Skip to main content

Exercise

How physical exercise and fitness improves your brain function

Both aerobic exercise & strength training improves older brains

A review of 39 studies investigating the effect of exercise on cognition in older adults (50+) confirms that physical exercise does indeed improve cognitive function in the over 50s, regardless of their cognitive status. Aerobic exercise, resistance training, multicomponent training and tai chi, all had significant effects. However, exercise sessions needed to be at least 45  minutes and moderate intensity.

Even a single exercise session helps your brain

An extensive review of research looking at the effects of a single bout of exercise has concluded that:

  • the most consistent behavioral effects of acute exercise are
    • improved executive function
    • enhanced mood
    • decreased stress levels

  • widespread brain areas and brain systems are activated

Executive functions include attention, working memory, problem solving, cognitive flexibility, verbal fluency, decision making, and inhibitory control.

Aerobic exercise preserves brain volume and improves cognition in those with MCI

A study involving 35 adults with MCI found that those who exercised four times a week over a six-month period increased their volume of gray matter. But those who participated in aerobic exercise experienced significantly greater gains than those who just stretched, who also showed signs of white matter loss.

Aerobic activity included treadmill, stationary bike or elliptical training.

The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in November, 2016.

Exercise might help your vision

A study involving 18 volunteers who performed a simple orientation discrimination while on a stationary bicycle, has found that low-intensity exercise boosted activation in the visual cortex, compared with activation levels when at rest or during high-intensity exercise.

Chemo-brain: prevalence, why it happens, and how to help

Chemo-brain common among women with breast cancer

A study involving 581 breast cancer patients and 364 healthy age-matched people (mean age 53) has found that women with breast cancer reported significantly greater cognitive difficulties for up to six months after chemotherapy. Cognitive difficulties were evaluated using FACT-Cog, an assessment that examines a person's own perceived impairment as well as cognitive impairment perceived by others.

Exercise and meditation help beat depression

A small study involving 22 students with depression and 30 mentally healthy students had positive results from a program that combines mental training through meditation and physical training through aerobic exercise. After eight weeks, those with depression showed a nearly 40% reduction in depressive symptoms, and said they did not spend as much time worrying about negative situations taking place in their lives as they did before the study began. There were also changes in brain activity that may reflect better cognitive control.

Interestingly, those in the control group also reported fewer depressive symptoms.

The program involved two sessions a week, with each one having 30 minutes of focused attention meditation followed by 30 minutes of aerobic exercise. They were told that if their thoughts drifted to the past or the future they should refocus on their breathing - enabling those with depression to accept moment-to-moment changes in attention.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/ru-eam021016.php

Alderman, B. L., Olson, R. L., Brush, C. J., & Shors, T. J. (2016). MAP training: combining meditation and aerobic exercise reduces depression and rumination while enhancing synchronized brain activity. Transl Psychiatry, 6, e726. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/tp.2015.225

Exercise counteracts sitting time

Research using data from 2131 participants in the 2008 U.K. Health Survey suggests that regular exercise can partly counteract the negative health effects of being sedentary. The analysis grouped people into the following categories:

  • physically active and low sedentary 'busy bees' (18.6% of the sample)
  • physically active and high sedentary 'sedentary exercisers' (36.7%)
  • physically inactive and low sedentary 'light movers' (6.8%)
  • physically inactive and high sedentary 'couch potatoes' (37.9%).

Overall, physical activity was significantly associated with lower BMI, lower waist circumference, lower HbA1c levels (HbA1c is a modified form of haemoglobin, commonly used to measure glucose concentration; higher levels indicate poorer control of blood glucose levels), and higher HDL-cholesterol (the 'good' cholesterol). Sedentary time was associated with lower HDL-cholesterol levels.

None of that is a surprise, of course. The interesting aspect of this study is its attempt to disentangle physical activity and sedentary time.

In comparison to the couch potatoes, both busy bees and sedentary exercisers had significantly lower BMI and HbA1c levels, and higher HDL-cholesterol levels.

Busy bees (but not sedentary exercisers) also had lower waist circumferences. Compared to couch potatoes, light movers had only one improvement: higher HDL-cholesterol levels.

What all this shows is not simply the importance of physical activity for health, but that physical activity offsets some of the evils of a high sedentary time. It also suggests that not being sedentary doesn't take you all that far — you still need to exercise.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uol-ecs040516.php

Bakrania, K., Edwardson, C. L., Bodicoat, D. H., Esliger, D. W., Gill, J. M. R., Kazi, A., … Yates, T. (2016). Associations of mutually exclusive categories of physical activity and sedentary time with markers of cardiometabolic health in English adults: a cross-sectional analysis of the Health Survey for England. BMC Public Health, 16, 25. http://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-2694-9

Subscribe to Exercise