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Which Type of Exercise Is Best for the Brain?
- tanker 11y agoMy takeaway is that different types of exercises might have different effects on the brain. Stronger claims must wait. And I think that is all the study was meant to determine. Based on the findings, I would support more research on the brain's response to exercise.
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- jpeg_hero 11y agoNot sure if the rat weight training routine was effective enough to test the hypothesis.
- brahmwg 11y agoThere is a theory that distance running is intimately related to humans evolution and their brain development. The human foot is beautifully engineered to be used for long distance running, to help absorb the impact and transfer the force into our Achilles and larger glute muscles. The fact that we have feet designed to run for a long time, have the nifty ability to sweat (unlike our prey at the time who needs to stop and pant to cool off), and are social creatures leads some to believe that we were persistent hunters, akin to a pack of wild dogs; ideally chasing down our prey as a group during the hottest part of the day when the animal would have most difficulty cooling off. Some believe the introduction of animal protein into our diet also helped trigger brain growth. So some combination of sociability, persistent running, and animal protein helped accelerate human brain growth back in the day. Recommend reading Born to Run or watching the Ted talk by the author for those interested.[1] [1]https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdougall_are_we_born_to_run?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdougall_are_we_born_...
- dschiptsov 11y agoHigh altitude trekking in mountains is even better than long distance running, at least in terms of breathing and sweating.) The crucial difference is in variety of breathing patterns on a trail - it changes with a terrain, in contrast to steady breath while running on a flat surface. I do both - moderate distance running (10-15km) and up to 6000m trekking as a guide. http://karma-engineering.com/ http://karma-engineering.com/
- saiya-jin 11y agoactually high altitude might be damaging the brain quite a bit, albeit 6000m is not really that bad (but it depends on person)
- dschiptsov 11y agoNepal's most popular trekking trails, which are below 5600m, are passable even for grandmas.
- leroy_masochist 11y agoAbove 6,000 meters (that's nearly 20,000 feet) you're mountaineering, not trekking. "High altitude" depending on whom you ask is generally taken to mean anything over 2,000-3,000 meters.
- saiya-jin 11y agothere is no clear definition, but for most mountaineering starts when you need technical equipment (crampons, ice axe etc). I do hikes in alps in non-winter almost every weekend in 2000m-3000m band and its pure hiking. There are peaks higher than 6000m where you will not need this (ie in andes, tibet), and there are much lower peaks where you can't do anything without it. One example I did - you can do Kilimanjaro without touching any snow or ice, via standard route, and that's 5895m high.
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- lqdc13 11y agoWow... Please do not rely on an animal model to make lifestyle choices. What this article needed to answer the question was IQ tests conducted possibly right after exercise and later in the day for people exercising in specific ways and not exercising at all.
- alwaysAttending 11y agoAn IQ test wouldn't indicate more neurons.
- lqdc13 11y agoThey can infer size with fMRI. The article claims it's good for the brain. What does it mean to be "good for the brain"? What people want to know is not how many neurons there are but whether cognition gets better. And that is indeed the case: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21282661 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21282661
- papapra 11y agoToday there is no way to increase your iq. Exercise may improve your attention, emotion regulation, reduce stress.
- oh_sigh 11y agoThat is not true at all. There is a very easy way to increase your IQ - just study for IQ tests!
- papapra 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient I don't think you know a lot about iq.
- cwbrandsma 11y agoIf brain structure stayed static throughout your lifetime I would be inclined to agree. But as the structure is constantly in flux, and proven so, no so much. Granted there is disagreement on how much your iq can change over time. http://www.livescience.com/36143-iq-change-time.html http://www.livescience.com/36143-iq-change-time.html
- cylinder 11y agoThe best type of exercise is the one you enjoy enough to make routine.
- z3t4 11y agoI think that "having fun" stimulates brain growth. And rats really like running on that wheel.
- carleverett 11y agoI think you're right. Also, I think they understated the impact that the stress of the high intensity interval training simulation would have. Imagine being stuck in a room where the floor below you was moving, at random intervals of walking pace and sprinting pace, with no warning. It would be unbelievably stressful. The psychological impact of that, versus getting the same type of exercise from playing basketball, seems like it would be hugely different.
