Can Walking Help You Feel Less Depressed?
Experts weigh in on how much and how often you need to walk to keep your spirits high.
If you’ve ever been told to ‘take a walk’ during a heated situation, you’d probably, albeit begrudgingly, agree that a couple of steps can help you cool off. But what if that’s just a tiny sample of the benefits of walking, and what it can do for your mood?
“A lot of people come to me with mood concerns, and many of them are surprised when I tell them to make sure they’re exercising,” says Elizabeth Kera, PhD, a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist at Hackensack University Medical Center. “I tell them that it’s just like taking an antidepressant medication.”
Turns out, whether you suffer from clinically diagnosed depression or just feel kind of down, walking might actually be one of the best things you can do to turn your mood around. But how long—and how often— would you need to walk for it to actually make a difference?
What the research says
A 2024 review published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research found that walking for approximately 35 minutes a day—notably, four times a week—was enough to improve depressive symptoms. “The latest science supports walking as a real, low-cost mood tool,” says Rab Nawaz Khan, MD, a board-certified neurologist. “The practical message is simple: Walking does not have to be perfect, intense, or long to matter—but it does need to be repeated.”
A separate 2024 meta-analysis published by JAMA Network Open reinforced the connection between walking and depression. After analyzing data from nearly 100,000 subjects, the researchers noticed that walking 5,000 steps a day (roughly 2–2.5 miles) was associated with fewer depressive symptoms, and walking 7,500 or more steps a day reduced symptoms by as much as 42 percent. The study also suggested a potential protective effect against developing depression. The results showed that subjects who increased their daily mileage by just 1,000 steps reduced their risk of developing depression by nine percent, and those walking 7,000 steps or more per day reduced their risk by 31 percent.
The antidepressant powers of walking appear to be available to everyone, no matter how slight or severe your current state, says Kirk Erickson, PhD, director of translational neuroscience at AdventHealth Research Institute. “The effects seem to be largest in the people you might expect—those who have more clinically definable and identifiable levels of depression,” he says, “but we and others have also noted that even in people with subsyndromal depressive symptoms—in other words, people that might be feeling a little bit down but aren’t really meeting clinically high levels of depressive symptoms—if you get them walking for a period of time, we can see improvements in mood.”
How walking fights depression
While the research is clear that moving your body can mitigate the symptoms of depression, scientists are still working to understand exactly how this happens. “The beauty of physical activity is that it really affects every organ system that we know of,” says Dr. Erickson. “Scientifically, however, that creates a lot of challenges, because there’s so much that happens with even modest amounts of physical activity that it’s difficult to pinpoint the molecular pathways that are driving the benefits.”
“Exercise helps mood through several pathways at once,” says Dr. Khan. “It increases blood flow to the brain and supports chemicals involved in mood regulation, including serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which helps the brain adapt and form healthier connections.”
“It also affects the brain through peripheral pathways,” adds Dr. Erickson. “Muscles release chemicals called myokines”—small signaling proteins, or peptides—“that can cross the blood-brain barrier and induce a cascade of different events in the brain that result in a reduction in depressive symptoms.”
Step into a better mood
They say the first step is always the hardest, and that’s especially true when it comes to depression. So, to get started, Dr. Khan’s prescription is to do simply that. “For someone who is feeling depressed, I would start with a very achievable goal: 10 minutes of walking daily,“ he says. “The bare minimum is the amount a person can repeat consistently, because depression often makes motivation, energy, and initiation much harder.”
Once that feels manageable, you can start to increase your mileage at whatever rate feels right. “The 35-minute figure is useful, but I would not present it as a magic number,” he says. “Some newer data suggest benefits around that range for moderate activity, but the broader walking research shows that even smaller increases in steps are linked with fewer depressive symptoms.”
If you’re up for it, Dr. Kera recommends challenging yourself to more closely replicate the regimens utilized in the most recent research. “Try and get out there 2–3 times a week for at least a half an hour,” she says. “Ideally, you’d want to do it at least four or five times a week, for half an hour or more.”
Again, the important thing to keep in mind is that it’s not all or nothing. “Even just getting up and doing something for little bits of time can really have a pretty significant impact on depressive symptoms,” says Dr. Erickson. “Every minute counts.”
Originally published by gq.com. Syndicated material does not necessarily reflect the views of Glamour Canada.
