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When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows
- kleiba 2y ago[flagged]
- high_na_euv 2y agoWhy so snarky? Those two do not contradict eachother
- stronglikedan 2y agoDolph Lundgren, for example.
- alexander2002 2y agoPerhaps building/having neurons and utlizing nerurons are two different things? You can have a very good gaming pc but if you are only using it to play solitaire then you are under utilizing the capacity/power. I am not a neuro expert so take this with a grain of salt.
- kossae 2y agoProbably not the best delivery, but perhaps use of anabolic steroids in bodybuilding could have a counteracting detrimental effect to the brain (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632231632529X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632231...).
- lm28469 2y agoWhat percentage of people going to the gym takes steroids ?
- huehehue 2y agoIn the US, between 15% - 30% according to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1484557/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1484557/ I would guess this number is higher today
- tayo42 2y agoIf testerone counts then probably. Feels like everyone wants to be on trt in my hobby circle (bjj)
- evilduck 2y agoI don’t agree about bodybuilders being stupid, but going to the gym and being a bodybuilder are not one and the same. They just happen to occupy the same spaces. And in bodybuilding, unless someone is specifically a natty/natural bodybuilding competitor the answer is pretty much “all of them have been on gear at some point in time”. For other gym-goers, the answer is, nobody knows unless they tell you and since steroids are very illegal, people don’t tend to shout it from the rooftops.
- mp05 2y agoDo these studies control for the fact that only dumbasses take anabolic steroids? :)
- mp05 2y agoIt's a lazy and dated stereotype. I know a lot of very intelligent people who spend a great deal of time lifting heavy things. In fact, there's a joke around our campus that the engineering school needs its own fitness center due to the overall buffness of the students.
- dartos 2y agoIt’s almost like people are different, right? lol In my experience, a lot of really fit engineers see it as another optimization problem, which is an interesting way to look at working out. I’ve been trying to adopt that mindset.
- mp05 2y agoCareful, you'll get scorn from those who think you should be spending that time doing leetcode. How could you be any good at your job when you're flexing and sweating all the time?
- HPsquared 2y agoCan call it the "character creation points limit fallacy".
- easythrees 2y agoThere’s this remarkably stupid stereotype that muscles equates to stupidity. If you look at some of the champions, they all have degrees in fields like Accounting (Ronnie Coleman, Phil Heath) or Chemistry (Frank Zane). Schwarzenegger famously did business school at night while a bodybuilder.
- giuliomagnifico 2y agoHaha, we should coding with one hand and lift weights with the other :)
- snarg 2y agoYou jest, but when i was in school, i used to do pushups, situps, planks, curls, etc. while studying. It helped quite a lot with data retention.
- giuliomagnifico 2y agoThat's true! I also listen to lessons while walking,it helps me remember
- FartyMcFarter 2y agoMuscles need neurons to control them, so it makes sense that some feedback loop would exist. I remember reading about similar feedback loops between muscle growth and bone density (as you get stronger, bones benefit from being resilient to higher loads). As I understand it, the kinetic chain goes nervous system -> muscles -> tendons -> bones. It would make sense for all of these to make each other stronger in some way.
- JusticeJuice 2y agoDon't forget cartilage. Regular cyclical loads trigger cartilage growth. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PNBjKJ9hxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PNBjKJ9hxQ
- elsamuko 2y agoSea squirts digest their own brain when they become stationary: https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2022/07/20/what-can-sea-squirts-tell-us-about-neurodegeneration/ https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2022/07/20/what-can-sea-squir...
- euroderf 2y agoAny parallels to sedentary human beings are strictly coincidental.
- barrenko 2y agoIt makes sense to think of bones as endocrine organs.
- 1GZ0 2y agoWell dad, turns out you were right..
- benbojangles 2y agoThen why do sci injury patients need to remain still?
- devmor 2y agoProbably because the risk of catastrophic damage from moving far outweighs the benefits in that situation.
- tsunamifury 2y agoA brisk one our walk or hill climb of a few lifts of a 10-15lb weight weight set does wonders for reducing anxiety, stopping stiffness and soreness, getting the brain thinking. The whole body is a thinking system with nerves and muscles that need feedback to work as well.
- myth_drannon 2y agoHow much of it is just reduced CO2 from being in the open air vs sitting in a stuffy office?
- tpm 2y agoNot much I would think - there is a clear difference between just being outside and being outside while expending lots of energy, at least for me.
- tsunamifury 2y agoMore the deep breathing triggered by a hill climb or brisk walk than the actual atmosphere.
- ggu7hgfk8j 2y agoMotor neurons
- Etheryte 2y agoI'm not sure which part they're claiming here is novel? Myokines' effect on neuron growth and wellbeing is a well known phenomenon, no? Or is this another instance of MIT press overstating their work?
- almost_usual 2y agoTwo things that will improve mental clarity and sleep. Not drinking alcohol and strength training.