- gertef 11y agoHow would you test this hypothesis? With a non-physical mental stimuation? Multi-colored paper confetti in the cage, or laser-light shows, to give the rats something to play with?
- z3t4 11y agoMaybe if you somehow could measure brain activity and hormones.
- vinceguidry 11y agoThe conclusions presented by the article gel with my experience. There is nothing like cardio for helping me think better. Anything more intense forces my mind to concentrate on the exercise. Less intense and I don't really get any benefit from the exercise, might as well be sitting or laying down. When I did HIIT-style cardio, the train of thought would be broken during the intense periods. I found that doing longer periods of less-intense activity was perfect for braining.
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- varelse 11y agoAnd alas we live in an age where we are scored by a cargo-cult process that mostly rewards sitting at a desk for 8-12 hours a day over producing actual results yet it is somehow called "agile." Evidence: my last job watching the t-crossers and the i-dotters get promoted over the engineers doing the heavy lifting hence why I left.
- RDeckard 11y agoWhat's "a t-crosser and an i-dotter"?
- varelse 11y agoIt's kind of like a Nexus 6 that instead of going on the run in search of a cure for its 2-year lifesppan, its happily sits at its desk filling out TPS reports and their ilk right up to its last day whereupon it conveniently punches out the clock just before it punches out it own clock.
- delecti 11y agoReasonable intensity cardio might facilitate thinking while you're doing it, but which of the three (high, mid, or low intensity) facilitates your average ability to think when you aren't doing it? I'm not saying that the answer isn't still mid-intensity, just pointing out that you're not answering the same question.
- xiaoma 11y agoThis fits very well with my anecdotal observations throughout my own live in years where I've done more or less exercise of different types.
- phat4life 11y agosquats and deadlifts, please be squats and deadlifts. I'm of the belief all you need to do is compound lifts with occasional cardio. Deadlifts are amazing for your health if you learn how to do them without hurting yourself.
- sunsu 11y agoAnecdotal (and risking downvotes), but my opinion: Brazilian Jiujitsu. It's like Chess for the mind while simultaneously getting an incredible workout.
- magic_beans 11y agoCould you elaborate on that? Would you say this is true of most martial arts?
- mtrycz 11y agoI don't do BJJ, but am familiar with it and have done some judo. In contrast to stand-up striking arts, you have limited possibilities of movement when "hugging" your opponent on the ground, so you need to do have a strategy, do some planning, and have to adapt rapidly to changing conditions. Like "what move can I do in the current position?", "what moves could my opponent pull off form this position?", "what moves could I do if I changed to this other position?", etc. etc. I do believe that you won't find any better than anecdotal evidence for this subject, tho. Expecially if you'd need to compare between arts.
- vocatus_gate 11y agoI've always felt the chess analogy applied to rock climbing when I did it. Like a constant "game" against the wall and my body, to see if I could manoeuvre into position to attain the next hold. Very stimulating and at the same time relaxing.
- atom-morgan 11y agoI am not currently practicing BJJ (did years ago) but I would agree. Constantly tapping to veterans is very humbling and the mental strength it takes to maneuver another human being as they attempt to maneuver you, while you're completely gassed, makes a lot of other tasks seem trivial.
- bduerst 11y agoI did both folkstyle and freestyle wrestling for a time (similar), and have used the chess analogy to describe it before. Two equally weighted opponents on a level playing field, with only their limbs as the different pieces to be moved strategically across the board.
- sktrdie 11y agoI wonder if there has been any study regarding the head impact involved with running for long periods of time. I've heard for instance the water-skiing can cause minor brain damage because of the constant bumps in the water. I'm curious because I know that running involves a similar kind of minor - although constant - head impact as your body jumps out of each stride. I have no data to back this up so sorry if I'm just blabbering nonsense.
- delazeur 11y agoI would imagine there is a step change somewhere in causing brain damage. I.e., if your brain can withstand a 1.5g impact it can withstand any number of 1.5g impacts, but 2g or 3g impacts lead to cumulative damage. Then again, I don't know what I'm talking, or where running impacts might fall in that spectrum.
