How Exercise Fuels the Brain

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/how-exercise-fuels-the-brain/?gwh=E719F4F4FBE1F513EB0D1E0E9ACFD189

by danso • 14 years ago

287 18 14 years ago

well.blogs.nytimes.com

I expected this to be a fluff piece about exercise and learning, but it was in fact rather interesting.

It should be noted that while increased "glycogen supercompensation" in the brain correlates with the much-hyped exercise-induced-cognition-enhancement (aka running makes you smarter/healthier/happier) the author's don't provide any behavioral or cognitive tests. They acknowledge this, and since it wasn't part of their study they just offer the correlation as an interesting hypothesis.

I imagine they'll be testing cognition/behavior in their next paper.

The articles they are referencing is:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21521757

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22063629

noobface• 14 years ago

Great content. Scientific, only presents the facts, and doesn't take the typical "THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING" sensationalist approach. Good on the author and the NYT for reporting actual science.

kmfrk• 14 years ago

And they link to the source of the article. I feel like ticking this day in my calendar to mark a good day of journalism.

paulovsk• 14 years ago

Indeed.

Geee• 14 years ago

I wonder if physical activity correlates with education results. For example, in Finland kids typically walk or bicycle to school and are also actively running or playing on 15 minute breaks every hour.

bitwize• 14 years ago

wait, what?

Hourly recess?

So jelly now.

cathcouretas• 14 years ago

I definitely think it does. Working harder in general drives better results, so I'm sure it's not only true in the workplace. When you have the energy, you're happier and want to do well. Period.

lena• 14 years ago

Research suggests that it does. The book "Spark" by John Ratey goes into this in depth. http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-B...

mattjaynes• 14 years ago

I have to second the "Spark" recommendation. It presents the very compelling research behind exercise's cognitive and mood benefits. I've read many of the articles and books on this topic and Spark still included new information for me.

After reading it I decided to finally get on a religious exercise schedule and I've been on it for two months. The improvements to my will-power, focus, and mood have been tremendous.

As a side note: one thing that has helped me keep up the 5 to 6 exercise sessions per week is reminding myself that I'm only exercising for cognitive and mood benefits. This helps me personally not get distracted by other factors like fat-loss, improving running times, etc. If I added other non-brain goals, then it'd be easy to get bummed out and discouraged if I didn't achieve them, so I keep my goals purely brain focused. If those other benefits happen as a result of the exercise, then great, but they are not why I'm doing it.

maeon3• 14 years ago

So the hypothesis is that the reason cardio exercise every other day makes you smarter is because the astrocytes next to your neurons in your frontal cortex and hippocampus become 60% more capable of meeting needs to fuel your neurons with glycogen during periods of glycogen shortage, increasing the brains ability to keep glycogen levels at optimal levels at all times during the day.

I would like to see a study done seeing how 5 hour powers, caffeine, sugary treats, no-doz and other performance altering drugs affect this astrocyte supercompensation process.

ryanmolden• 14 years ago

I always get a kick out of articles whereby they basically say 'hey, excercising is good for you!', as though that were some kind of new discovery :) This is a good article, and as others have mentioned it actually links to scientific study, which is a rarity for mainstream press. On the other hand does anyone here think that getting regular excercise WOULDN'T be better all around, in a multitude of ways, than say sitting on your ass all day?

pavelkaroukin• 14 years ago

I have quite weird view on physical exercises, so for me seeing why it work this way and understanding what is going on in the brain during work out helps.

nitrogen• 14 years ago

Invariably on exercise-related articles there will be a comment saying, basically, "Congratulations, science, for proving the obvious..."

The proper response is always the same: even what seems intuitively obvious needs continual verification through the scientific method, both to understand the underlying physical mechanisms that drive a phenomenon, and to detect situations where our intuition is wrong.

orky56• 14 years ago

Here's a few key take-aways that I hope I'm not extrapolating.

1. Exercise without the proper "carbo-loading" can eliminate the cognitive benefits that astrocytes provide in restoring glycogen to neurons. 2. Exercising every now and then versus continuously will not provide these benefits. Intermittent exercise may just provide temporary (up to 24 hrs) cognitive benefits whereas continuous exercise may allow it to last longer (more than 24 hrs).

tl;dr Article should be renamed to: "Continuous Exercise with Proper Post-Workout Nutrition (Carbs) Fuels the Brain"

gizzlon• 14 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, but isn't beer full of carbs? =)

rfergie• 14 years ago

1 pint of beer == 1 slice of bread (ish, in terms of carb content)

But, a quick experiment will show you that

6 pints of beer /= 6 slices of bread

bcowcher• 14 years ago

I wonder what types of exercise trigger this effect and to what degree. Off the top of my head (going by their descriptions) team sports would be ideal not just for the exercise but the constant situational analysis, team work, running plays etc would increase the workload on the brain.

ajtaylor• 14 years ago

I started exercising regularly last week and I've noticed that my productivity has soared! Until I read this article I wasn't entirely sure if the two were correlated, but now I'm thinking there is something to it. My exercise time is in the early morning, and it's been a great way to start the day.

How Exercise Fuels the Brain

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