Strolling Towards a Better Brain
You already know that exercise is good for you. You may
already know that exercise is good for your mind.
For instance, you may have encountered studies which show how
half an hour of vigorous exercise gives you a boost in brain-derived
neurotropic growth factor or BDNF, what’s sometimes referred to as “miracle-gro for the brain.”
That’s not the kind of nickname that comes casually; BDNF stimulates the
production of new brain cells and increases your neuroplasticity, which allows
the components of your brain to work more smoothly with each other.
A 2016 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
found that the top quartile of older individuals who kept active retained
noticeably more grey matter than the others, specifically in areas related to
memory and higher-level thinking.
And those with more grey matter were also shown to be 50% less likely to
develop Alzheimer’s or other memory problems over the next five years. “If we
want to live a long time but also keep our memories, our basic selves, intact,
keep moving,” Dr. Cyrus Raji told the New York Times.
However, at the word “exercise” you are probably picturing a
hard, tiring, sweaty workout—the kind of thing that can be hard to fit into an
average day in your already-hectic life. Could a brief relaxed walk make any
difference? And what result would one single ten-minute chunk of walking have on
your brain? Recently, a joint study between researchers at University of
California, Irvine, and the University of Tsukuba in Japan set out to
answer these questions.
Scientists invited 36 healthy young students to the lab. On
one occasion, the volunteers were instructed to sit still on an exercise bike
for ten minutes; in another instance, they were told to lightly pedal for the
same period of time. This created an extremely mild form of exercise, less
strenuous than a brisk walk. The subjects then took a difficult, image-based
memory test. When they had used the bike before, they scored significantly
better. Interestingly, the bike use made the most positive difference when the
memory test was at its hardest.
The researchers then replicated this procedure, only this
time, the student volunteers took the memory test from within an MRI machine. Thanks
to MRI scans, the researchers were able to observe that the post-pedaling brain
worked differently, with portions of the brain related to learning lighting up
in a more coordinated fashion. This suggests that the light, gentle exercise
still managed to noticeably improve the connection between disparate parts of
the brain.
So even on days where a 5k is beyond you, it’s highly worth
it to lace up those walking shoes for a quick ten-minute after-dinner amble.
Your memory will thank you.
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