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Exercise Outcome Categories
The content of this website is purely for informational purposes. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
Wound Healing
Increases to the speed and quality of wound healing, the bodies ability to repair itself to physical damage. Wound healing is facilitated by a complex interaction of growth-factors, inflammatory cytokines, hormones, and other cells and nutrients.
Arthritis
Decrease in inflammation of the joints. This can occur as a result of many different causes, such as wearing down the cartilage, autoimmune disorders that target the joint tissue, or other processes in the joints.
Sleep Quality
Improvements to sleep quality, as measured by better sleep depth, quicker times to fall asleep, patterns of brain waves, or even subjective measures of tiredness. Sleep can have a wide range of impacts on wellbeing such as cardiovascular health, immune function, metabolism, cognitive function, and more.
Blood Pressure
Decreases in blood pressure. Chronically increased blood pressure (or hypertension) stresses the cardiovascular system and has many negative effects, including being associated long term with blood vessel damage, heart disease, coronary artery disease, as well as damage to other organs.
Positive and Negative Affect
Positive and negative affect is the scientific way of talking about your mood. Associated exercises are shown to have an impact on your mood, usually by increasing positive affect or decreasing negative affect.
Stress
Decrease in chronic stress. While it's normal, and potentially positive, for the body to experience stress, chronic stress results in the long term presence of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which have a negative impact on cardiovascular functions, affects immune response, IBS, headaches, mood, and many other aspects of wellbeing.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a condition of persistent, unwanted compulsions to perform behaviors or thought patterns. These compulsions stem from anxiety, but are usually unrelated to the context of the situation.
Immune Function
Improvements to the bodies response to deal with infections and disease. Immune function is the result of a complex system rather than a singular response, and tightly coupled to inflammation and inflammatory response.
Inflammation
Reduction in the bodies inflammatory response. Inflammation is a biological process that results in swelling, redness, warmth, etc. and can be external or internal. Inflammation is the bodies attempt to increase blood flow to an area. While inflammation is a natural response to injury, chronic inflammation can be detrimental to the body.
Heart Rate Variability
Increase to heart rate variability. In general higher heart rate variability is a positive measure of cardiovascular health. High HRV is associated with lower risks of heart disease and related conditions. High heart rate variability is seen as the hearts ability to cope in the face of physiological stressors.
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is a perceived ringing in the ears with no external source, potentially stemming from earlier hearing damage. Tinnitus is common and can affect up to 25% of adults.
Asthma
Decrease in the severity of Asthma, a chronic inflammatory lung condition associated with wheezing, coughing, and difficulty breathing. Asthma occurs as a combination of genetics and environmental factors such as the presence of pollution and allergens.
Migraine
Migraines are severe and recurring headaches, sometimes accompanied with other symptoms such as nausea or sensory sensitivity.
Task Performance
Improved ability on objective measures of task performance. This depends on the context, an example would be students performance on a subtraction test, a well studied task in research around self-efficacy and goal attainment.
Burnout
Decrease in the physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged and excessive stress. Usually as a result of feeling overwhelmed or excessively cynical about being overworked, or as a result of a lack of autonomy or ability to affect outcomes in combination with high expectations.
Phobias
Phobias are intense, often irrational fears of specific things or situations. Common examples of phobias are fear of heights, fear of spiders, or social situations.
Fibromyalgia
Decrease in the severity of Fibromyalgia, a chronic musculoskeletal disorder. The exact cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, and believed to be a complex combination of factors. Fibromyalgia results in chronic pain, fatigue, cognitive difficulty, mood disorders, and sleep problems.
Academic Success
Improvements to academic outcomes for students. For example decreased stress during term time, increased grades, or subjective wellbeing.
Cardiovascular Function
Improves the functioning of the heart and blood flow. For example, increasing VO2 max (the maximum amount of oxygen your body is capable of processing), decreasing blood pressure, decreasing heart rate, increasing heart rate variability are all positive measures of cardiovascular function.
Memory
Improve memory function, the ability for people to remember things. While memory is complex, emotional arousal and stress hormones can impact memory, as well as sleep, blood flow, and the presence of various neurotransmitters.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Decrease in the severity of PTSD, a mental health condition that occurs after a person is exposed to a traumatic event. This can manifest as intrusive memories, avoidance, negative thought or feeling patterns, or reactivity symptoms, among other things.
Depression
Decrease in Major Depressive Disorder (also known as clinical depression), a disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness and/or a lack of interest in activities.