The connection between exercise and brain health has now been super conclusively and astonishingly shown, but what are some possible evolutionary reasons for this connection?
Maybe the extra energetic investment in brain health is only justified when there is an energetic surplus, and doing exercise correlates with having extra energy available? (As opposed to starving and thus needing to conserve energy.) But that doesn't actually make sense, since the extra metabolic expenditure of these processes can't possibly be all that high, and doesn't the brain use almost the same (huge) amount of resources whether it's at rest or very cognitively active?
Prehistoric humans likely exercised as a matter of course. They weren't sedentary. The brain evolved assuming the condition of exercise. naturally occurring byproducts of exercise were just always there for the brain to use.
This is my favorite explanation. It may be that the deficiencies of these chemicals are harmful and the release of them returns us to "regular" function, but since we are so sedentary it appears that we are getting a benefit.
Physical activity levels were also within a standard deviation of one another (between western and h/g populations).
The brain evolved in similar conditions to modern man. I would argue current conditions are far better for the brain in terms of good nutrition and low disease.
The effect in the OP was not selected for, it is likely a serendipitous biochemical interaction. Repair enzymes from one part of they also effecting another.
Within a standard deviation (just) of the hunter gatherers, but not for Western males.
PAL is 2.26 +- 0.48 for Hadza male and 1.81 +- 0.21 for Western Male. That's an average 25% difference in activity. I'm not a biologist but it seems like that could surely be significant.
Especially if the protein being talked about is generated by strenuous activity above some level. 25% total difference in activity could be a very large difference in activity above a threshold, since both groups are going to spend a lot of the day sitting around, sleeping or walking slowly.
Selection pressure doesn't care about standard deviations, believe it or not. Even a small difference can exert evolutionary pressure over a long period of time.
Minute changes are actually a huge part of evolution. Evolution is much more about minute changes than it is about huge (standard-deviation-level) changes.
As far as calories go, exercise doesn't have much impact. And maybe the Hunter/Gatherers are more efficient in their metabolisms.
As far as exercise goes, maybe one standard deviation is enough to produce a brain effect. And maybe there is a lot of variation within modern populations, with many far enough below the average to have a significant effect.
I find it really hard to believe that any healthy Hunter/Gatherers sit around all day like so many moderns do.
> Repair enzymes from one part of they also effecting another
That's an even more fascinating idea; so what other things could create the conditions for other repair systems to be activated. Maybe meditation, maybe different drugs, plants, ketosis etc...
Additionally, the lymphatic system doesn't have a pump like the circulatory system. So not only does exercise improve blood circulation thereby improving oxygen and nutrient delivery body wide, exercise improves lymph flow thereby assisting in removing metabolic waste products from the interstitial fluid. Also, the lymphatic system can be considered an immune organ, so exercise improves the immune response.
And, of course, we know nutrients like Zinc and Vitamin C are essential for tissue repair via being essential for DNA replication.
This does not imply that, for example, a daily or weekly peak of energy expenditure was the same. As training once per week for 15 minutes with weights is enough to grow muscles, it could be that hunter/gatheres needed to release energy at the max level like running away from a lion much more often than we do nowdays and during those releases the brain also had to work hardest.
>during those releases the brain also had to work hardest
That is speculation, and is unintuitive. Why would the brain "work hardest" when running? Why would modern humans not exert the same forces during sport? Why would humans, the top group-oriented predator, run from a lion?
The data linked above shows that observed Physical Activity Levels and caloric use are comparable to modern day. Stop inserting your own assumptions into the data.
The data do not indicate that we experience the same need to work at max energy for brief periods of time as hunter/gatheres. Besides running away from predators in most efficient way, consider throwing оf javelins or stones during hunting. It requires a very precise muscle work at max energy after intense brain activity of target selection. Modern day life does not involve that, yet evolutionary this combination of brain/muscle work at peak could be advantageous.
Any study that shows present-day humans (at least those living in Western societies) to get the same amounts of exercise as any other culture is bound to be deeply flawed.
Interestingly, exercise itself actually helps get an energetically favorable type of energy to the brain in the first place: lactate.[1] Moreover, lactate in the brain triggers the release of BDNF, which causes neurogenesis.[2]
Actually there is some evidence to suggest that the runners high is due to endocannabinoids rather than endorphin release. Interestingly the endocannabinoid system is also activated when consuming cannabis and experiencing the resulting cannabis/runners high.
Real runner's high means you started damaging your muscles and brain flushes endorphins to your blood stream in order to keep you being able to continue without experiencing debilitating pain in case you are running from a disaster/predator/death in the last attempt before you cease to be able to move. Not something you'd want to achieve repeatedly.
Then I'm not sure I ever got Runner's High. I did get Runner's Crave after one week tied to a bed. I couldn't stay in place and was anxious all the time, fantasizing about climbing the stairs between the hospital floors.
Any exercise can lead to the release of endorphins. Endorphin release doesn't occur only to mask the damage you are doing to yourself in the face of an extreme life threatening situation (which is also accompanied by the release of adrenaline and other hormones).
>The endogenous opioids seem likely to be assigned a significant role in the integrated hormonal and metabolic response to exercise. This article reviews the present evidence on exercise and the endogenous opioids, and examines their involvement in a number of widely disparate physiological processes
My memory is telling me that studies of exercise show the longest living are those that do anything from endurance to what the article below calls "mixed" sports. Powerlifting and high intensity training may offer some benefit, but it is not as much as endurance training.
