8 ms·

How exercise boosts brain health

119 points by ca98am79 13y ago

nephorider 13y ago
More and more scientific confirmation of "mense sane in corpore sano"
- dhimes 13y ago
  often translated as, "A sound mind in a healthy body." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano
bo1024 13y ago
Remember that the human body is adapted to frequent physical exercise. So the story would really be more accurate to say that lack of exercise impairs brain function due to less release of irisin. Perhaps a small difference in wording, but I think the change in perspective is important.
- tobylane 13y ago
  Nearly everything about human physiology can be thought about what would have worked for hunter-gathers. We're specialised in some areas, most of which doesn't require a constant practise (e.g. a 60 year old can start training for a marathon). But the one of the basics of that life was daily exercise, it's a shame it appears avoidable to us now.
  - taeric 13y ago
    Of course, "daily exercise" may have simply included what amounts to a long walk, no? Not everything was heavily labor based. Certainly not year long. More, if you go far enough back (not actually that far, frighteningly) and things like "respect for the life of others" drops out rather sharply. So.... what, exactly, is the lesson here? My takeaway is that rose colored glasses can make even some of the most horrid of conditions (human history), somehow look good. Me? I'll take the present where I have a reasonable expectation that my kids will not die before me. By a long shot.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      My understanding is that we're basically built to be walking ~8 hours most days. So yes, a long walk... but longer than most of us can fit in.
      - taeric 13y ago
        I would find that a little tough to believe. I could see long walks occasionally, but sustained walks of ~8 hours a day just doesn't make sense. Where would we have been walking? Just giant circles?
        euccastro 13y ago
        Wherever food seemed to be, I imagine. Google "wolf run hours per day". Where do they run?
        fsiefken 13y ago
        "... the Hadza, a population of traditional hunter-gatherers living in the open savannah of northern Tanzania. Despite spending their days trekking long distances to forage for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable from that of Westerners." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.ht...
  - Dewie 13y ago
    From what I've read, I think I'll gladly take the physiology forced upon me by what hunter-gatherers were used to, over what subsistence farmers were used to.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    > it's a shame [daily exercise] appears avoidable to us now Unless you're elderly, sick, or disabled. Then making long walks, jogging, and sprinting optional is literally a life-saver.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
There's no question about this personally. It's why I started exercising about 18 months ago, because I realized my ability to concentrate had faded as my fitness had decreased. I couldn't stand it any more and had to fix it. It's made a huge difference.
- flanbiscuit 13y ago
  what do you do? What's your routine?
  - jmduke 13y ago
    I am not the post to whom you replied, but to share my own routine (similar thing, started seriously pursuing fitness over the past 8 months or so and have noticed a lot of cognitive reward): - Every morning except Sunday I'll do some form of cardio; first I did C25K, then random biking, now I'm doing a sprint regimen (from half-awake to dead legs in like eight minutes; talk about bang for your buck) - Lift every other day doing a simple weights program (started off doing Starting Strength, moved to bodyweight stuff, now back on Starting Strength) - On weekends I do something fun: co-ed frisbee/soccer leagues are a dime a dozen and will give you quite the workout. The past few weekends I've been going to a climbing gym, which has been awesome. I had this idea in my head that improving my level of fitness was this Herculean task that would take hours a day, but it's really not. I spend roughly thirty minutes a day working out.
    - philangist 13y ago
      I've found starting strength to be a lot of fun and very beginner friendly (apart from the overhead press anyway). I'd suggest anyone who wants to get into lifting follow it, nothing feels better than going from squatting 0 to 200 lbs in the course of a few months.
      - rurounijones 13y ago
        Ditto for SS, I have no idea how well it compares to other programs but for the sense of progress (weight increases every time) it cannot be beaten. Good if you have tried and then quit the gym before. I also recommend fitocracy.com (or any other sites of that ilk) to "game-ify" exercise a bit and keep you motivated.
zenmaker 13y ago
I'm actually about to shift my workflow in a major way to include more movement. Already use an adjustable desk, standing in the morning and sitting in the evening. And when I'm on calls, I always use a headset and walk-n-talk.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That's good and all, but activity does not replace exercise.
  - zenmaker 13y ago
    Completely agree, as I do with the comments below. A wide range of "real" exercise, from high-intensity training to endurance and flexibility, has and will continue to be a part of my life. My comment was just on the narrower idea of making the insane number of hours I (and most people) spend in front of a screen or on calls every day a whole lot less sedentary.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Might want to go so far as to consider a treadmill when you're on your headset when you're doing your walk n talk.
- pmr_ 13y ago
