
How exercise boosts brain health - ca98am79
http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-exercise-boosts-brain-health
======
bo1024
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
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
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
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
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
Wherever food seemed to be, I imagine.

Google "wolf run hours per day". Where do they run?

~~~
fsiefken
"... 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.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.htm)

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nazgulnarsil
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.

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waterlesscloud
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
what do you do? What's your routine?

~~~
jmduke
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
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
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.

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

~~~
guelo
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
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.

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espeed
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-B...](http://www.amazon.com/Spark-
Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113506)).

 _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_fact...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-
derived_neurotrophic_factor)), 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)

~~~
socillion
A bit pedantic, but I'd like to defend endurance running - comparing 2 mile
runs to really pushing yourself with HIIT is unfair. At 5mph (a slow pace)
that's only 24 minutes, which is usually not enough time to even experience a
runner's high and about when you get settled into a rhythm as a distance
runner.

If you only have 30 minutes you're indisputably better off sprinting.

~~~
auctiontheory
As a practical matter, very few over 30s can keep up a regular sprinting habit
without injuring themselves. HIIT running may be better in theory, but it
doesn't work out that way in real life.

~~~
socillion
I find that even at 20 it's very easy for me to cause joint issues after
several years of inactivity. If you do too much too fast it'll cause problems
no matter your age - although I'm sure age is something that you should take
into consideration.

If you're concerned, there are alternatives like swimming and biking that are
lower impact.

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sethlesky
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?

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samstave
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.

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zenmaker
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.

~~~
pmr_
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 :)

~~~
zenmaker
See my comment above. I've actually been an entrepreneur, teacher, trainer and
comptetitor in the health and fitness field for the better part of the last 15
years. But the last few have seen a lot more screen time, so I'm doing what I
can to change that.

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

~~~
dhimes
_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)

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jalayir
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.