Endurance exercise displays an inverted U curve in terms of longevity.
Strength is highly correlated with reduced all cause mortality. Which direction the relationship goes is debatable, but being strong is pretty sweet in and of itself.
Anyways I've run marathons in the past, but I mostly do strength training now, actually mostly callisthenics. It's less dedication, gives me more of an adrenaline rush and easier to do than endurance training. I don't deny, though, that most of what I've read says that cardio is better if you just simply want to live as long as possible.
Though I wasn't able to find it offhand, the study with the inverse U curve showed that the moderate training group had lower all cause mortality than the extreme training group (who still had lower all cause mortality than the sedentary population). The meta-analyses I was able to find did not show the inverted U, but it is very possible that too few studies had "extreme" training groups for the far side of the distribution to show up.
If you only watch TV or read while walking at an incline on the treadmill, it's easy to rack up the miles without inconveniencing yourself. I probably hit about 24 miles a week doing this.
This correlates with my personal experience. Lifting is a good idea, but my optimum for it is perhaps once a week, else I fall into overtraining. The rest of the time when I want to exercise mild cardio seems more beneficial.
Maybe that works for you, but you'll never be strong/look strong weight training weekly. If you're "overtraining" from one weight training session per week, there's something very wrong. The average human only takes 48-72 hours to fully recover for most muscle groups in the body.
It's also been proven that HIIT is much more beneficial for your system than LISS.
It might "seem" more beneficial to you, but likely is not more beneficial than the alternatives. However, something is definitely better than nothing, and do what works for you and makes you happy.
>It's also been proven that HIIT is much more beneficial for your system than LISS.
Source? What is your definition of 'better?' The context is in longevity, and my link offers some evidence against your statement, so I think you should provide some source for your claim that HIIT is consistent with living longer than LISS because that's not what I've seen published in the last 10 years.
Long time lurker, finally registered to answer this. What's your definition of "strong"? I've been weight training once a week since March, following Doug McGuff's "Body By Science" method, and I have doubled my weights in 4 of the "big 5" in the last 3 months. While I'm led to believe McGuff's methods will never make anyone look absolutely massive, I disagree with your premise that you have to train more than once a week to be strong or look strong. Incidentally, McGuff mentions in his book that the optimal gap between workouts is 8 days.
No offense meant for something working for you. If it works for you, keep doing it.
I've competed now in three separate strength sports (powerlifting, strongman, olympic lifting). There isn't a single person on any competitive circuit that only lifts weights once every 8 days. You might be getting strong for you. You started in March, so you are on the ultra-beginner slope that means you can basically do any training in existence and make gains. That will steadily slow.
Regarding a definition of "strong", there are many, but the one most people in the strength industry agree on is:
As usual, people say "no offense" when they are about to offend me :)
I have actually read more than one "person". McGuff actually has some credibility, and cites many scholarly articles in his book. However his method is not aimed at competitive weightlifters, which suits me as I don't have hours to spend at the gym every week, or a desire to get huge. I do expect to be stronger than approximately 99% of my peers by the end of the year though, which in my book is a bit better than "strong for me".
> However his method is not aimed at competitive weightlifters
Yes, but you said a workout every 8 days was optimum. I'm saying that's completely bad information. You don't have to compete to learn from people who compete.
You wouldn't learn an optimal golf swing from someone who only plays mini-golf at an arcade would you? No, you'd look at the true greats in the game.
Here are just a few people to read instead of McGuff, all of who have some actual strength credentials.
* Wendler
* Coan
* Rippetoe
* Dan John
* Pavel
* Abadjiev
* Kilgore
Hey nosequel, can you recommend me succinct reading or ideally a great training program to follow for strength building with calisthenics? In my situation with my lifestyle of travel at the moment, access to gyms can be expensive and infrequent, and I like the athleticism and balance involved in calisthenics anyways.
Body shape is hugely influential. Limb length compared to torso length, back width, arm length compared to leg length all will have huge influences. These were general guidelines kind of thrown around over the years, but it is expected that for each person on of those will be easier than the rest to achieve. Most really good deadlifters are not necessarily good squatters, and vice versa.
You are correct. In fact, you can get really strong training once a week. Fact is, this guy's training methods are basically kind of appoaching an optimization for bulking (building the most muscle mass possible) combined with laziness (only training once a week).
The big criticisms of this kind of training would be:
1.) athleticism (he recommends machines, but free weights and calisthenics--replacing lat pulls with pull ups, muscle ups, etc is much better for athleticism)
2.) strength (he recommends machines, no momentum in movements, long recovery periods... this is basically how bodybuilders train to build the most muscle, but power lifters and athletes will optimize for maximum power, which includes momentum in their movements, and more endurance in their muscles)
3.) cardio/weight loss (you will burn more calories and build better cardio with higher volume, repitions)
4.) Injury (machines, low reps, high weights, all increase risk of injury)
I heard that "runner's high" only sets in when you train hard and for a long time. To make that clear, you're saying it's actually a sign of you having gone too far?
Just from personal experience, it usually hits around mile 3 or 4 at a decent pace (8-9 min/mi). But then, I wouldn't say I'm in the best of conditioning either.
It's probably not that complicated. It probably goes something like, our species developed using our brains and exercising in harmony, so they wound up linked to eachother, simply because everyone was exercising. The two systems developed together, and simply because there was no reason NOT to be, wound up intertwined.
