Impact of Regular Exercise on Student Mental Health & Academics

This report investigates the significant impact of regular exercise on the mental health and academic performance of secondary school students. The introduction establishes the prevalence of stress and depression among this demographic and highlights the potential of exercise as an intervention. The report explores key findings, including how exercise improves focus by increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and temporal lobe, and how it enhances neuroplasticity. The study also examines how regular exercise increases cognitive performance, stress tolerance, and self-esteem in students. The report emphasizes that daily exercise, regardless of intensity, can significantly improve mental health and academic achievement by influencing brain function, hormone release, and sleep quality. The conclusion summarizes the benefits of exercise, including reduced insulin resistance, inflammation, and increased growth factors, while also acknowledging the need for further research into specific exercise types and their effects on cognitive functions like concentration and innovative thinking. The report uses examples to illustrate the practical implications of the research findings and provides a foundation for future studies.

Name:_______________________
Question: How does regular exercise impact on the mental health and academic performance of secondary school
student and why is this the case?
Introduction (100-150 words)
This report states the effectiveness of the regular exercise on mental health of the students. This research also helps
to know about how the academic performance of the student can change by exercising daily (Teasdale et al. 2017).
Secondary school students are suffering from stress and they needs to overcome their stress and reduce their level
of depression. The student needs to decrease their depression and for that this research study is carried out. This
research will find out how regular exercise can help to increase the mental health of the student and can improve
their performance in academics.
Background Information/Context/Why is this topic important? (200 words)
 Physical activities helps in decreasing the risk of having cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and many
other diseases. But in the recent trend, physical activities have shown its benefits with mental health and
regular activity along with improved fitness helps in increasing the psychological well-being.
 Students in the secondary level faces stress related with increased academic demands. Many studies have
stated that students having academic stress decreases performance and motivation and higher rate of
withdrawals from courses (Fan and Evans 2017). There are also long term effects regarding stress in school
which includes decreased likelihood for sustainable employment.
 The activities related to physical exercise reduces the depression risk mostly among the young people.
Researching about the number of people facing mental disorders in Australia, it was found that the people
suffering from mental disorders mostly were between age group 16 years to 24 years. Physical activities
helps to reduce the stress in people and helps to improve the mood. So, studying the effect of physical
activities to improve the mental stress or disorders due to stress in school students will be helpful to
community.
Key Finding 1 (250 – 300 words):___________________________________________________________
 Topic Sentence
Physical exercise improves focus on brains and increases prefrontal cortex, hippocampus as well as increases
temporal lobe in human brains.
 Explanation
The frontal lobe in the brain is vital for consciousness and with functions that appears in human. For
example deals with cognition, problem solving, planning, decision making, language development and
speech production and the prefrontal cortex specifically helps with planning and order of events as well as
short-term or working memory
Physical exercise and aerobic exercises increases hippocampal perfusion (Carlbring et al. 2017).
The aerobic training sessions helps to increase the volume of gray matter and the white matter in prefrontal
cortex and helps to increase the functioning key nodes in the executive control network.
 Example
From the interview taken from Dr. Roy and from Mr. Bradford, it was clear that physical exercise increases
the ability of the human brain and that effects in long term also. As per the interview taken from Mr. Roy,
she has stated that from neuroscience studies, physical exercise has long term effect on the person and
helps to improve the attention function that is increases the prefrontal cortex of the brain (Abdollahi et al.
2017). This would also result in getting good grades by the students. The activities of physical exercise is
non-stigmatising as well as acceptable approach for promoting the mental health status in young people.

