Diet plus exercise cuts depression

Depression risk was lower in Korean adults who combined regular physical activity with a higher-quality diet than in people who did neither. (asiae.co.kr) The research team, led by Professor Park Minseon at Seoul National University Hospital, analyzed 17,737 adults in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020. They reported the findings on April 9 in the journal *Nutrients*. (asiae.co.kr, chosun.com) Researchers sorted participants into four groups: low diet quality and low activity, high diet quality only, high activity only, and both high diet quality and high activity. Depressive symptoms were defined as a Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score of 10 or higher, a standard cutoff for moderate depression screening. (mdpi.com, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Overall, 4.6% of participants had depressive symptoms. The group with both a higher-quality diet and higher physical activity had about a 45% lower risk than the group with neither, while the high-activity-only group had a 26% lower risk and the diet-only group did not show a significant association. (asiae.co.kr, mdpi.com) The pattern was not the same for every group. Among women, the combined diet-and-exercise pattern was linked to a 52% lower risk, and among adults ages 45 to 65 and 65 and older, the reduction was 58% to 59%, but the study did not find the same association in men or adults under 45. (asiae.co.kr) Diet quality in the study was measured with the Korean Healthy Eating Index, which scores how closely people’s eating matches national dietary guidance. Physical activity was split at the sample median, so the paper compared relatively more active adults with relatively less active adults rather than testing a single universal exercise target. (mdpi.com) The study was observational and cross-sectional, which means it measured habits and depressive symptoms at the same time. That design can show an association, but it cannot prove that diet and exercise prevented depression or rule out that depression changed people’s eating and activity. (mdpi.com) The result fits a broader research base showing that physical activity is linked to lower depression risk and can reduce symptoms in treatment studies. A 2022 *JAMA Psychiatry* meta-analysis found that even activity below the standard recommended amount was associated with lower depression risk, and a 2024 *BMJ* review found exercise reduced depression symptoms across multiple trial types. (jamanetwork.com, bmj.com) Diet has also been studied separately. A 2024 population-based cohort study in Spain found that stronger adherence to healthy diet patterns was associated with lower incidence of depression over follow-up. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) The Korean study’s main claim was narrower: exercise alone was linked to lower risk, diet alone was not statistically significant, and the strongest association appeared when both habits showed up together. (asiae.co.kr, mdpi.com)