- bedobi 2y agoTook me three times to parse what you wrote, I thought you were saying Not strength training improves mental clarity and sleep lol
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kanbankaren 2y agoJust one missing comma before `and`
- khaneja 2y agoAlso, a colon after `sleep` in place of the period
- charliebwrites 2y agoAnd good sleep will increase mental clarity and strength training And not drinking alcohol will improve good sleep and strength training They all impact each other!
- yazzku 2y agoIt's a small town shop.
- kombine 2y agoI've had a lot of fights about this with my girlfriend. We both work in academia and regularly go to the gym, but she insists to have a drink every now and then, which she says helps her take an edge off work stress. She also scolds me some times when I want to go to bed before 10pm, saying this is too restrictive and less fun. We ended up breaking up last week - not exclusively because of this, but these incompatibilities definitely contributed to the decision.
- TeeMassive 2y agoEveryone who starts working out notice this. Very fast gains in strength and resistance the first weeks due to neuronal signals improvement. And then a slow down where muscle gains take over.
- barrenko 2y agoMuscles are lazy, CNS is necessarily much much lazier.
- SirMaster 2y agoThis frustrates me because I see this said often, but I have never experienced it myself. It makes me feel like I am doing something wrong that somehow everyone else is doing right.
- phil21 2y agofwiw it took me a few months to see any gains myself. The key for me was consistency and showing up on a regular schedule. Twice a week for me, with a third day thrown in if I could manage it. But those two days I chose were absolutely non-optional and I held myself to it. Took about 60-90 days before I noticed any sort of improvement.
- blastonico 2y agoOk, I'm almost convinced to start lifting weights... if they release a study showing hair growing I'll be 100% in.
- maxilevi 2y agoThere is no negative effect to doing so, why would you not?
- the__alchemist 2y agoTime, and it may be desirable to avoid things you find uncomfortable.
- swat535 2y agoThe time commitment is vastly over stated. It takes an hour at most and you can go twice a week, working different muscle groups. Your muscles need 3-4 days of rest especially as you increase intensity. So you can only do bicep workouts once a week for example. Even then, any exercise is better than none. You can even just start at home with adjustable dumbbells and go to the gym when you hit those limits..
- the__alchemist 2y agoIf I did everything people said isn't a big time commitment, I'd have no time left! Edit: A more direct response - I agree with you that it's not a big deal, especially if you have dumbbells etc at home. (I think it's worth it, and lift weights.) It's still a time commitment, and therefore opportunity cost. That is a downside, irt the parent comment. I think you'll find many weight lifters spend more than the amount of time you cited. (Especially if they don't have a home gym), and I suspect any benefits are proportional (not linearly) to time spent doing it.
- ssl-3 2y agoThere's all kinds of potential negative effects. 1. It generally comes at non-zero financial expense. 2. I might not know what I'm doing. 3. I might get hurt. 4. I might cause someone else to get hurt. Or, perhaps most-tortuously: 5. They're all going to laugh at me.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cdrini 2y agoClarification since a number of the comments are reading this as "strength training makes your brain stronger". This study looked at _motor_ neurons, not neurons in your brain. Motor neurons are the neurons between your spinal cord and muscle cells, responsible for transferring the signal from your brain to contract/relax your muscles. I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (the resolution of how many neurons are attached to a muscle) of the muscles, which is the mechanism for increased motor control that eg pianists have. I think this study is shedding more light on process, and providing stronger empirical evidence for that exact mechanism. Very exciting that this might be used to help people recover from nerve damage/spinal cord injury!
- deepGem 2y agoI have a unique related problem. My left leg calf muscle is almost an inch smaller than my right calf muscle. I just noticed it this year. Felt so weird. Why would there be imbalance in calf muscle growth to such an extreme degree. Then I tried to do a single leg calf raise on the left leg and couldn't do it. I still can't do it after 6-7 months. I must admit I am not training the left calf muscle at all, just the usual running and some sporadic squats. This could have something to do with motor neurons not firing or something I don't know. I went to a physical therapist who suggested some calf and toe stretches and it seemed ridiculous to me. Like why would I exercise a muscle or a bunch of bones that is not functioning as expected, wouldn't that exacerbate the problem ? He didn't give a convincing answer but this paper makes me think he was spot on. Isolating and exercising the calf muscles could probably help fire those neurons I don't know.I should do some more study on this. It's not debilitating now but I don't know what will be the impact on my balance 20-30 years from now. I am 47.
- sizzle 2y agoI have the same thing, the PT is right. Activating your big toe kicks off a chain of biomechanics up to your hip muscles (glutes) and will correct your gait and muscles that are not firing if you work on it consciously. I still deal with it when I forget the problem went away and sit in my computer chair all day leaning on one side not using my other calf. Awareness is key and conscious work will activate it over time.