Like what I've heard about automatic transmissions. Supposedly, some automatic transmissions do not lubricate themselves when coasting in neutral (the pump is driven engine-side), and for this reason you shouldn't regularly coast long distances at freeway speeds in neutral on an affected automatic. Why is it this way? Simply because it's easy to slave the pump off the engine-side, and at 65mph, you generally have your engine engaged! So why NOT?
Evolution is all about selective pressures, but equally important are the absence of those pressures.
There's interesting theories behind humans evolving as a distance running (endurance hunting) species, and brain size being required evolutionarily as a tracking mechanism (understanding footprints & getting in the prey's head to understand it's path).
The two work in concert because fast prey escapes line of sight and gets mixed up with each other easily, so human endurance becomes much less useful if you can't follow & wear down the appropriate target.
"Born to Run" is a fun summary/story about some of this science but there's more hard science out there too if you're interested.
A couple possible reasons: surviving to hunt, fighting/battle and celebration/training/building activities.
If you have an elevated heart rate and exercising in the past that might mean going after food where you have to outwit, thus the brain needed to fuel/prepare for that.
Additionally, exercise could be fighting, you might also need elevated brain performance during a battle for survival.
It might also mean you are doing some work to get a system in place for food and providing that for others in the group.
Exercising is probably tied to survival, nourishment and providing. The brain probably has a reward system because it can expend more energy if there is more to be had soon.
Also, you're probably learning during that time. Think about how young animals play: they practice a lot of the skills they need to survive. It builds dexterity, coordination, reflexes and strength.
Evolutionary speaking, those animals whose brains go into "extra learning mode" during exercise likely had a huge advantage over their peers whose brains didn't. Their brains picked up on skills related to hunting and survival and didn't waste energy building neural connections while they're sitting around not doing anything.
The evolutionary reasoning behind almost any trait is going to be entirely speculative.
> The fact is that none of this greatly influences reproductive fitness, so it is unlikely to be acted on by evolution.
It absolutely does, in fact, it's probably a key influence of reproductive fitness in predatory species. The species that can gather more energy or more efficiently use that energy is going to out-grow their peers more each successive generation. And it's easy to see the relationship between more efficient learning and gathering more food.
A group of hunting animals that learn 10% faster during and after exercising than a control group would have a huge resource advantage because they increases both the pool of available prey and the likelihood of catching prey. Acquiring just 7% more calories (and translating that into 7% more offspring) would result in a population that is double the control group in 10 generations.
I agree that it is speculation, but the evolutionary advantage is pretty clear there: getting extra learning during fights increases your chances of survival in the next fight.
2. You are assuming fights exert the same effect as exercise.
3. You are assuming the selection pressure is great enough to effect allele frequency.
4. You are assuming humans fight alone.
5. You are assuming humans have extra knowledge to be gained in a split second of a fight.
6. You are assuming said extra knowledge would be overwhelmingly adaptive in a physical fight.
Breaking down adaptation is all about understanding your assumptions. It is easy to speculate, but it is hard measure evolution. However, given rigorous study we can measure adaptation mathematically and quantify it's impacts.
Reason should be some kind of benefit. But honestly, I dont know, here are just some facts.
You need to see the connection of systems. Neuromuscular connection of basal ganglia: central part of brain - neural pathway - muscle - and then feeling of movement going back to the brain through hypothalamus and to other areas - from hypothalamus it goes to brain like a shotgun fire.
The more you do the same movement the more you fire up the same lines. In order to get faster and more effective movement you add additional channels for signal transport in neuronal connections {this happens through release of BDNF, which induces insertion of new channels, for faster transmission}. This molecule happen to influence formation of memory, survival of neurons and supress your desire to eat.
Sooo, again, I dont know, but this seems a bit like a side effect of firing up those circuits, because more or less the same way works memory formation (long-term memory potentiation). I would guess here plays a role effect of neigborhood - niche influencing neurons sitting next to those active pathways.
BTW.
Also movement should increase your bloodflow, waste created by neurons is now removed much faster, this should go the same for neurotrasmitters - molecules transmitting signal which just flow around and act as signal interference, thus removing part of interference and now you can fire clear signal.
Unless it's explicitly linked to surviving natural selection before reproduction, it's more likely that this finding is just a pointless by-product of another biomolecular pathway, even though it may have some discernible benefits.
It's like trying to puzzle out why there are nipples on male mammals - it usually devolves to some creative stories and hand waving.
That is, they're useful for the female and not particularly harmful for the male, so they live on.
It's also an instance of DRY (don't repeat yourself) "coding" in our DNA: basically males and females carry the same instructions, with a bunch of randomly interspersed if/else conditions that hinge on the presence of testosterone (coded for in the small Y chromosome)
> The connection between exercise and brain health has now been super conclusively and astonishingly shown, but what are some possible evolutionary reasons for this connection?
Both physical activity and brain-health improve survival and a small group of people whose brain became healtheir with physical activity survived at a faster rate than others.
Isn't it obvious ? I would assume exercise for early humans did not mean spending 30 minutes running for no reason. They probably spent that time running after a rabbit or running way with someone else's wife on his shoulder etc or tribes that kept well trained armies probably survived at a higher rate than tribes that relied on the Shaman to summon the dead.