  This is very far from exercise but it might feel to you as exercise and an increase of movement because your perspective on the physical abilities of the average human is skewed. One astonishing thing I've learned while becoming more active is what a normal body is really capable of without going into the realm of professional athletes. Running a marathon with a slow pace is really feasible. So is lugging a 15-20kg backpack for 35-40km per day for about a month or rock climbing/bouldering in the lower difficulties. To achieve either of it you wont need a very hard exercise regimen either, rather persistence. Please don't take this as personal criticism. I just find it important to point out that there is a huge gap between what people unfamiliar with sport perceive as achievements and what actually are achievements. Just put in 4 hours of running and 4 hours of climbing per week and you will see for yourself. Edit: Or I just failed to see the sarcasm in your post. Entirely possible :)
auctiontheory 13y ago
Does the underlying article, which is not linked to, specify quality and quantity of exercise necessary to experience the benefit?
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Can't comment on this one in particular, but the threshold most often set forth for this or that health benefit from exercise is 30 minutes of elevated heart rate a day, aka 3-5 hours a week.
- guelo 13y ago
  The experiments were conducted on mice so probably have little applicability to humans. For what it's worth, the experiment used mice housed in cages with access to a running wheel for 30 days of voluntary excessive. The control group did not have running wheels.
  - Cyranix 13y ago
    As the husband of a neuroscience researcher who works with a mouse model, I believe you'd be surprised at the applicability of such research towards human analogues.
  - im3w1l 13y ago
    What did the other mice do? Just sit around, doing nothing?
jalayir 13y ago
Distance runner here. This may may not seem medically sound, but I have this theory that mental exhaustion and physical exhaustion are inversely proportional to an extent.
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
I did some research into when diminishing marginal returns to exercise kick in. I eventually found this excellent study http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/5/1382.long http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/5/1382.long which indicated to me that ~1000Cal/week expended in a vigorous fashion should be what I shoot for. This means that stuff that elevates post exercise oxygen consumption like resistance training and interval training for cardio are great bangs for your buck. This jives well with other research on the health benefits of these activities. I'm currently hitting the threshold with 2 days/wk of HIIT and resistance training each.
espeed 13y ago
John Ratey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratey), the professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who wrote Driven to Distration, recently published a book called Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113506 http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-B...). Spark details how high-intensity cardio (like sprints or interval training) put your brain chemicals in balance in part by generating BDNF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_factor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_fact...), which as Ratey describes, it's like "Miracle-gro" for the brain. Last year my stress levels were getting out of control from working too much. At the time I was running at least two miles every day so it's not like I wasn't exercising. But then one day I changed from running a couple miles to running 50-yard sprints, as fast and as hard as I could push myself. The first day I only ran four sprints, but I felt euphoric the rest of the day -- the best I had felt in years. So I tried it again a couple days later, and sure enough it worked again -- I felt amazing. So then I had to find out why this worked -- why a few sprints were so much more effective than running several miles. I started Googling and eventually found Ratey's book -- it explains the entire biochemical process of what's going on and why sprinting works. It's an eye-opening read. Each chapter covers how high-intensity cardio affects things like stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD. I have ADHD but haven't taken anything for it in years (since I was in college), and I can attest that sprints not only fixed by stress levels, but my ADHD symptoms were almost non existent. Here's a key point that Ratey makes throughout the book that completely changed my perspective on things -- he says that instead of thinking of exercise as something you should do to look good and build a healthy body, you should instead think of exercise as the key to building a healthy brain: "We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why. We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best" (http://www.sparkinglife.org http://www.sparkinglife.org). In the book's introduction he goes on to say, "Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain." In fact the brain exercise routine he recommends is similar to a weight workout routine, in that you have to push yourself hard one day, and then take a day off to let your brain recover, just like in weight training. Another key is when you sprint, always put everything you have into it. Run as fast and as hard as you can so you are constantly pushing your body and your brain past their limitations -- this is the key to growth. Reposted from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323019 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323019
samstave 13y ago
One of my favorite quotes from growing up was from my martial arts class, we had this trainer who would come over a couple of times a year from Israel - and during one session where we were doing particularly interesting movement, he said: "These movements open up dormant brain circuitry" -- it was a statement that always stood out to me.
deviltry 13y ago
Explains why Stephen Hawking is so pumped and smart.
sethlesky 13y ago
This has been absolutely true for me. Both lifting, olympic style compound lifts and cardio have made a measurable difference in my ability to concentrate and problem solve. I've also measured a marked increase in retention when memorizing GRE words while jogging over memorizing them while sitting. That experiment inspired me to put together this website: http://rungre.com http://rungre.com (shameless yet hopefully relevant plug) Has anyone else tried to combine studying and exercise?