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- known 11y agoSudoku
- illivah 11y agoWhat exercise is better for improving my cooking skill? What about the exercise that's best for my alcohol consumption? If you want to improve your brain, it's important to be healthy, I get that. But come on, the point of exercising is to be healthy. Beyond that no exercise is going to improve your brain directly if it doesn't actually use your brain. This whole movement makes me very skeptical.
- Joof 11y ago1) cooking new things / practice 2) decrease: any exercise most likely. increase: drinking more alcohol in more places to increase tolerance & conditioning.
- etrautmann 11y agoThis logic isn't quite right though your intuition is easy to understand. The thought behind these studies is that exercise leads to the release of certain chemicals, in this case BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor) that leads to new neuron growth. This mechanism is a physiologically reasonable way for exercise to improve your brain without directly using/engaging the neural circuits in a way that would modify learning and memory.
- elcapitan 11y ago> Obviously, rats are not people. We'll have a separate study for that.
- buro9 11y agoOne should probably take care of doing the best exercise for the body first.
- jvanderbot 11y agoGreat. So if you run a lot (long distance cardio), you get a marked increase in new brain cells. What brain cells? The part of the nervous system that regulates (wait for it) breathing and metabolism. No kidding. This is like the study [citation missing] that showed a huge increase in brain cell generation for seniors playing wii fit ... in the area of the brain that regulated fine motor skills. The "Brain" is not a general-purpose computing resource. Until someone can show that these skill-specific increases can translate to IQ or (better) improved long-term creativity and happiness, take them with a grain of salt.
- blennon 11y agoI believe you are mistaken. Adult neurogenesis has only been shown to occur in three brain regions as far as I know: in the hippocampus (declarative memory and learning)[1], the olfactory bulb (smell)[1] and the striatum (procedural memory and learning) [2]. Adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN) has been linked to exercise. The conceptual leap which requires empirical validation is that exercise induced neurogenesis in the hippocampus indeed has a positive effect on memory. Maybe those experiments exist. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106107/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106107/ [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24561062 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24561062
- fluidcruft 11y agoThe hippocampus regulates breathing and metabolism?
- kozikow 11y agoI know a little about neurology, but their study mentioned increase in hippocampus. Hippocampus Wikipedia entry does not mention that it is responsible for breath or metabolism. Some Google searches list different parts of brain responsible for breath[1] and metabolism[2]. 1. http://www.interactive-biology.com/107/what-parts-of-the-brain-control-respiration http://www.interactive-biology.com/107/what-parts-of-the-bra... 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamus
- wodenokoto 11y ago
- andy_ppp 11y agoThere is not enough information in the article to make accurate conclusions about changing your exercise regimen. The fact is that the body adapts to it's environment and that this study is ABOUT RATS you should remain skeptical to its conclusions!
- dghughes 11y agoI used to go to a gym in a mall basement and when I went to go home I could never remember where I parked my car. If I went to the same mall just to shop I had no problem remember where my car was parked.
- Kluny 11y agoSomehow I have trouble equating a rat climbing a wall with a tiny weight attached to its tail, with a human doing heavy weight lifting.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoWhy do these need to be equated?
- Kluny 11y agoThey said that they were testing for the result of "resistance training" in rats. For rats that means climbing a wall with weights tied to their tails. However, if a human was going to do resistance training, they would probably do it by lifting weights. There are other ways, I suppose, but that's the main one. Weightlifting, once you get to higher weights, is a pretty cerebral activity that requires perfect form and close attention to training schedule, repetitions, amount of weight, and diet. It's a very different activity from pulling a weight along because it happens to be attached to your ass and you can't escape it.
- whelp 11y agoSleeping is by far the best exercise for the brain.
- NiftyFifty 11y agoSex with a nerd. muhahaha.a.a
- dang 11y agoPlease stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN.
- unixhero 11y agoJumping from stone to stone (boulders) is supposed to stimulate and train large parts of the brain.
