Posted on 04/19/2008 1:56:53 PM PDT by blam
Housework helps combat anxiety and depression
19 April 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition.
FEELING down? You might be able to dust away your distress. Just 20 minutes a week with the vacuum cleaner or mop is enough to help banish those blues, and sport works even better.
That's the message from Mark Hamer and his colleagues at University College London, who wanted to find out what benefits arise from different types of physical activity. They examined data from questionnaires filled in by almost 20,000 Scottish people as part of the Scottish Health Surveys, carried out every few years. Some 3200 respondents reported suffering from anxiety or depression, but those who regularly wielded the mop or the tennis racket were least likely to suffer, the researchers report (British Journal of Sports Medicine, DOI: 10.1136/bjsm.2008.046243).
One 20-minute session of housework or walking reduced the risk of depression by up to 20 per cent. A sporting session worked better, reducing risk by a third or more. Failing housework or sport, says Hamer, try to find something physical to do. "Something - even for just 20 minutes a week - is better than nothing."
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I think I’ll suggest this remedy to my wife..........
It also helps people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. But they usually only get a very small area EXTREMELY clean...
No. I think it is deeper than that. I think a woman’s house reflects what her life is like. When I’m getting pulled in all directions, housework isn’t a priority. Looking at a sink of dishes, piled up clothes to wash etc gets to me. I feel out of control. It’s depressing. When the house is clean and organized the rest of my life seems organized too. We eat out less, appointments aren’t missed...life is calmer.
Don’t tell my bride, she is obssesive-compulsive. One speck of dust and it’s “all hands man your stations.”
You’re exactly right. The way mine works (quite minor) is that the whole house can look like hell but one spot will all of a sudden drive me completely bonkers and have to be cleaned right now, prior obligations be damned.
And about the house’s cleanliness reflecting your general stability, I’m exactly the opposite. The house causes my general stability =P
That is precisely the reaction I had, too. Good thing she’s got a sense of humor when she is not depressed.
Good suggestion from the country that gives us “How Clean Is Your House?” on BBC America. What degrading hovels these Brits live in!
I love it when the cleaning duo tells the filthy blighters off before teaching them how to get the horse manure off the kitchen floor...I kid you not.
Gosh, do you suppose there's any chance that depressed people might do less cleaning and play less tennis? Nah.
Let's take a trivial statistical correlation, pick the least likely causal sequence, and publish. Nobel Prize, here we come!
20 minutes a week of house cleaning? The place would look like a redneck shack in no time at all. How about a couple of hours a day? Unless it’s a very small house.
But the principle makes sense.
1) It’s depressing to live in a messy house.
2) It’s important to get exercise.
3) It’s always satisfying to do physical work, and do it well, in a way you can take pride in.
If you run around the block, you’ve gotten a little exercise. If you really clean up a room, you have accomplished something.
I broke down this morning and picked up that peanut....
Slacker!
What a bunch of crap.
Ladies, don’t fall for this.
I feel so much better and on top of the world when my cleaning woman and man come twice a week and clean my apartment from top to bottom. They do what ever needs to be done to include electrical and pluming fixtures if repairs/replacements are needed. Also, they paint the apartment once a year (whether it needs it or not).
Obviously, I do not live in the U.S. of A.
For those few hours, I feel like a princess.
So there.
“I think I’ll suggest this remedy to my wife..........”
After my input, too late.
My point. It’s not the “doing” the housework that makes you feel good. It’s the clean house that perks you up.
That’s what I first thought, but I’m now thinking a placebo effect. Or perhaps if it’s put forth a “baby steps”, that is, getting something accomplished that benefits *you*, it might indeed be beneficial.
Funny no breakdown by sex. I suspect this is far more true in women than men. Studies of brain activity and hormone levels show women create the chemicals that create a feeling of well-being by “building the nest” as it were, cleaning and decorating. Men create them whole doing nothing after a period of stress (i.e. vegging out after work).
Your bride to be or your wife?
My wife. Since we married a dozen years ago, we have made each day as if it was the first together.
I understand that, Cindy. I am more than totally perked up if someone else does it for me.
And please, I am not being snotty.
If you lived in the Rep of Panama, you would also have this type of help as you sat at your computer reading FR while they clean around you, through you, and above and below you.
This is not a bad thing. By hiring them, I am also contributing to their social security which includes hospital care (such as it is) and their retirement (such as it is). It is not a one-way street.
Yes, I can see why you wouldn’t be depressed, but you aren’t spending your twenty minutes cleaning the house as the article suggests.
Are the cleaning people happy or depressed? They should be deliriously happy according to this article, if not from the actual work, at least from their pay checks. Ha.
Waiting for an upswing in aluminum prices to motivate them.
Good, legal help is hard to find around here. I’ve been looking. The last time I had a housekeeper I had to get out of the house. I would get up early and clean before she came to clean. If I stayed I had to help. Just couldn’t help myself:’)
That sounds like me. Had to go to our daughter’s house to let her cleaning lady in to clean, and I would end up helping her. She loved me! lol.
Excellent point LucyJo.
I leave them alone to do their work…period. I do not interfere because I know they know what they are doing.
Since I like to cook (it relaxes me), I cook lunch and there is a lot of joking going back and forth at that time. I always need to know who was the latest to get whacked in their neighborhoods (it is always about drugs).
My cleaning lady’s last job assignment from me (a few months ago) is to sit in front of the TV local news starting at 11:50 and report to us the latest scandals. By that time, she has finished ironing my clothes.
What a great job she has.
If I lived in the U.S, I would never, ever be able to afford this help.
P.S.
Panamanian women are notoriously nasty to their house employees.
I don’t understand it. This is why I lucked out with my male employee. He couldn’t take the abuse anymore from his last employerette.
You should have smooshed that peanut into the carpet and called it peanut butter.
Oh, my goodness... Here all this time I thought you were a dude. 
I can relate to that.
I finally said to myself, the heck with that.
Although, before they come (7:00 am), the cats are fed and kitty litter cleaned. Why? Because I know my cats’ habits, and they don’t...although they have offered to do that for me.
Besides, cleaning kitty litter is a nasty job, and I will not joist that job on anybody else. It is my nasty stuff to clean, and it is for me to do it.
LOL!!!
I am sorry to disappoint you…I think.
But I can hold my own against anybody.
Certainly, in the mean time I do superficial cleaning.
Cats like to vomit. That needs to be cleaned posthaste.
I spill something on the floor. I am not going to leave it there for Monday or Thursday.
Etc.
But there are things that can wait. Overall general cleaning can wait.
Sure it does. I could guess at the next healthful habit but let’s not be crude.
Sure as h*ll does. Ask my Husband and kids during that magical time of the month. They are grateful that I like to clean.
I love that show! Couldn’t watch it though when I had morning sickness. The filth made me throw up. I also like “You Are What You Eat.” No PC crap from that host. She tells fatties exactly what they are and how they got that way.
“Housework helps combat anxiety and depression”
Not as much as paying somebody else to do it!
My husband calls me “The Bleach Queen”. I seriously have a compulsive cleaning disorder when it comes to my house.
Does it have to be administered orally ?
=running away=
LOL!!! : )
I dance around to 50’s music when I swiffer my floors. It’s head rotates which makes it easier for some of the trickier dance steps.
The problem is, my children ignore the ELEPHANT!! :p
Excuse me.. there's a little.. smudge on your.. computer.. screen
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