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Hey {{ first_name | Reader }},
A new Cochrane review looked at how exercise impacts depression. In the research world, this is the gold-standard kind of study, where they pool together piles of trials and grade how trustworthy each one is.
Here’s what they did:
The review pooled 73 trials and nearly 5,000 adults. Compared to doing nothing, exercise gave a moderate benefit in depression symptoms.
But here’s the part that made me sit up: in the trials that pitted exercise head-to-head against traditional treatment, exercise came out about level with both antidepressants and talking therapy (Clegg et al., 2026).
Level. With the drugs we hand out by the tens of millions!
Now, before you screenshot that and quit your prescription, let me show you the cracks. Only five trials compared exercise to medication, and ten compared it to therapy, so we're working with small numbers.
The reviewers also flagged a lot of bias in the underlying studies, and the cleaner the trial, the smaller the effect tended to look.
But here's the part I want you to take with you today, {{ first_name | Reader }}.
The benefit didn't last once people stopped exercising. Few trials followed people for long, and the ones that did couldn't show the benefits held. The evidence there is thin, so I won't oversell it, but it lines up with what most of us know in our bones: the effect tracks the habit. And in plenty of these trials, people dropped out for that very reason.
So the question I keep coming back to is this: what kind of movement will you still be doing next March? A perfect programme you abandon in three weeks loses to a mediocre one you can stick with.
And the research shows that it pays to keep moving your body.
Which is why I want to give you a second study to think about:
Bright light therapy.
A 2025 JAMA Psychiatry review of 11 trials and 858 people found that adding morning bright light on top of standard treatment pushed remission rates to roughly 41%, compared to 23% without it. It may even help treatments kick in faster (Menegaz de Almeida et al., 2025).
To be honest with you, {{ first_name | Reader }}, nobody has run a proper trial stacking exercise and light together, so I'm connecting two separate dots rather than quoting one clean result.
But the dots do connect nicely. Light works partly by anchoring your body clock, and it costs you almost nothing.
Most exercise habits die from the sheer willpower they demand. Light asks for almost none.
Try putting the two together with a morning walk outside. Daylight, even on a grey day, runs dramatically brighter than anything indoors, so a 30-minute walk before work is cheap, repeatable and far easier to keep than a 6 am gym booking. Or sit in front of a red light pannel.
If you’ve been on a walk outside lately, you know that summer changes the maths a little. You lose sodium and electrolytes as your walk stretches on, and a glass of water alone won't put those back.
For anything over about 60 minutes in the heat, I reach for an electrolyte mix from Momentous Fuel.
The team there (@live.momentous) are running a summer campaign right now, so for once I can hand you a proper link for something I use every day. If you train through the heat as well, creatine is worth a look.
The evidence for strength and recovery is solid. The mood and brain research is early, so I won't oversell that to you, but this is still the most-studied scoop in the cupboard.
In short:
Walk.
Light.
Hydrate.
They won't fix everything, and I'd never tell you to drop your treatment over a newsletter. But they're worth a real shot, and the only version that helps is the one you'll repeat.
Take a breath,
Richard
And if you got lit up by the talk of light boosting your mood check out Bon Charge’s red light panels
Talk soon, Richard
P.S. If you take one thing from this, walk outside tomorrow morning before you open your laptop. If it's a hot one, take the electrolytes with you. Let me know if you do it by replying here—I read every email.
Affiliate disclosure: the Momentous and Bon Charge links above are affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy it, at no extra cost to you. I only point you towards kit I use and trust myself.
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References
Clegg, A.J., Hill, J.E., Mullin, D.S., Harris, C., Smith, C.J., Lightbody, C.E., Dwan, K., Cooney, G.M., Mead, G.E. and Watkins, C.L. (2026) 'Exercise for depression', Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 1(1), CD004366. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD004366.pub7.
Menegaz de Almeida, A., Aquino de Moraes, F.C., Cavalcanti Souza, M.E., Cavalcanti Orestes Cardoso, J.H., Tamashiro, F., Miranda, C., Fernandes, L., Kreuz, M. and Alves Kelly, F. (2025) 'Bright light therapy for nonseasonal depressive disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis', JAMA Psychiatry, 82(1), pp. 38-46. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.2871.