"The connection between exercise and brain health has now been super conclusively and astonishingly shown, but what are some possible evolutionary reasons for this connection?"
Your question assumes that bodily health and brain health are separate and distinct things - as if we are mental beings that just happen to have bodies.
Perhaps we should read the headline as "exercise releases body healthy protein" ... I doubt we'd consider that an evolutionary paradox.
Probably these results should be considered ipso facto.
Neurons evolved from muscles. After exercises muscles needs to be repaired (due to microdamages); it is not unreasonable that there is some positive side-effect for neurons as well.
To me it is very obvious that physical activity = you are being active and will need more brain power to proccess all the activity, while being inactive means brain power will be energy waste. As only very recently u can do high intellect stuff like computer work while sitting.
your heart is a pump, when you exercise your heart pumps harder and faster, your legs create a flowing motion that helps the blood make it back to the heart.
during all this the brain experiences a surge in blood levels, oxygen, metabolic exchanges happen faster and so your brain is more effective.
add into that, the body breaks down fats to power you, those fats have omega fatty acids that are released into the blood stream and go to the brain to provide nutrients.
this is why drinking coffee wakes you up.
what I really want is a pair of those leg pumps that assist the heart, so I can sit on my ass longer and code whilst getting the benefits of exercise on my brain :)
>but what are some possible evolutionary reasons for this connection?
Maybe you should be asking the opposite question like why should evolution reward sedentary life? Human history involves daily exercise in some form that is more strenuous than a long walk and that's clearly connected to our general health and well-being both mentally and physically (why should these be separate to evolution?). What we're doing today is the exception, we shouldn't expect everything to work out as before.
I imagine we're in a temporary lull. Either modern society will collapse and we'll go back to farming or hunting and gathering, or we'll invent a exercise pill. There is effort in this direction:
>Maybe you should be asking the opposite question like why should evolution reward sedentary life?
If you can live a sedentary lifestyle and still produce children, then evolution doesn't care. In fact, an indoors lifestyle is much more fit in the longterm than a life of hard labor.
Evolution isn't trying to create the Platonic Ideal of a human. It just is a thoughtless mechanism to efficiently reproduce DNA.
> If you can live a sedentary lifestyle and still produce children, then evolution doesn't care.
Hunter/gatherer humanity did not have the luxury of a sedentary lifestyle, so it did have a negative impact on your ability to produce children for a long time.
> In fact, an indoors lifestyle is much more fit in the longterm than a life of hard labor.
I think "hard labor" is a bit extreme, but even so, working a physically demanding job is still better for your overall health than a sedentary lifestyle of office job + sitting on the couch watching Netflix.
For all the entrepreneurs wanting to bottle Cathepsin B (the "Brain-Healthy Protein"), unfortunately it has also been linked with tumour invasion and metastasis[1]. Further study is needed to know if the increase in Cathepsin B is a factor or simply correlation.
That's assuming the unscrupulous spam artists pushing nootropics and smart-pills even care about the adverse effects of the ingredients they're selling. And most of their target consumers will be too wooed by the use of a scientific term like 'cathepsin-b' to bother with their own due diligence.
There is a strange dichotomy here... I do believe that exercise helps thinking, but when I was growing up, very few of the smarter people were involved in sports, either formally or informally. Perhaps 1 in 20 was on a team, and few were that active otherwise. The link to drama and music was much bigger.
Probably because you're talking about academic success which is only loosely correlated to intelligence, and almost entirely not correlated to "brain health."
"Brain health," as it's used in this article, would also contribute to coordination, muscle control, and various other things that would benefit athletes in ways that are totally opaque to you or me.
The article doesn't say exercise makes you smarter, and even if it did, "smarter" is an awfully vague term.
One more thing is emotional health, it's already pretty known that exercise helps with anxiety and depression. But I disagree about your assertion about intelligence, I think it plays a huge role in academic success.
There are plenty of people with above average intelligence who enjoy below average academic success, and inversely plenty of people with below average intelligence who enjoy above average academic success.
This can happen for a variety of reasons: poverty, nutrition, "misaligned" interests, etc.
Intelligence plays a role in that someone with an IQ of 80 probably isn't going to Stanford, but there are ostensibly plenty of people with IQs far above your average Stanford student who will never set foot in a university.
Fair point. I guess by smart I'm thinking "least work for best grades" but that's a very loose definition.
Also - it's a very small sample size. And if I look more broadly... 2 of the seemingly "dumbest jocks" I knew in college went on to become doctors, one at the Mayo clinic. So perhaps their intelligence was showing in other areas until they got out of school.
Similarly, one of the 'dumb jocks' from my high school just graduated with a PhD from Harvard, which means humans are awful at estimating the intelligence of others.
Or, you know, someone obtaining a PhD breaks the "dumb jock" mould without necessarily being more or less intelligent whomever it is that you are referring to.
So many people in this thread trying to figure out reason for the evolutionary connection between excersize and brain health... And you hit it so effortlessly... Seems obvious
If artistic ability has a strong influence on intelligence compared to athleticism, then P(intelligent | artistic) >= P(intelligent | athletic). We know that P(athletic) > P(artistic) from the data.
There is nothing in the data that says that participation is exclusive, "other" bucket is larger than "performing arts". So the whole thing is invalid. But most importantly participation doesn't mean ability. There are plenty of people in both camps who clearly are not able.