Name:_______________________
 Link Back to Question
As per the question, that was asked about what types of behaviour is effected by doing regular exercise.
Key Finding 2 (250 – 300 words):__________________________________________________________
 Topic Sentence
The second fact that was found was that with the help of exercise, neuroplasticity of the brain increases and
allows new connections to establish.
 Explanation
Physical exercises have many benefits on the brain function that ranges from molecular level to behavioural
level. Physical exercise such as aerobic exercises are mostly helpful for enhancing the brain functions.
Exercise on daily basis helps to increase the heart rate by increasing more amount of oxygen to brain. This
also helps to increase the bodily release of plethora of hormones.
The growing hormones, and development hormones provide nourishing environment for growing of the
brain cells. Morning exercise helps to stimulate growth factors in brain which helps to make more neuronal
connections in brain (Grassmann et al. 2017). Doing exercise in morning helps to increase the brain
activities and prepare the brain to keep away from mental stress for that day. Exercise helps in producing
increased retention for the new information in brain and also helps in reacting in a better way in complex
situations.
So, it can be said that morning exercise improves the cognitive performance among students and increases
decision making function in them.
 Example
The presenter of the video “The brain changing benefits of exercise” Wendy Suzuki stated that with regular
period of exercise, the activities in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus as well as temporal lobe can be
increased (San Too, Leach and Butterworth 2019). The focus of human brains can be increased up to 2
hours by exercising daily and also helps to decrease the reaction time of the brain. As per Dr. Wendy, there is
a prescription of the exercise for maximizing the brain activity and helps to optimize learning, memory, and
increase attention in the brain.
 Link Back to Question
The question asked about “what type of exercise are mostly beneficial to academic performance and mental
health” is associated with this finding.
Key Finding 3 (250 – 300 words):__________________________________________________________
 Topic Sentence
As per the researchers, exercising daily helps to increase the cognitive performance among all humans
specifically among children.
 Explanation
Childhood is the main period of human life that can be used for developing cognitive functioning. Children in
21st century spends most of its time playing computer games or by watching TV. This lifestyle results in

Name:_______________________
neglecting all physical activities those are needed in development period. Less physical activities or no
physical activities leads to different health problems (Halabchi et al. 2017). Increased susceptibility that
risks the behaviours among the adolescents is mainly associated with not having mature cognitive control
system. This results in impulse risk behaviour within the adolescence. Doing exercise daily increases stress
tolerance ability among the students. Exercise produces a chemical, endorphins in brain of the students that
mainly acts as painkillers and this improve the sleeping ability among students and in helps to reduces stress
as a result.
 Example
There are some students who feels that doing rigorous exercise daily is too challenging for them to continue
along with the pressure on studies (Weinstock et al. 2017).
 Link Back to Question
The research question that was asked in the research was “Is high intensity exercise more effective than low
intensity exercise.” This finding on the research states that effectiveness of exercise does not depend on high
intensity or on low intensity. All about it is to do some exercise daily to keep the mental stress controlled
and to have proper physical structure.
Key Finding 4 (250 – 300 words):_____________________________________________________________
 Topic Sentence
Health professionals treating depression suggests to do exercise daily to improve their mental status. Proper
education is needed among adolescence and others to undertake physical therapy so that they can increase
their self-esteem, the physical structure and can be self-motivated.
 Explanation
Moving around allows the muscles to move and encourages the circulation of blood in the body (Wegner
and Budde 2018). Daily exercise enables students to breath deeper and that triggers the body relaxation
among the students. The exercises those are helpful to relief stress are doing yoga, and practicing Tai Chi and
Qigong. Walking also reduces stress and increases self-confidence among students (Cockerham 2016).
Exercises that are done normally and the exercises those are done for depression subjects are mainly
considered as neurophysiological process that helps to optimize the brain metabolism. Other exercise those
are useful to decrease the stress level among the students are gardening, Pilates, circuit training, and
dancing.
 Example
Exercise helps to maximize the performance of brains and helps to manage the self-control and self-esteem
among the humans (Spitzer, Endicott and Franchi 2018). If exercise is included directly in daily lives, the
mental stress or pressure that comes due to studies and other factors in life of students can be reduced. As
an example, students were surveyed to know their level of stress while studying.
 Link Back to Question
The answer to the question “Does routine exercise benefit students?” is provided in this research. As per the
research, there are different types of exercise that helps to solve different problems in human body and
those are to be studied or known before starting exercise. There are different types of exercise that to be
done to solve different problems in human body.