119 points by ca98am79 13y ago

nephorider 13y ago

More and more scientific confirmation of "mense sane in corpore sano"

dhimes 13y ago
often translated as, "A sound mind in a healthy body." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano

bo1024 13y ago

Remember that the human body is adapted to frequent physical exercise. So the story would really be more accurate to say that lack of exercise impairs brain function due to less release of irisin. Perhaps a small difference in wording, but I think the change in perspective is important.

tobylane 13y ago
Nearly everything about human physiology can be thought about what would have worked for hunter-gathers. We're specialised in some areas, most of which doesn't require a constant practise (e.g. a 60 year old can start training for a marathon). But the one of the basics of that life was daily exercise, it's a shame it appears avoidable to us now.
- taeric 13y ago
  Of course, "daily exercise" may have simply included what amounts to a long walk, no? Not everything was heavily labor based. Certainly not year long. More, if you go far enough back (not actually that far, frighteningly) and things like "respect for the life of others" drops out rather sharply. So.... what, exactly, is the lesson here? My takeaway is that rose colored glasses can make even some of the most horrid of conditions (human history), somehow look good. Me? I'll take the present where I have a reasonable expectation that my kids will not die before me. By a long shot.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    My understanding is that we're basically built to be walking ~8 hours most days. So yes, a long walk... but longer than most of us can fit in.
    - taeric 13y ago
      I would find that a little tough to believe. I could see long walks occasionally, but sustained walks of ~8 hours a day just doesn't make sense. Where would we have been walking? Just giant circles?
      - euccastro 13y ago
        Wherever food seemed to be, I imagine. Google "wolf run hours per day". Where do they run?
        fsiefken 13y ago
        "... the Hadza, a population of traditional hunter-gatherers living in the open savannah of northern Tanzania. Despite spending their days trekking long distances to forage for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable from that of Westerners." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.ht...
- Dewie 13y ago
  From what I've read, I think I'll gladly take the physiology forced upon me by what hunter-gatherers were used to, over what subsistence farmers were used to.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  > it's a shame [daily exercise] appears avoidable to us now Unless you're elderly, sick, or disabled. Then making long walks, jogging, and sprinting optional is literally a life-saver.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

There's no question about this personally. It's why I started exercising about 18 months ago, because I realized my ability to concentrate had faded as my fitness had decreased. I couldn't stand it any more and had to fix it. It's made a huge difference.

flanbiscuit 13y ago
what do you do? What's your routine?
- jmduke 13y ago
  I am not the post to whom you replied, but to share my own routine (similar thing, started seriously pursuing fitness over the past 8 months or so and have noticed a lot of cognitive reward): - Every morning except Sunday I'll do some form of cardio; first I did C25K, then random biking, now I'm doing a sprint regimen (from half-awake to dead legs in like eight minutes; talk about bang for your buck) - Lift every other day doing a simple weights program (started off doing Starting Strength, moved to bodyweight stuff, now back on Starting Strength) - On weekends I do something fun: co-ed frisbee/soccer leagues are a dime a dozen and will give you quite the workout. The past few weekends I've been going to a climbing gym, which has been awesome. I had this idea in my head that improving my level of fitness was this Herculean task that would take hours a day, but it's really not. I spend roughly thirty minutes a day working out.
  - philangist 13y ago
    I've found starting strength to be a lot of fun and very beginner friendly (apart from the overhead press anyway). I'd suggest anyone who wants to get into lifting follow it, nothing feels better than going from squatting 0 to 200 lbs in the course of a few months.
    - rurounijones 13y ago
      Ditto for SS, I have no idea how well it compares to other programs but for the sense of progress (weight increases every time) it cannot be beaten. Good if you have tried and then quit the gym before. I also recommend fitocracy.com (or any other sites of that ilk) to "game-ify" exercise a bit and keep you motivated.

zenmaker 13y ago

I'm actually about to shift my workflow in a major way to include more movement. Already use an adjustable desk, standing in the morning and sitting in the evening. And when I'm on calls, I always use a headset and walk-n-talk.