Is it possible kids maintain a higher rate of metabolic activity just by growing thus offsetting some of the activity you don't see in children with above average intelligence?
I would be more interested in a discussion of the benefits of the different types of exercise. I see there is this sentiment about seeing the same type of exercise is good for you articles every week.
All of it. As long we're not talking extremes, all kind of aerobic exercise, is beneficial for both cholesterol (HDL), lowers triglycerides and it's (very) good for the heart.
There are other beneficial side effects like: endorphins, high quality night sleep, bigger amount of oxygen reaches the entire body and the brain.
well im surprised to be the first person in this thread to ask this question (if i am not mistaken) but what about supplementing the protein instead of working out?
Generally, proteins you eat get broken down by the digestive system into their component amino acids. There are some notable exceptions where proteins can apparently get absorbed intact, but generally proteins are broken down upon injestion. Supplementing intra-venously might be the only option.
And even then this protein may provide negative feedback for the production of other unidentified proteins, which are kept in check by the exercise activity, meaning that flooding your system intravenously could lead to some undesirable or harmful results.
Does supplementing this protein cause the brain to absorb it at the same rate as exercise? Doesn't exercise increase the brain's ability to absorb certain chemicals (probably a bad way to phrase it, mentioned elsewhere on this page).
I don't think that is true whatsoever. There might be a few people in millions who absolutely can't do anything.
Everyone can exercise, no matter what condition: bad heart, missing lung, missing limbs, etc. There is some form of exercise that can be done. You name a condition, I'm sure I can find someone on youtube with that condition absolutely crushing a work out.
Very very few people are physically disabled to the extent that they can't exercise. I see people who walk with canes lifting weights. Water aerobics can also be a good option.
Honestly, considering the overweight and obese population is growing we have a problem with systemic overeating that needs to be corrected first. It doesn't matter how much exercise you do if you eat more than you need.
As you can see, me there playing sports that evening, super exciting and really keeps me focused. Granted hard to take me seriously, but we have some users like Tatiana have done some amazing stuff
I'm a Gyroscope user and really enjoy it. It combines tracking from different sources well, making it easier to understand your day, and take action based on that.
hm, seems like the bet is to get people that are not as scientifically well-versed to get into exercise through nice data visualization and fun shareable images of their exercise. probably has a higher likelihood of getting people to exercise instead of saying "cathespin B is good for you and here's why" people seem to be sharing their stuff
I had heard that even a brief bit of HIIT has all of the benefits of longer exercise times... Does this refute that or give evidence in support of that?
It probably helps with some markers deemed important in competitive sports like VO2 max and won't help with others that aren't measured. With HIIT you significantly increase the risk of injury and/or death comparing to moderate longer exercise. You should only do it when your body doesn't gain much benefit from moderate ones. Try the popular Tabata sprints just once to understand the stress you are putting your body through (20 seconds all out effort sprint followed by 10 seconds pause, repeat 8 times).
Wait a minute, the part about injury/death is a bit ridiculous. With this logic, stay sedentary, no risk of injury/death from training ever, that's for sure. And never ever go to the mountains or dive!
I do HIIT, with running uphill on treadmill (1 min sprint, 2 mins slow pace, increase inclination, repeat), but it's only one type of running I do (others are slowly increasing speed and inclination every 5 mins, and just circles in hilly park nearby). It's very effective, 'different' type than others (heart rate takes very long to come down for example).
Definitely I feel my knees more after usual running on concrete in proper shoes rather than these treadmill sprints.
If you don't challenge your body and put some pressure on muscles/joints/ligaments/cardiovascular system etc. it will never reach its potential. Would I do this if 60 years old? No. But I don't consider such blank statements true. If you don't want to do HIIT for whatever reason, that's your choice
You are probably in a good enough shape to benefit from HIIT. For usual couch potatoes it might not be the case; it would benefit them more to start with swimming/walking, then later running a bit and once they are somewhat in shape and have proper injury-avoiding practices, they can do HIIT.
Findings show that although the more intense, motorized running exercise induced a rapid
increase in BDNF, the elevation was more short-lived than with voluntary running. Suggests that longer, easier exercises might be more beneficial. - http://202.120.143.134/download/20090702135031_277199777813....
Exercise effects on executive function are not doseresponsive, meaning that better fitness does not
necessarily lead to larger cognitive gains... physical activity levels that benefit cognition may
not necessarily be as intense as those levels required to increase cardiovascular fitness. - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michelle_Ploughman/publ...
neither duration (20 vs. 40 min) nor intensity (60 vs. 80% HR reserve) significantly affects the benefits of exercise if only the sBDNF increase at a single post-exercise time point is considered... -http://www.jssm.org/research.php?id=jssm-12-502.xml
This meta-analysis provides reliable evidence that both acute and regular exercise have a significant impact on BDNF levels. (but animal models show that these can be gone soon after you stop training) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4314337/
I can recommend the meta-analysis (last link), data is unfortunately somewhat inconclusive. There are basically two theories, the inverted-U theory, stating that moderate exercise is most beneficial and the drive theory, stating that the largest effects will be achieved with the largest intensity. Chang et. al., however, conclude that: The size of the benefit is dependent upon a number of factors, but results indicate that benefits are larger for more fit individuals who perform the physical activity for 20 min or longer. The appropriate intensity depends upon the time of measurement — any intensity benefits cognitive performance during exercise, but lower intensities provide more benefit when the tests are performed immediately after exercise and higher intensities have more durable effects that can be observed even following a delay.
