Why anxiety scientists like tragic accidents?

Have you ever wondered this about anxiety research: why don’t scientists conduct experiments on humans?

Drug trials aside, the answer is obvious.

Experiments are often unethical.

You can remove a rat’s liver and see what happens. 

Can’t do that to a human.

No-no.

Same way, you can’t take a person who’s successfully managing their disorder (Generalized anxiety, for example) and tell them to stop doing what they’re doing.

That would cause the symptoms to come back. 

Worry, sleepless nights, sleep deprivation, depression, panic attacks.

Making someone experience them is just…

Cruel!

So, what do scientists do instead?

They study what happens during…

Accidents. 

For example, doctors learn about the brain functions by observing people who injured some part of their brain. 

You injured the front of your head? 

You lost your self-control.

You injured the back of your head?

You have memory problems. 

Etc. 

One such (but less dramatic) accident happened to me in early fall of 2024.

What almost breaking my hand taught me about anxiety

I was playing with my son in a park.

I was doing some advanced-level calisthenics on a pull-up bar. 

Long story short, I fell down and injured both of my hands. 

Left hand became completely useless. 

I could barely hold things. 

I couldn’t even squeeze out toothpaste!

My right hand was injured as well, but only my index finger, so it was mostly usable. 

This experience taught me a great deal about my mind.

The injury limited how many pull-ups per day I was doing.

I couldn’t cycle anymore either.

Before the injury, my average number of pull-ups per day was 30-40.

After the injury? 

One.

Yes, I didn’t want to stop the pull-ups completely (not to lose my habit), so I still did them, but I did easier variations and only one per day. 

I cycled about 52 km(32 mi) per week.

After the injury? 

Zero.

This gave me a chance to see what would happen if I were to stop exercising. 

I wanted to try stopping and “see what happens”, but I was worried that it would make me feel worse. 

You see, for many years I relied on exercising for:

1. Staying in shape
2. Managing my weight
3. Boosting my willpower
4. Boosting my focus
5. Lowering my intrusive thoughts
6. And much more…

I KNOW from experience that they were real effects.

You know, sometimes you read an article praising exercise and think to yourself: “Yeah, right. Sounds too good to be true!”

But I saw real benefits in each of the areas above. 

And when I stopped doing pull-ups, all these benefits gradually started going away.

And while I didn’t see my weight going up or my body shape changing drastically, I quickly saw my mental state deteriorate.

My worry thoughts started happening more often.

It felt like a flashback to my GAD days. 

I was more anxious. 

I couldn’t focus on things anymore.

My overall energy dropped.

I felt more in danger. Almost like having death anxiety.

Basically, I couldn’t control what was happening in my brain and in my mind as well.

My mental skills (that I talk about here How to overcome anxiety with just 6 mental skills ) were keeping my life together, but it was getting harder and harder.

And it’s no wonder. 

Science told us about this.

“You take my self-control”, but in a bad way

Back in 2010 a research paper by Megan Oaten, Ken Cheng showed that, quote:

“participants who exercised showed significant improvement in self-regulatory capacity” (https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/135910706X96481)

What is self-regulatory capacity?

It’s people’s ability to exert control over their thoughts, feelings, and actions.

In plain English this means: “if you exercise, you will have more conscious control over yourself”.

An intrusive thought pops into your mind? 

You can make it go away.

You want to stay up late and deprive yourself of sleep?

You can get up, brush your teeth and go to bed.

You can’t muster enough “motivation” to do the scary thing (like leaving the house)?

With exercise, now you can.

Sounds like having a superpower, doesn’t it?

But here’s more!

Let me hit you with another unbelievable fact.

Exercise is more effective than medication!

One study examined how effective exercise is for depression, anxiety and psychological distress.

Researchers found out that that exercise had an effect of 0.43, 0.42, and 0.6 respectively.

These are big numbers in the scientific community. 

If you find such numbers, it’s almost like striking silver. Not quite gold, but still great!

(here’s the link: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/18/1203)

But what about the drugs?

Don’t they work just as well?

Let’s not guess and take a look at another study asking these same questions.

They found that:

“the mean effect size of modern antidepressants in the context of regulatory clinical trials was around 0.3”.

Effect size of 0.3.

That’s less than for exercise (it was 0.42-0.6)!

What’s more… 

The researchers add:

“it corresponds to approximately 10% more reduction of depression symptoms with antidepressant compared with placebo.”

Pills are just 10% more effective than placebo.

You can eat candy and feel about the same effects as depression medication.

(research link: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8374926/)

So, the ranking for managing depression is: 

1. Exercise. 
2. Antidepressants or candy (whichever is cheaper).

Having experienced both anxiety and depression, I know that they’re different animals. 

But, as we saw from the exercise research, exercise influences depression as much as it does anxiety, so they are at the least related. 

Exercise is free, it’s available anytime, anywhere.

Why not do it? 

