Work Out to Reduce Stress (a Little)

Exercise generally does improve productivity, but a new study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine finds that long workouts might not do much to mitigate extreme stress.

Researchers studies 2,823 workers in Minnesota to see how their perceived stress and other factors affected work performance. Stressed workers had about an 11 percent productivity loss at work whether or not they exercised, which means the stress was either keeping them home or they didn’t think they completed enough work while on the job.

So, should you workout at lunch during a stressful day, or should you just give up and eat some donuts? “Generally speaking, the more active employees were, the more productive they were,” says Jeff VanWormer, Ph.D., study author and project scientist at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin.

The answer is? Yes. Workout (and avoid the donuts, while you’re at it).

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