower overall symptom severity. Both groups showed improvement during treatment, so it’s not like either technique is a waste of time, but gains from relaxation techniques faded more quickly after sessions ended. Benefits of exercise held steady for longer stretches.
Notably, not a single participant experienced a full panic attack during the intense workouts themselves. Sometimes, someone suffering from panic disorder or some form of anxiety can have an episode triggered by a racing heart or heavy breathing. Or, at least, that was the assumption. This finding suggests that the condition could be caused by how the brain interprets those sensations as signs of imminent danger. Relaxation techniques suppress those sensations, which can reinforce the idea that arousal is something to fear.
Exercise flips the whole idea. Sprinting produces the same visible signs as panic, like rapid breathing, tense muscles, and a pounding heart, but it’s a safe, healthy version of the exact same symptoms of a panicked episode.
This is a lesson that seemed to sink into patients’ brains as continued exposure to intense exercises that ramped up the body’s heart and breathing responses allowed them to steadily learn that the sensations didn’t immediately mean something catastrophic was happening. They just mean that the body is working hard.
The study, recently published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, also reported unusually low dropout rates. People were tolerating all the exercise, a lot of them even finding it empowering. Where relaxation techniques often want you to get out of your mind, out of your body, into a world where you’re not thinking about your problems, exercise is forcing you into activity.
The researchers are quick to point out that none of this means that therapy or medication or meditation should be abandoned. But it does suggest that for panic disorder specifically, avoiding physical arousal brought on by exercise might be doing a lot more harm than good.
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