7 ms·

Physically fit young adults have healthier white matter in their brains

90 points by johnny313 7y ago

Reubend 7y ago
In addition to the great benefits which this article discusses, exercise has also been proven to greatly reduce the risk of depression and Alzheimer's. My personal opinion is that the 2 best things you can do to improve your own intelligence are to constantly challenge yourself to keep learning, and to exercise daily. More info: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/depression-and-exercise/art-20046495 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in... https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/research_progress/prevention https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/research_progress/pr...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- chadcmulligan 7y ago
  and eat your greens! Was talking to an older lady the other day about someone I knew who seems to be "getting old" to me, the first thing she asked was "does he eat his greens?", and no he doesn't. Lots of evidence for helpful brain things in eating your greens, the darker green the better.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  > exercise has also been proven to greatly reduce the risk of depression and Alzheimer's I'm not convinced that it has. Lifestyle interventions in general tend to be given a lot of hype based on very little hard evidence, probably because lifestyle advice is unregulated and appeals to our biases about cultivating virtue. Of those I'm motivated enough to dig into, claims of lifestyle changes having a large effect on disease tend to be based on at least one of: 1) unfounded assumptions about the significance of a correlation (e.g. since exercise intolerance is a symptom of several cardiovascular and neurological conditions, it may be that getting less exercise is an effect rather than a cause of such a disease) 2) cherry-picking poor-quality or pilot studies 3) exaggerating the practical importance of a well-established but small effect 4) assuming that an intervention proven to improve X in a healthy population must help prevent or treat a disease that involves lowered or impaired X For depression in particular, the effect of physical activity per se virtually vanishes in more rigorous studies, or when comparing leisure to non-leisure physical activity [1] [2]. Basically, the psychosocial meaning of "exercise", and the social structure surrounding it as a positive activity, seems to matter more than the actual exercise. [1] https://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depression https://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depr... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037212/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037212/
gonational 7y ago
“Being healthy is healthy... more at 11”
- rienbdj 7y ago
  Not quite. The article claims that the health of various organs affect each other. Is it really so obvious that cardiovascular health improves the brain?
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Sort of yeah. Your cardiovascular system provides oxygen to your brain, which, it needs to function properly. A weak cardiovascular system provides less oxygnated blood and has to work harder than a stronger healthier one to get the same amount of oxygen to the brain. When your brain is deprived of oxygen, your thinking quality decreases.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
t_mann 7y ago
The most relevant paragraph in the entire article comes (almost) at the very end: "Dr. Repple says he and his colleagues are planning experiments to test whether and how various exercise programs affect fitness and the brain in people of different ages." The reported study just documented correlations, so it gives no indication whatsoever on whether there are any causal effects at all.
- shijie 7y ago
  Is it really too much of a stretch that being physiologically fit positively affects other areas of the body than the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems? For millions of years, the evolutionary winners of the human race were able to cognitively and physically outperform others. It makes intuitive sense that peak health has an “entourage effect” on other areas of the body.
  - katzgrau 7y ago
    That may be true but I also wouldn't be surprised if, in modern context, being fit can begin with something cognitive. In my own experience, when I've been out of shape, I felt that I wasn't living to my own expectation and felt some drive to improve. The exercise that followed seemed to improve my thinking too, so there was a bit of an upward cycle.
  - t_mann 7y ago
    It doesn’t seem unplausible, but that’s not the point of doing research. The causality could be the other way round (people who are mentally fit also enjoy sports more, or see more benefits in doing it), or it could be driven by unobserved variables, like influence from your family or friends that leads you to both study and work out hard. What you’re interested in is the treatment effect of doing sports vs not doing sports. With enough and the right kind of data you could try to estimate this effect while accounting for the potential endogeneity. Randomized experiments are a good way of generating such data, but even then the inference is tricky (subjects will know whether they are in the treatment or control group,...).
- anaphor 7y ago
papermachete 7y ago
That's a racist terminology, should be called "Person of color matter".
- codq 7y ago
  What was your purpose in making this comment?
notadoc 7y ago
Healthier people are healthier, indeed. The challenge for some people is how to be physically fit, or how to fit that activity into their own lives or within their own limitations. But surely any activity is better than none. And limit caloric intake to reasonable levels, which will make fitness easier for anyone.
sargun 7y ago
Dumb question - do these correct for quality of life factors? Exercise, to some degree, is a luxury. Is this just another case of people who have access to nice things doing better?
- mruts 7y ago
  I would expect poorer people to do more physical work. I live in a 3rd world country and let me tell you, the people who get the most exercise aren’t doing it in their free time.
- ummonk 7y ago
  They controlled for several factors such as socioeconomic.
justanothersys 7y ago
I’ve always wondered why pro esports players tend to be more athletic looking than the stereotypical couch potato gamer.
- maceurt 7y ago
  Well it also due to the fact that cardio exercise is one of the few ways to naturally improve one's reaction time.
- maceurt 7y ago
  Well it also due to the fact that cardio exercise is one of the few ways to naturally improve one's reaction time. It is crazy though to see how many e-sports players are actually insanely muscular. I think it is most obvious in csgo where you have so many guys who are actually on forms of steriods and could probably compete at a strongman or bodybuilding competition. It is also one of the esports that is most aim and reaction time intensive, so that may be a reason it is like that.