- SonicSoul 11y agoAnd the weight-training rats, although they were much stronger at the end of the experiment than they had been at the start, showed no discernible augmentation of neurogenesis. This phenomenon was deeply studied and illustrated in the 'Jersey Shore' series documentary
- lsdafjklsd 11y agoReminds me of an episode of Bones: a: These are what are known as "Guidos. b: (chuckles) Yeah, Sweetie, I don't think they actually like to be called that. a: But they do. a: That's what they call themselves, although interestingly, not all Guidos are of Italian descent. b: Really? a: While the styles and mannerisms are based on Italian-American tropes, the Guidos can be of any ethnic background. a: They gather at the Jersey Shore. a: The male bonding is near homoerotic. a: The friends or "bros" are more important to them than family. b: Right. b: And how do you know all of this? a: I stumbled across a compelling documentary about them. a: The anthropologist in me was fascinated.
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- robotnik 11y agoStress can inhibit neurogenesis (among other things) in the hippocampus, as the article states. Is it possible that HIIT was not as beneficial for the rodents, because they were, unlike the moderate exercisers, forced to exercise? Being forced to exercise intensely might have been the real source of stress.
- jjallen 11y agoHaving a weight strapped to your tail could definitely be stressful too.
- thesz 11y agoFor humans it is different. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772595/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772595/ - brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) serum level increase for what can be considered high intensity exercise. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/723059 http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/723059 - resistance training induce BDNF release, from all of the body. BDNF can cross brain-blood barrier. Rodents are easy to experiment with, but quite distant from humans in actual metabolism.
- bonniemuffin 11y agoThis struck me as the most important potential difference -- that the moderate-intensity rats were able to make choices about when and how to exercise, while the HIIT rats had exercise forced upon them. It reminds me of Rat Park -- when you stress out rats by treating them poorly, all you end up measuring is the effect of misery on rat physiology.
- agentgt 11y agoPrevious relevant HN post: "Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10594516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10594516 IMO I think squats are superior to running for overall health.
- jjallen 11y agoSo it turns out different kinds of exercise are more or less beneficial for different parts of our bodies, probably ("probably" because the study was in rats only). I reminded myself while reading that article to remember that what may be best for the brain is not necessarily the best for our cardiovascular systems and others.
- personjerry 11y agoHow does taking long walks compare to running?
- ativzzz 11y agoThe article stated that rats who ran more miles had more neurogenesis. So my guess would be walking = less distance than running = less benefit. But this is too much of a simplification. If you walk a mile in 15 minutes and run a mile in 7.5, is there a difference? Maybe not, but if you run, you can then run two miles in the same 15 minutes and increase your efficiency.
- kazinator 11y agoYou wouldn't do interval training without a mileage base. There is no either/or there. I follow the rule of thumb that no more than 3% of the weekly mileage consists of hard repeats. So for instance a weekly mileage of 30 "buys" about a mile of repeats, which could be, say, 4x400 at the track. Some intermediate percentage of the mileage is tempo running, say 15 to 20%. The rest, easy miles. This is just the traditional "training pyramid".
- joelthelion 11y agoSome people do. Check the "seven minute workout" for an example.
- krisroadruck 11y agoMental exersize?
- kmicklas 11y agoI'm skeptical that the "weight training" routine was at all adequate. Climbing a wall with weights attached to you is nothing like a set of heavy squats.
- eggy 11y agoI agree. I used to just use free weights for upper body, and only calf raises, and machines for leg presses and quads, but when I started squatting with just a barbell (non-guided), my lower back pain went away, and standing up off the mattress I had on the floor became a breeze. I jump rope and run as well (barefoot or with FiveFingers by Vibram). I find jumping rope to be a great way to get in 20 min. intense cardio to music. My last job was diving and fixing underwater hydraulics and electrical systems, and always walking with about maybe 3 hours sitting at a desk per day. Jumping rope, or the run, made me feel sharp many hours after. Sometimes weights would make me focus, and be very clear, but I tired and became groggy afterwards. I suspect your body takes a hit, and wants you to sleep to repair all the muscle you tore down.
- melted 11y agoThe best exercise for the brain is the kind you won't give up doing after a month or two.
- mannykannot 11y agoIf you want exercise that will give you something of a mental workout as well, try orienteering.