Name:_______________________
Conclusion (100-150 words)
 What is the answer to your research question?
As per the questions asked to the students, it has been found that exercise helps the memory of humans as
well as thinking capability both directly as well as indirectly. Benefits of doing exercise daily includes
reducing the insulin resistance, reducing the inflammation as well as stimulates releasing of growth factors in
the brain. Exercise also helps to affect the brain cells and helps to grow new blood vessels in brain. The
indirect effects those were studied related to exercise is that it helps to control the mood of humans and
also helps to have good sleep. This reduces the stress and human anxiety and helps to control the cognitive
performance among humans.
 What are the key findings to support this?
Exercise affects the brain in different ways and helps to increase the heart rate and enables to pump more
oxygen to brain which decreases the stress level among humans.
Exercise helps to release hormones and helps in growth of brain cells. This also promotes plasticity by
stimulating the growth and establishing new connection between cells.
Certain types of exercise such as walking, gardening, dancing helps to release stress among students.
Exercising for 20 minutes daily helps to facilitate the information processing as well as increases memory
functions in human brains.
 Does more research need to be done in this area? Why?
More research can be conducted related to some specific subjects for example some particular exercise that
can increase the concentration power of students while doing maths or some particular exercise that can
bring more innovative thinking among student to invent new things.

Name:_______________________
References
Abdollahi, A., LeBouthillier, D.M., Najafi, M., Asmundson, G.J., Hosseinian, S., Shahidi, S., Carlbring, P.,
Kalhori, A., Sadeghi, H. and Jalili, M., 2017. Effect of exercise augmentation of cognitive behavioural
therapy for the treatment of suicidal ideation and depression. Journal of affective disorders, 219, pp.58-63.
Cockerham, W.C., 2016. Sociology of mental disorder. Taylor & Francis.
Fan, W. and Evans, R.M., 2017. Exercise mimetics: impact on health and performance. Cell
metabolism, 25(2), pp.242-247.
Grassmann, V., Alves, M.V., Santos-Galduróz, R.F. and Galduróz, J.C.F., 2017. Possible cognitive benefits of
acute physical exercise in children with ADHD: a systematic review. Journal of attention disorders, 21(5),
pp.367-371.
Halabchi, F., Alizadeh, Z., Sahraian, M.A. and Abolhasani, M., 2017. Exercise prescription for patients with
multiple sclerosis; potential benefits and practical recommendations. BMC neurology, 17(1), p.185.
San Too, L., Leach, L. and Butterworth, P., 2019. Is the association between poor job control and common
mental disorder explained by general perceptions of control? Findings from an Australian longitudinal
cohort.
Spitzer, R.L., Endicott, J. and Franchi, J.A.M., 2018, September. Medical and mental disorder: Proposed
definition and criteria. In Annales Médico-psychologiques, revue psychiatrique (Vol. 176, No. 7, pp. 656-
665). Elsevier Masson.
Teasdale, S.B., Ward, P.B., Rosenbaum, S., Samaras, K. and Stubbs, B., 2017. Solving a weighty problem:
systematic review and meta-analysis of nutrition interventions in severe mental illness. The British Journal
of Psychiatry, 210(2), pp.110-118.
Wegner, M. and Budde, H., 2018. The Exercise Effect on Mental Health in Children and Adolescents. In The
Exercise Effect on Mental Health (pp. 113-137). CRC Press.
Weinstock, J., Farney, M.R., Elrod, N.M., Henderson, C.E. and Weiss, E.P., 2017. Exercise as an adjunctive
treatment for substance use disorders: rationale and intervention description. Journal of substance abuse
treatment, 72, pp.40-47.