TL;DR: Long distance running or other sustained aerobic exercise is best. Several meta-analyses also have shown that the mood and cognitive benefits increase with aerobic exercise duration and intensity.
Does it have to be a treadmill? I mostly do the elliptical (ski whatever it's called) since i'm not much of a runner. Just curious if I need to take it up a notch or not.
not it can be also spinning, swimming (probably best since it's full body workout without joint stress) and so on. elliptical is actually pretty good full body exercise from what i heard, if you are happy with it keep doing it
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...), 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 its 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).
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.
The social categorization of an activity as "intelligent" or "unintelligent" is based primarily on bullshit stereotypes (including classist, sexist, and racist ones). The actual level of intellectual engagement involved in the activity has hardly anything to do with it.
Why do we have an article saying basically the same thing every single week here?
I get it, and I think everyone here has, exercise is good for you, in many ways, don't sit on your ass all day.
I guess it's sad to see this becoming the "Good Morning America" of tech (not that we didn't have those ones already) or the ultra localized we-only-care-about-the-bay-area medium.
I have a potential context shift to offer - do you mean this exact thing was discussed, that is, the protein cathepsin B which is released upon rigorous exercise?
The potential context shift I have to offer here is that I perceive that what might be happening is that you see an article saying, "exercise is healthy for you brain!" - and you seem to see that all the time here and are bored of it, and that's reasonable. But what I, as a biologist, see, is an article saying, "The mechanism by which exercise assists the brain is cathepsin B!" That's new to me, I haven't heard it ever before, but I can see how a non-specialist might not be so interested in it -
Which then leads me to the context shift proper: it isn't that the same stuff is coming every single week, it's that you're not specialized enough in this area to understand the critical differences each time it comes across your radar here (and that biology should be having a larger and larger impact isn't surprising - bioinformatics is growing a lot, and health startups are downright ubiquitous - I'm a part of one, myself! :) ).
It's rather like a businessperson who doesn't care to understand the difference between Docker and Virtual Machines - they may justifiably not care when Docker puts out some new feature, but that doesn't mean that the new feature from Docker isn't important. I'm afraid that in a similar manner to the tech news seeping into the businessperson's business news, biology news may be seeping into your tech news, but I think it's justified in both cases.
All that said, you may be totally conversant with the nuances of protein interactions and pathway chemistry, and this same headline may just have escaped me the past few weeks that it has been posted, or something, regardless, I hope I don't offend, it just sounds like/seems like this may be the case- that something outside of your specialty looks like tons of the same old crap, when really it's all critically different, even if the advice arising from it is similar. It's of deep interest to us biotech folks, and we're becoming a larger and larger population on Hacker News, so, there it is. :)
If you read it as "Good Morning America" of tech, it will appear that way. The article is reporting on new evidence of one particular mechanism of how exercise and the brain work. It's complex and each weekly article expands on our understand. That's why they're here each week; each week we learn something exciting and new.
Personally, I enjoy when health related things are posted here because the HN community does a good job of parsing the bullshit from the useful information.
Also, this is a newly discovered mechanism for exercise being healthy, so it's not exactly "the same thing." I've been checking the comments regularly to get HN's "take."
>>Personally, I enjoy when health related things are posted here because the HN community does a good job of parsing the bullshit from the useful information.
Furthermore, health-related articles are extra beneficial for the HN community, since most people here probably have very sedentary jobs.
When it's truly overplayed, it will get less votes and less interesting comments leading to votes, and make the home page less often. It may be on its way, but it's obviously not there yet.
It is interesting to ask why, though.
Are people still interested because a lot don't know and are hearing about it? There's often secondary posts and discussions by different groups of people a day or two later, I suspect there are different demographics reading at different times. (This new thing sounds cool, let's discuss!)
Are they interested because they heard about it recently and thinks it needs more exposure? (This new thing seems cool, let's spread the word more!)
Are they interested because it has spurred them to action, and they had or have currently changed some aspect of their life for better or worse, and they feel they need to share? (This new thing is/was cool/sucked, let me tell you why!)
These are all different stages in the life cycle of a trend. I think it's interesting to identify the stages, as there can be different benefits and drawbacks to getting on board (if that's your wish) depending on the stage.
Or piss them off. Exercise is tiring and painful and time-consuming (especially if you count in after-exercise showers). Also, I don't like the whole culture around exercising and fitness. Gimme a damn pill or something.
More seriously though, I really find no pleasure in exercise and would like to approach it in the most cost-effective way (i.e. maximum benefit for minimum time used). Any hints on exercise regime optimised for that? I heard weightlifting is good.
Wondering if you might have an undiagnosed medical condition.
I've been very a active exerciser my whole adult life. It's part of my identity.
Last year I started suffering from chronic fatigue. Exercise began to hurt. It hurt when I did it. It hurt afterward. I was tired all the time. I was gaining weight. I stopped exercising. It brought me no relief. Only resting did.
I knew something was wrong. Went to Doctor. Treated me like I'm a lazy ass who doesn't know how to care for myself. Fuck that dr.
I was on my own to figure this. I finally found out a treatment that works. Salt supplements and licorice root to address adrenal insufficiency. Day and night difference.
I feel bad for anyone who goes through something like that. It's not fair. And many people are dismissed by the medical establishment when they need help and compassion. It's awful how people get treated when they are sick but don't have the standard common diseases. The whole system sucks.
