Examining the benefits exercise has on the brain
There has been mountains of research on the benefits of exercise and running for health. Exercise helps you lose weight, improves cardiovascular circulation, increases muscle strength, and helps fight many forms of disease are just a few. This week it seems I had several sources that focused more on the benefits of exercise on the brain than on the body. It seemed that benefits of exercise for the body is where all the attention is. Benefitting the brain is not usually associated with the physical benefits of exercise.
Several articles and a video on Facebook was more frequent this week then the usual physical benefits that get publicized. When benefits to the brain are included it reaches several areas of brain function. One of the benefits mentioned several times was the reduction of stress. When people start to worry about things that they can’t seem to get out of their mind and associated with the lack of performance at a task, and the lack of sleep that keeps you awake until the early morning hours, the brain needs some help. Exercise increases the blood flow to the brain, increases the ability to use more sections of the brain to possibly come up with a solution to the problem. The video mentioned that as little as 30 minutes of exercise can be of benefit in increasing brain function. The solution seems to be that instead of tossing and turning in the bed, get up and take a walk around the house, up some stairs, maybe warm up the treadmill in the spare room for 30 minutes to an hour. One of the benefits listed is that exercise helps you sleep better. That hour of exercise helps solve your worries, and the hour of sleep lost exercising, benefits you by getting a sounder sleep the rest of the evening.
Another brain benefit is the ability to reduce the effects of depression. Participants in a study found that even walking can have a mood lifting benefit. Studies on the mood lifting benefits have also been seen in weight lifting exercise, running, biking and swimming. I personally do not recommend golf to reduce stress from stories I hear from my buddies that play at golf. Taking your stress out on a golf ball with the hook, or slice, resulting with the ball landing in a sand trap does not help reduce stress. Try sports with a higher success rate and not a high level of competitiveness to it.
The one brain benefit that was mentioned several times was the ability to focus on a task better. The studies showed that children that participated in running had an improvement in working memory and were able to focus better on tasks. For young adults a similar pattern was observed as well as better task switching ability. This can be a benefit in the work environment and at school. For older adults the walking provided a better working memory, better focus, and better task switching ability.
The research written about in the book, “Spark” by Dr. John Ratey, M.D., on students in Naperville School District in Illinois, had a ‘zero hour’ gym class before school started. The one amazing point of the benefits for school age children was the result of a group of eighth graders taking the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test that is administered every four years to 230,000 students in 38 countries. There were 59,000 students from the United States taking the test. Naperville had 97% of its students in the eighth grade sign up to take the test. The result was that the students finished first in science, just ahead of Singapore. They finished sixth in math behind Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. The scores for the students as a whole from the United States was 18th in science and 19th in math. Districts from Jersey City and Miami scored dead last in science and math. It seems that mile the students had to run every week at ‘zero hour’ physical education paid off.
One other article that was brought to my attention was about aging and exercise. A paper in Science magazine found that a person’s risk of dying gets statistically higher with each passing year – until they hit 80 years. After 80 the death rates decelerate – and after 105, the death rates plateau. The one point that was brought out was those individuals that were less fit die out before they hit extreme old age. The author of the study did mention that people older than 80 years are still very close to death. As a human, and having good genes and avoiding disease, they have a higher chance to live just a little longer than others. One study comparing a group of runners versus a group of non-runners found that the running group had fewer ailments as they got older and any ailments appeared at an older age.
It seems exercise added one more benefit to the list of reasons to be physically active. Now, the benefits not only include the physical aspects of heart and muscle, but also the grey matter in the brain as well.