Well, I believe many people misunderstand what exercise really is.

The biggest lie you’re telling yourself about exercise

I believe most people think of exercise as something you do. 

This is what people go to the gym for. 

Lifting weights, squatting, bench-pressing, marathon-running.

This couldn’t be more wrong. 

If you think that, then you will unlikely start exercising. 

In fact, I’ve never been to a gym, yet I was able to match the world record for pull-ups, which made me one of the fittest people alive (at least, for a certain time).

The best way to think of exercise is this: 

Exercise is simply moving your body.

You choose to use the stairs instead of the elevator? 

Exercise. 

You choose to walk or bike to the supermarket or to work? 

Exercise. 

You stretch every now and then? 

Exercise. 

You run in the park with your young kids? 

Exercise. 

When you stop thinking of exercise as something painful you do in a sweaty dark room full of strangers, suddenly you feel liberated to find what you enjoy doing.

What’s more, if you think like that, you will realize that not moving your body is akin to not moving your car. It will rust and break down. The engine oil will go bad.  Eventually, you will have to scrap it.

Not moving your body is the misuse of your body.

You have muscles, joints and bones so that you can move. 

So, not moving is not using your body as it was intended to be used. 

Body movement doesn’t have to be hard or painful. 

Body movement is as natural as sleeping or eating. 

You may think it’s OK to skip a meal (when you’re busy), or sleep two hours less, but ask yourself this: 

Would you do it to your own child? 

Would you say: “I’m sorry, dear. I’m busy, so, no dinner for you today”?

Would you not let your child sleep? 

That would be cruel. 

Why do it to yourself? 

This is the main premise of my approach in the Outsmart Anxiety course.

You need to be kind to yourself, just like you’d be to your own child. 

You can read the about this method in this article: Can’t Overcome Anxiety? Why not Outsmart it instead?

You need to love yourself.

Take care of yourself.

Help yourself recover.

The people who take the course go through these realizations and tell me that it really works!

You can try it for yourself HERE.

The cheapest, fastest, easiest way to lower your anxiety this week

So, what is the best exercise?

My answer will be simple: anything you can do at home. 

Basically, there are two types of exercise in terms of where you apply the force: 

• Weight exercises (using something to lift).
• Calisthenics (body weight exercises).

I prefer calisthenics because you don’t need to buy anything, and they usually train multiple muscles at once. 

For example, push-ups will train all of your upper body muscles. 

Squats will train your legs and back. They have a big impact on your overall health since they train your biggest muscles. 

Pull-ups also train your upper body and, especially, grip strength.

In fact, I’m sure I’d have broken my hand had it not been strengthened by my pullups.

Each of these helps with stability and agility – critical skills for older people as older-age injuries are often fall injuries. 

For example, you slip.

You lack grip strength, so you can’t grab something to avoid the fall. 

Your legs are too weak to hold your body, so you fall.

Your body core is too weak, so you fall in the worst possible way.

Instead of a mere sprain you get a bone fracture. You stay at home for a month and during this month your health deteriorates as a whole. You lose some social connections. 

This shortens your life. 

And the worst part? 

You could have prevented it by following the advice in this article.

Just like in my case…

My injury didn’t turn into something much worse. It just limited my physical activity. 

As I said earlier, after the injury I couldn’t exercise much.

This caused my anxiety and other symptoms.

So, I had to find a way to exercise without using my hands.

I started doing squats, and you know what happened?

All the benefits of exercise came back!

My anxiety subsided. 

I slept better.

I felt better.

I had more energy.

I focused better.

So, if you feel inspired, what do you do? 

I go in more detail in my Outsmart Anxiety course, but here’s the gist of it

5 rules of fun yet effective exercise that doesn’t drain your energy

1. Start small. 

Choose one or two exercises. I would start with squats and push-ups. Finish BEFORE you feel like you’re pushing yourself. Use variations. Search “push-ups variations” and find the one you feel like would be easy to do. 

2. Build habits. 

Do these exercises daily, preferable at the same time. 

3. Try it for 10 days. 

You don’t have to commit to a lifetime of fitness. Try it for 10 days and see how it feels. 

In my Outsmart Anxiety course I show you how to best approach your anti-anxiety efforts. Treat them as an experiment.

4. Keep it light. 

If an exercise feels “too easy” for 3+ days in a row, increase difficulty by adding repetitions or moving onto a more difficult variation.

5. Do what you like.

The main purpose of body movement is to feel better. If you hate a certain exercise, it won’t make you feel better. Some people prefer running, others like cycling. Some prefer pulling, others prefer pushing. Choose what you enjoy.

Here’s a great YouTube channel about calisthenics. I’m not affiliated with it in any way, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. 

https://www.youtube.com/c/HybridCalisthenics

Or search online for “push-ups variations”, “squats variations”.

Or just go for a walk. Or throw a ball. It doesn’t matter. 

Whatever makes you smile.