While medications are a great way of treating health issues that arise in the course of daily life, an even better way to take care of your health is by preventing these issues from arising to begin with. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to make sure that your routine includes plenty of exercise.
The health benefits of exercise are well-documented and scientifically proven, and are the largest step you can take toward a happier, healthier you. The renowned Mayo Clinic has stated that regular exercise can help improve mood in several ways:

• Exercise causes the release of several neurotransmitters and endorphins that cause a natural feeling of well-being.
• Exercise helps to raise core body temperature, exerting a calming effect.
• Exercise contributes in reducing immune system compounds like cortisol that can lead to feelings of stress and anxiety.

Additionally, exercise can help improve your mood and reduce anxiety and depression indirectly, by providing psychological and emotional benefits:

• Building confidence. Exercise involves setting and meeting goals, and rising to challenges, and you’ll find that you can accomplish much more than you thought possible!
• Clearing your mind. Unlike other things people do to take their mind off of problems, exercise is a healthy way to forget daily troubles. It is a positive way of relieving stress, and remains an effective way to do so over time.
• Interacting with others. Exercise is a great way to meet other like-minded people and participate in social interaction, the lack of which can contribute to depression. Even if you just start out smiling or waving at a fellow jogger, you’ll find that exercise makes it easy to interact with people.
• Promoting healthy habits. Exercise not only increases your baseline energy, it also helps you develop better sleeping patterns. Both a high energy level and proper sleep are important for feeling happy.

Exercise may seem like a simple way of increasing your happiness, but it’s also an effective one. One study at Duke University looked at individuals with clinical depression that began to exercise for 30 minutes at a time, three times a week, for four months. The researchers found that 60 percent of these participants experienced a full relief of their depression without using medication; this is the same proportion that would have seen a reduction in symptoms from using a medication-only treatment. Clearly, a healthy body has an enormous capacity to promote a healthy mind.
If you feel like you don’t have enough time to hit the gym frequently, don’t worry. Research has found that even exercising for eight minutes at a time was enough to see an increase in overall energy. These benefits were seen in people with clinical depression, as well as healthy individuals, so exercise can be seen as a way for just about anybody to build strength, increase resistance to disease, gain a sense of well-being, and promote happiness.