If it weren't for a long history of excellent health and fitness, I might thought I just don't like exercise. And never have the motivation to figure out how to get better.
Might be. I'm planning to do thyroid tests soon, because some of the things in my life could be explained by problems there, and my sister recently found out she has some thyroid problems. I understand the experience - for me, day-and-night difference was getting on SSRIs.
But it could also just be that I never started to like exercising in the first place. I have myopia since early childhood - so from the first years in school, glasses gave me logistical problems on PE lessons. It was especially problematic during team games - when I took the glass off, I was the worst player in class. When I left them on, I could play somewhat well, but I was risking breaking them when hit by a ball (it actually happened). So I ended up avoiding team sports as much as I could, and there a negative feedback loop starts (not playing made me only suck more and be less willing to play).
The reason I wrote my long response was because you said exercise was painful. Sure, if you overdo it, it can be painful to anyone. But it's not supposed to painful. Uncomfortable sure, tiring sometimes yes.
But not painful. Afterward you should feel alert and relaxed. And in reasonable amounts it should feel like it is increasing what you can get done. Usually anyway.
If not, something is wrong. Hopefully something that can be treated.
Good luck to you! Health can be very tricky. In so many ways health and wellness is still in the dark ages. So many incomplete models and misinformation. I've been there and feel bad for anyone else bewildered because they don't fit into mainstream ideas of how their bodies are supposed to work.
>I was on my own to figure this. I finally found out a treatment that works. Salt supplements and licorice root to address adrenal insufficiency. Day and night difference.
Thought maybe I had mold in my house. Tested that. Maybe I'm allergic to my bedding. Got s new mattress and beefing.
Thought it might be kidney related since I had back pain in my flanks. Thought it might be my gallbladder. Thought it might be my liver. Tried various foods and supplements. Nothing helped.
Thought it might be thyroid related perhaps due to iodine deficiency. So I started taking table salt that has iodine in it. Started feeling less muscle pain immediately. Then started iodine tablet supplements. Pain returned. Then tried just salt tablets. Found relief. Then researched and found adrenals regulate sodium. Then found out licorice root blocks an enzyme that metabolizes cortisol, which is produced by your adrenal glands. Tried that. Fatigue disappeared. Sleep improved. Pain gone. Started losing weight.
So basically trial and error over many months. I'm only mentioning a small number of things I tried. Doctor was no help. But a better Doctor probably would have suggested better tests and things to try. But how would a normal person know their doctor is letting them down? Shit is hard.
All exercises are five sets of five reps except Deadlifts which are one set of five reps.
Ignore the marketing speak: http://stronglifts.com/5x5/ - has all the info you'd need and a free app to track your exercises. I highly recommend it.
Still tiring. Not painful unless you have bad form, and 3 hours/week isn't that time consuming (IMO).
You might not necessarily lose a ton of weight - but you will feel stronger. And you'll notice when you go from struggling with light weights to effortlessly lifting triple that.
If you really want minimum time but still some benefit, taking a walk around the block 2-3 times a day is probably your best bet. But that's "fitness" in the same way the 15 year old with a pirated copy of Photoshop is "a graphic designer."
I don't think anyone who has done weightlifting would say you can do it quickly or that it takes minimal time or effort.
I don't want to minimize time, I want to maximize the benefit/time ratio, where time includes maintenance expenses (like showering, getting to the gym) as well. I.e. if jogging every day for an hour provides X "fitness points", but you can also get those X "fitness points" by doing e.g. weightlifting 3 times a week, I prefer to go for the second option. It can be painful - I won't like it, but when I work out I don't do it for pleasure (which I generally never got from exercises); its means to an end. End being losing weight, keeping cognitive power at full capacity, living longer.
I'm not an expert, but jogging every day for an hour seems excessive. Running for half an hour (~5km) 3 times a week will get you a long way and it is one of the best exercises there is. I'd argue it's better than weightlifting because you activate (almost) the whole body and it's free.
The whole body can be activated by utilizing compound lifts as well. IMO running can be monotonous while outdoor running is weather dependent depending on one's tolerance for enduring inclement weather.
For many, doing a 10 minute mile for 30 minutes can be quite challenging.
Make that 7km, at 7km/hr, 3 times a week and I believe you hit the sweet spot of the Danish study that came out a couple of years ago.
If I recall correctly, it monitored ~20000 people over ~19 years, and provided bell curves of the best benefit.
I used to jog every day for an hour, and it was bliss. I miss it. Any day I don't get up and go for a run, I feel like I am worse off for it. But I'm trying to migrate to the above.
CrossFit. It is the most time efficient all-around fitness program I have run across. And they're the ONLY methodology I've seen that has an actual measurable definition of the fitness they seek.
You know what's more painful? Dying of a heart attack. Being bedridden. Joint failure. The inability to walk a few city blocks. Diabetes. Having to ride in a mobility scooter. Or even the inability to keep pace with your children when they're playing.
These things aren't inevitable, scaring people into exercise won't work. But even if they were, it wouldn't be terrible to die '"on my back, lying on my many rolls of fat, scarcely uttering a word, taking labored breaths, and eating my fill," for of all the ways a man might die, an excess of luxury was the only truly happy death'. (From http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/dimtext/kjn/people/heavies...)
