After fracturing my humerus in an arm-wrestling match, something happened that I wasn’t prepared for. For the first time in my life, I lost the ability to exercise; the one thing that had always anchored my mental health. My mood began to unravel. The only solutions I knew were the ones I’d been taught in medical school: therapy or medication. My experience isn’t unique; it reflects a much larger problem in how we currently treat depression. An estimated 1.17 billion people live with a mental disorder globally, and depression remains one of the most common. People with depression also face higher risks of other medical problems like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet our standard approach — medication, therapy, or both — leaves up to 30 to 50% of people without meaningful improvement and does little to address these physical comorbidities. This is why more holistic options, particularly exercise, deserve serious consideration. What the evidence actually shows Hundreds of clinical trials now show that exercise can significantly reduce symptoms of depression. For mild to moderate …