90 points by johnny313 7y ago

In addition to the great benefits which this article discusses, exercise has also been proven to greatly reduce the risk of depression and Alzheimer's. My personal opinion is that the 2 best things you can do to improve your own intelligence are to constantly challenge yourself to keep learning, and to exercise daily. More info: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/depression-and-exercise/art-20046495 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in... https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/research_progress/prevention https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/research_progress/pr...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chadcmulligan 7y ago
and eat your greens! Was talking to an older lady the other day about someone I knew who seems to be "getting old" to me, the first thing she asked was "does he eat his greens?", and no he doesn't. Lots of evidence for helpful brain things in eating your greens, the darker green the better.
0xcde4c3db 7y ago
> exercise has also been proven to greatly reduce the risk of depression and Alzheimer's I'm not convinced that it has. Lifestyle interventions in general tend to be given a lot of hype based on very little hard evidence, probably because lifestyle advice is unregulated and appeals to our biases about cultivating virtue. Of those I'm motivated enough to dig into, claims of lifestyle changes having a large effect on disease tend to be based on at least one of: 1) unfounded assumptions about the significance of a correlation (e.g. since exercise intolerance is a symptom of several cardiovascular and neurological conditions, it may be that getting less exercise is an effect rather than a cause of such a disease) 2) cherry-picking poor-quality or pilot studies 3) exaggerating the practical importance of a well-established but small effect 4) assuming that an intervention proven to improve X in a healthy population must help prevent or treat a disease that involves lowered or impaired X For depression in particular, the effect of physical activity per se virtually vanishes in more rigorous studies, or when comparing leisure to non-leisure physical activity [1] [2]. Basically, the psychosocial meaning of "exercise", and the social structure surrounding it as a positive activity, seems to matter more than the actual exercise. [1] https://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depression https://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depr... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037212/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037212/

gonational 7y ago

“Being healthy is healthy... more at 11”

rienbdj 7y ago
Not quite. The article claims that the health of various organs affect each other. Is it really so obvious that cardiovascular health improves the brain?
- grawprog 7y ago
  Sort of yeah. Your cardiovascular system provides oxygen to your brain, which, it needs to function properly. A weak cardiovascular system provides less oxygnated blood and has to work harder than a stronger healthier one to get the same amount of oxygen to the brain. When your brain is deprived of oxygen, your thinking quality decreases.
dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

t_mann 7y ago

The most relevant paragraph in the entire article comes (almost) at the very end: "Dr. Repple says he and his colleagues are planning experiments to test whether and how various exercise programs affect fitness and the brain in people of different ages." The reported study just documented correlations, so it gives no indication whatsoever on whether there are any causal effects at all.

shijie 7y ago
Is it really too much of a stretch that being physiologically fit positively affects other areas of the body than the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems? For millions of years, the evolutionary winners of the human race were able to cognitively and physically outperform others. It makes intuitive sense that peak health has an “entourage effect” on other areas of the body.
- katzgrau 7y ago
  That may be true but I also wouldn't be surprised if, in modern context, being fit can begin with something cognitive. In my own experience, when I've been out of shape, I felt that I wasn't living to my own expectation and felt some drive to improve. The exercise that followed seemed to improve my thinking too, so there was a bit of an upward cycle.
- t_mann 7y ago
  It doesn’t seem unplausible, but that’s not the point of doing research. The causality could be the other way round (people who are mentally fit also enjoy sports more, or see more benefits in doing it), or it could be driven by unobserved variables, like influence from your family or friends that leads you to both study and work out hard. What you’re interested in is the treatment effect of doing sports vs not doing sports. With enough and the right kind of data you could try to estimate this effect while accounting for the potential endogeneity. Randomized experiments are a good way of generating such data, but even then the inference is tricky (subjects will know whether they are in the treatment or control group,...).
anaphor 7y ago

papermachete 7y ago

That's a racist terminology, should be called "Person of color matter".

codq 7y ago
What was your purpose in making this comment?

notadoc 7y ago

Healthier people are healthier, indeed. The challenge for some people is how to be physically fit, or how to fit that activity into their own lives or within their own limitations. But surely any activity is better than none. And limit caloric intake to reasonable levels, which will make fitness easier for anyone.

sargun 7y ago

Dumb question - do these correct for quality of life factors? Exercise, to some degree, is a luxury. Is this just another case of people who have access to nice things doing better?

mruts 7y ago
I would expect poorer people to do more physical work. I live in a 3rd world country and let me tell you, the people who get the most exercise aren’t doing it in their free time.
ummonk 7y ago
They controlled for several factors such as socioeconomic.

justanothersys 7y ago

I’ve always wondered why pro esports players tend to be more athletic looking than the stereotypical couch potato gamer.

maceurt 7y ago
Well it also due to the fact that cardio exercise is one of the few ways to naturally improve one's reaction time.
maceurt 7y ago
Well it also due to the fact that cardio exercise is one of the few ways to naturally improve one's reaction time. It is crazy though to see how many e-sports players are actually insanely muscular. I think it is most obvious in csgo where you have so many guys who are actually on forms of steriods and could probably compete at a strongman or bodybuilding competition. It is also one of the esports that is most aim and reaction time intensive, so that may be a reason it is like that.