More specifically to weight lifting, compound lifts: squats, deadlifts, bench press, and overhead press. (also rows)
As far as exercise related pain goes, the general rule is that sharp pains are bad (e.g. go see a doctor and get an xray/mri/scan) and dull throbbing pains are okay. Weight lifting can bring out dormant injuries as inactive muscles become activated and the body recomposes itself. These usually are treated with stretching, trigger point therapy, cupping and with time diminish significantly.
There's thousands of variations of exercise "programs" out there but the fundamentals are the same.
1. show up consistently
2. move weight at high intensities (>60%) to induce muscle hypertrophy
3. eat a lot (to gain muscle) || eat a little less (to lose fat) || eat adequately to maintain. (caloric surplus/deficit/maintenance)
Intensity refers to a percentage of your maximal weight that can be moved once. There are some calculators that can also calculate your 1-repetition-max based on the maximum.
One other piece of advice for myself is that I have very dry skin and using any type of soap on a daily basis dries out my skin pretty badly. As an Asian that lacks the specific type of sweat glands with BO, I've made showers that are time efficient by merely washing with water only. Soap is used sporadically, but 98% of daily showers are with water only. Anecdotally, other nationalities on reddit have reported success with water-only showering.
I can drive to the gym in 5 minutes, do several sets in 20-45 minutes depending on which compounds I am targeting, then be back home and spend another 5-10 minutes on a shower. Time is further made efficient by standardizing my tops with black t-shirts, so very little time is spent on choosing clothing.
Home versions of this is possible has well with a set of dumbbells, but if you have any strength, it is quite possible to outgrow the dumbbells in relatively short amount of time.
Glasses also don't get in the way of weights, other than wiping sweat underneath them between sets, but there aren't swift fast movements that jerk the face such that glasses are flying off of the face or a ball will knock one's glasses off.
I got her book and it is repetitive, but the basic premise from this MD is that the body is a chemical environment and chemical deficiencies lead to malfunctions. As it is obvious that plants won't thrive without fertilizer and water, the same goes for human nutrition. Her solution is consuming food sources with 2-3 cups each of greens, 2-3 cups of sulfur (broccoli, cabbage, etc), 2-3 cups of color (blueberries, tomatoes, blackberries) & 4-6 oz of nutrient dense meat on a daily basis.
I found a tremendous amount of quality of life improvement by adding the greens/sulfur/color just several times a week as well.
I may have a different skin type, but I've found that switching from sodium-laureth-sulfate-based detergent soaps to castile soaps significantly reduced the dryness I used to get on the skin on my hands. A good castile soap does not have any residual lye in it because the lye is fully consumed in the reaction that produces the soap.
Tim Ferris's book "The 4-Hour Body" is written with time min-maxing in mind. There's some weird stuff in there ("I supplement with garlic because a random homeless guy told me it's good for weight loss") but the core workout/diet regimen is effective and easy to stick to.
If this 4 hour book is the one I am thinking it is, no need to spend any money on it. It outlines the 80/20 rule, where you can derive 80% of the benefit with 20% of the effort and how the last 20% of benefit is derived from 80% of the effort.
It then focuses on deadlifts being one of the exercises that engage about 80% of the body's muscles and focuses on a short deadlift workout on a consistent basis.
Enjoy your limited life span, lack of energy, and general attractiveness. There's no secret here; you get out what you put in. Everyone wants to be in shape, no one wants to lift heavy things.
Why do we care? Why cannot we just accept that some people have no desire/interest in exercise, and let them live the way they want to live.
Anyone who likes exercise is already doing it. The constant drumbeat of "living healthy" that pervades the media and now the workplace is getting monotonous and annoying.
I know I come to Hacker News specifically to hear software junkies make bad analogies about health. I also go to my local paper's opinion column for the best tech news.
Engineers generally like smart people with powerful brains. If exercise improves the function of your brain, that's something that is likely interesting to engineers. Especially if they get into the details of how and why.
Shutting down discussion of "living healthy" is kind of counter intuitive to fostering a community of smart people. You can be smart without exercising, but exercising does seem to help the process. It's crazy to see something that makes you smarter and hear someone say "please stop talking about that, it bores me". Maybe you always hear people talking about it because it really is that useful of a tool?
Yes it does, but we've brought that on ourselves by insisting that pre-existing conditions (such as obesity, high blood presssure, etc.) cannot be cause to deny coverage or charge higher premiums. Smoking, interestingly, seems to be an exception to that standard.
There is no such insistence in the US. My insurer gives premium discounts to members who maintain a healthy BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar level. So people with problems on those metrics do pay higher premiums than the rest of us.
I can easily see somebody who isn't sufficiently motivated by being physically fit because they're too focused on intellectual persuits. This is now a(nother) reason for them to exercise.
And anyway, speaking for myself, I can see people being on the fence. Reading about articles or even comments online can be a tipping point to get (back) into a good habit.
"Brain-healthy"... that's the BS language you hear in commercials for vitamins and supplements and breakfast cereals... "Heart-healthy whole grains", "Supports breast health", etc.
Maybe the extra energetic investment in brain health is only justified when there is an energetic surplus, and doing exercise correlates with having extra energy available? (As opposed to starving and thus needing to conserve energy.) But that doesn't actually make sense, since the extra metabolic expenditure of these processes can't possibly be all that high, and doesn't the brain use almost the same (huge) amount of resources whether it's at rest or very cognitively active?