
Physically fit young adults have healthier white matter in their brains - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/well/move/being-young-active-and-physically-fit-may-be-very-good-for-your-brain.html
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Reubend
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...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
conditions/depression/in-depth/depression-and-exercise/art-20046495)
[https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-
dementia/research_progress/pr...](https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-
dementia/research_progress/prevention)

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0xcde4c3db
> 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-
depr...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depression)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037212/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037212/)

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t_mann
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.

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shijie
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.

~~~
t_mann
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,...).

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sargun
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?

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ummonk
They controlled for several factors such as socioeconomic.

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

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maceurt
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.

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notadoc
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.

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

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rienbdj
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?

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grawprog
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.

