"EXERCISE no help for depression”, was the headline that caught my eye this week. As someone who loves to keep fit and spends a lot of time encouraging others to do the same, you can imagine that I was a bit worried.

The truth, as always with these medical stories, was more complicated than it looked.

The story referred to an experiment – a multi-centre randomised control trial if you want to be technical – involving two sets of depressed people. One group was offered conventional medication, the other, anti-depressants plus exercise. The result was that both groups got better at roughly the same rate.

Of course that’s only half the story. For example, the study didn’t touch on whether exercise could prevent people getting depressed in the first place.

Equally, it didn’t take into account that exercise can stave off some of the physical and emotional factors that trigger or worsen depression, such as obesity or social isolation.

I think what the tests confirm is that there’s no silver bullet solution to lasting health and we shouldn’t look for one.

Running a marathon every week won’t make you a happier person if there are other aspects of your life constantly pulling you down. But getting out and active will never do you any harm, so never give up.

Just knowing that makes me feel better already!

ARTHUR WHARTON was a professional footballer in an era when racism was so common in sport and society it didn’t even have a name.

Thanks largely to the efforts of the Arthur Wharton Foundation, based in Darlington – where Arthur began his sporting career in 1883 – the achievements of the first black professional footballer were acknowledged by Fifa this week.

The tribute couldn’t have been more timely.

It came as the sorry Terry-Ferdinand saga grabbed most of the headlines and the organisers of Euro 2012 made contingency plans about what to do if players walked off the pitch because of racist abuse.

It would be silly and defeatist to say that we haven’t moved on in the past 130 years, but naive too, if we didn’t admit that ridding sport of racism is a work in progress.

We should also acknowledge that a lot of that progress has been made because of the pride and persistence of the black athletes who have followed in Wharton’s footsteps and who have often faced a complacent and hostile sporting establishment.

Wharton was a remarkable man – a worldrecord breaking sprinter who could play just about anywhere on any sports pitch.

Perhaps if every player in the European Championship just spared him a thought before they laced up their boots, we might see a tournament worthy of the name.

THREE out of four under-age drinkers picked up on the streets had been given the alcohol by a family member or older friend. The story in yesterday’s Echo should shame us all.

The public image of the “problem” drinker is that of the young person hopelessly out of control at the weekend. It hides the fact that an irresponsible attitude towards alcohol is ingrained in far too many older people, too.

They are oblivious to the harm that alcohol causes to them and to others It can only be changed by making drink harder to get and more expensive to buy. It isn’t just the kids who need to grow up.