What regular swimming does for the body and mind

I recently went for a swim for the first time in over a year. Standing over the sparkling, blue pool at my local gym, I tried to recall many of the stressful events from the past 16 months: moving to a new city -- Baltimore -- during a pandemic, starting a new internal medicine residency training program, and taking care of both Covid and non-Covid patients in the hospital had all taken their toll.