sliverstorm 13y ago
That's good and all, but activity does not replace exercise.
- zenmaker 13y ago
  Completely agree, as I do with the comments below. A wide range of "real" exercise, from high-intensity training to endurance and flexibility, has and will continue to be a part of my life. My comment was just on the narrower idea of making the insane number of hours I (and most people) spend in front of a screen or on calls every day a whole lot less sedentary.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
Might want to go so far as to consider a treadmill when you're on your headset when you're doing your walk n talk.
pmr_ 13y ago
This is very far from exercise but it might feel to you as exercise and an increase of movement because your perspective on the physical abilities of the average human is skewed. One astonishing thing I've learned while becoming more active is what a normal body is really capable of without going into the realm of professional athletes. Running a marathon with a slow pace is really feasible. So is lugging a 15-20kg backpack for 35-40km per day for about a month or rock climbing/bouldering in the lower difficulties. To achieve either of it you wont need a very hard exercise regimen either, rather persistence. Please don't take this as personal criticism. I just find it important to point out that there is a huge gap between what people unfamiliar with sport perceive as achievements and what actually are achievements. Just put in 4 hours of running and 4 hours of climbing per week and you will see for yourself. Edit: Or I just failed to see the sarcasm in your post. Entirely possible :)

auctiontheory 13y ago

Does the underlying article, which is not linked to, specify quality and quantity of exercise necessary to experience the benefit?

sliverstorm 13y ago
Can't comment on this one in particular, but the threshold most often set forth for this or that health benefit from exercise is 30 minutes of elevated heart rate a day, aka 3-5 hours a week.
guelo 13y ago
The experiments were conducted on mice so probably have little applicability to humans. For what it's worth, the experiment used mice housed in cages with access to a running wheel for 30 days of voluntary excessive. The control group did not have running wheels.
- Cyranix 13y ago
  As the husband of a neuroscience researcher who works with a mouse model, I believe you'd be surprised at the applicability of such research towards human analogues.
- im3w1l 13y ago
  What did the other mice do? Just sit around, doing nothing?

jalayir 13y ago

Distance runner here. This may may not seem medically sound, but I have this theory that mental exhaustion and physical exhaustion are inversely proportional to an extent.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

I did some research into when diminishing marginal returns to exercise kick in. I eventually found this excellent study http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/5/1382.long http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/5/1382.long which indicated to me that ~1000Cal/week expended in a vigorous fashion should be what I shoot for. This means that stuff that elevates post exercise oxygen consumption like resistance training and interval training for cardio are great bangs for your buck. This jives well with other research on the health benefits of these activities. I'm currently hitting the threshold with 2 days/wk of HIIT and resistance training each.

espeed 13y ago

John Ratey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratey), the professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who wrote Driven to Distration, recently published a book called Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113506 http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-B...). Spark details how high-intensity cardio (like sprints or interval training) put your brain chemicals in balance in part by generating BDNF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_factor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_fact...), which as Ratey describes, it's like "Miracle-gro" for the brain. Last year my stress levels were getting out of control from working too much. At the time I was running at least two miles every day so it's not like I wasn't exercising. But then one day I changed from running a couple miles to running 50-yard sprints, as fast and as hard as I could push myself. The first day I only ran four sprints, but I felt euphoric the rest of the day -- the best I had felt in years. So I tried it again a couple days later, and sure enough it worked again -- I felt amazing. So then I had to find out why this worked -- why a few sprints were so much more effective than running several miles. I started Googling and eventually found Ratey's book -- it explains the entire biochemical process of what's going on and why sprinting works. It's an eye-opening read. Each chapter covers how high-intensity cardio affects things like stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD. I have ADHD but haven't taken anything for it in years (since I was in college), and I can attest that sprints not only fixed by stress levels, but my ADHD symptoms were almost non existent. Here's a key point that Ratey makes throughout the book that completely changed my perspective on things -- he says that instead of thinking of exercise as something you should do to look good and build a healthy body, you should instead think of exercise as the key to building a healthy brain: "We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why. We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best" (http://www.sparkinglife.org http://www.sparkinglife.org). In the book's introduction he goes on to say, "Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain." In fact the brain exercise routine he recommends is similar to a weight workout routine, in that you have to push yourself hard one day, and then take a day off to let your brain recover, just like in weight training. Another key is when you sprint, always put everything you have into it. Run as fast and as hard as you can so you are constantly pushing your body and your brain past their limitations -- this is the key to growth. Reposted from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323019 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323019

samstave 13y ago

One of my favorite quotes from growing up was from my martial arts class, we had this trainer who would come over a couple of times a year from Israel - and during one session where we were doing particularly interesting movement, he said: "These movements open up dormant brain circuitry" -- it was a statement that always stood out to me.

deviltry 13y ago

Explains why Stephen Hawking is so pumped and smart.

sethlesky 13y ago

This has been absolutely true for me. Both lifting, olympic style compound lifts and cardio have made a measurable difference in my ability to concentrate and problem solve. I've also measured a marked increase in retention when memorizing GRE words while jogging over memorizing them while sitting. That experiment inspired me to put together this website: http://rungre.com http://rungre.com (shameless yet hopefully relevant plug) Has anyone else tried to combine studying and exercise?