The benefits of exercise in addiction recovery cover a wide range of neurological and physical healing effects. This helps naturally stabilize your body’s chemical imbalances. For a complete guide on the benefits of exercise in addiction recovery, consult the following information in conjunction with professional treatment.
How Does Addiction Affect the Body?
To better understand how exercise aids recovery progress, it’s important to know how addiction affects the body. The following is an in-depth description of the chemical effects of addiction on the body.
Weakened Immunity
Alcohol can alter and weaken T-cell function efficacy while delaying immunization response in the body. This makes your body susceptible to infections and other illnesses. Over time, this can cause permanent immunity complications depending on addiction severity. Once you stop using drugs and alcohol, your immune system can recover along with the rest of your body.
Organ Damage
Prolonged use of substances takes a collective strain on your liver, kidneys, heart, and other vital organs. This opens the potential for permanent organ damage, such as liver or kidney diseases. Medically-supervised detox in Orange County is the best preventative measure for further organ harm in the short term.
Respiratory Damage
Drugs that are inhaled, such as some cannabis products, open the door to a wide variety of lung cancers and other respiratory conditions. This includes both temporary and permanently reduced lung capacity. But depending on the extent of damage, it’s possible to partially or even restore full lung capacity and deter any lingering carcinogens that may cause damage further on.
Exacerbated Pre-existing Mental Conditions
Substance dependency has the potential to interact poorly with any pre-existing mental conditions. Use of certain substances can agitate or worsen the effects of certain conditions, such as anxiety disorders. Addiction can lead to an overall decline in self-care, which may make it more difficult to assess personal needs or detect changes in an individual’s mental state. This is why it is essential for those with a mental illness who are suffering from addiction to undergo dual diagnosis treatment in Orange County that addresses the addiction while accounting for the impact of the mental health condition.
Insomnia
Insomnia is both a withdrawal symptom and a direct side effect of substance use. Disturbed sleep patterns are commonly associated with cocaine use and party drugs like ecstasy. But even drugs like alcohol and marijuana can disturb sleep even with short-term use. Extended sleepless periods put added strain on the heart and circulatory system, and can lead to multiple negative effects for health.
Benefits of Exercise in Rehab
When utilized in conjunction with a treatment program, exercise can help support progress toward sobriety and can be a key component of a life without substances.
Natural Dopamine Production
Exercise is a natural producer of dopamine, which can help an individual cope with the dopamine deficiencies caused by detoxification. Drugs can flood the mind with a disproportionate amount of dopamine every use, which can be part of why relapse may occur. A person’s regular life (including naturally occurring sources of dopamine) may feel flat and uninteresting compared to the highs of drug use. The brain may even go into a dopamine-suppressive state to recover from the previous unhealthy overstimulation. Thanks to the natural properties of exercise, it’s possible to cope with these cravings through natural dopamine production.
Improved Mood
Dopamine is the “happy” neurotransmitter that correlates with positive experiences in an effort to help the body learn what is healthiest for it. Exercise provides a natural mood booster that can be very uplifting during the difficult period of detoxification. It can help counteract physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms, such as mood swings.
Improved Sleep
One of the most painful withdrawal symptoms can be insomnia. Exercise can naturally help to improve sleep cycles. This includes the improvement of deep REM sleep necessary for the body to maximize the mental and physical healing process.
Natural Stress and Anxiety Relief
Incorporating exercise into your daily routine can help with coping with natural stress and anxiety in a healthy way. Exercise stimulates stress-reducing endorphins responsible for regulating anxiety and stress levels. It can be a valuable tool when working to overcome difficult withdrawal symptoms and constructing a life with healthier coping mechanisms than drugs.
Renewed Energy Levels
Aside from the renewed energy from a better night’s sleep, exercise is a natural energy supplement. Since one of addiction withdrawal’s symptoms is low energy levels, exercise can help naturally raise your energy to balance this out.
New Healthy Routines
One of the most important aspects of rehab involves changing lifestyle routines to not include substances. Having new workout or exercise routines can help accelerate the process of replacing old habits and routines with a new habit structure.
Additional Healthy Habits for Recovery
Aside from the benefits of exercise in addiction recovery, other healthy actions can help distract yourself from former addiction-based habits. If possible, work with a health professional to help develop a relapse prevention plan you can enact early on in sobriety. Having plans in place to help alleviate the stress of early sobriety will help equip you with the means to avoid relapse in the precarious time of early recovery.
Incorporate Enjoyable Hobbies Into Your Routine
Hobbies are one of the greatest ways to replace addiction habits. Many hobbies you may enjoy are yet to be discovered. Addiction consumes so much time that people in recovery end up discovering new hobbies they never knew they loved. It’s also an opportunity to return to previously abandoned hobbies that an individual may have stopped at the height of their addiction. This can help in re-establishing identity after halting drug use, which can also help with eventually repairing interpersonal relationships.
Foster Social Connections
A natural effect of addiction is damage to social relationships, especially relationships with family. These can take time (and extended periods of sobriety) to fully recover. But it’s still important to reach out and maintain social connections when in active recovery. Support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous can help provide connection, as well as reassurance that you’re not alone in the struggles of sobriety.
Friends and family may be very supportive in helping a person stay sober over time, especially as you maintain your efforts and are doing the work to build a new life in a visible way. Family therapy can help provide a neutral space where family members can be honest with each other about the addiction, as well as learn how to best support the person in recovery.
Eat a Healthy and Balanced Diet
Balanced nutrition plays an intricate part in accelerating the detox and recovery process. Good nutrition supports the chemical restabilization of the body, and provides the body with useful vitamins it can utilize to help restore itself. It also prevents a person from replacing substances with behavioral addictions like sugar. A health professional can help develop a meal plan or construct a diet to help serve your needs as you detoxify from substances.
Get Adequate Sleep
This can be a difficult habit, considering insomnia is a side effect and withdrawal symptom of detox and recovery. But the body undergoes its deepest healing properties while in deep sleep. Exercise can improve sleep deficiencies and boost vital REM sleep. Medication-assisted treatment can help aid adequate sleep at the beginning of detoxification, as well as lessen the impact of other withdrawal symptoms.
Drink Enough Water
The overwhelming majority of individuals don’t drink enough water to maintain healthy hydration. When it comes to addiction recovery, hydration is even more important for several reasons. Water helps flush out toxins and bacteria from the mind and body, as well as supports the internal systems that help with healing. Drinking water helps to equip your body as well as possible for the strenuous process of detoxification.
Build a Sober Life at Adelante Recovery
At Adelante Recovery, we work hard to help you build a structured foundation for a new life of sobriety. We provide a variety of therapy modalities that support healing, as well as holistic methods that work to help health the whole person inside and out. We know recovery isn’t just about getting sober. It’s about building a new life of healthy habits that can support a healthier person, thus reducing the need to return to drug use.
If you’re ready to start building a life free of addiction, contact us today. It’s never too late for a fresh start.
