Elite cyclists are more resilient to mental fatigue
July 26, 2016
Science Daily/University of Kent
As British cyclist Chris Froome celebrates his third Tour de France victory, research shows for the first time that elite endurance athletes have superior ability to resist mental fatigue. The new finding showed that while the recreational cyclists slowed down after performing a computerized cognitive task to induce mental fatigue, the professional cyclists' time trial performance was not affected.
Professor Samuele Marcora, Director of Research in Kent's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, co-authored a report in the journal PLOS ONE entitled Superior Inhibitory Control and Resistance to Mental Fatigue in Professional Road Cyclists.
For the study, Professor Marcora and colleagues compared the performance of 11 professional cyclists and nine recreational cyclists in various tests. As expected, the professional cyclists outperformed the recreational cyclists in a simulated time trial in the laboratory. The new finding was that while the recreational cyclists slowed down after performing a computerised cognitive task to induce mental fatigue, the professional cyclists' time trial performance was not affected.
In addition, the professional cyclists performed better than the recreational cyclists in the computerised cognitive task which measure 'inhibitory control' or willpower. This is not surprising as the ability to suffer is a major factor in the sport of cycling .
Professor Marcora, says that the two effects go hand in hand, because becoming resistant to mental fatigue should bolster willpower during the latter stages of a competition such as the Tour de France.
Although largely hereditary, he speculates that superior willpower and resistance to mental fatigue may be trained through hard physical training and the demanding lifestyle of elite endurance athletes. Professor Marcora is also developing, in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence, a new training method (Brain Endurance Training) to boost resistance to mental fatigue and endurance performance even further.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123214.htm
Exercise results in larger brain size and lowered dementia risk
August 2, 2016
Science Daily/University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
Regular physical activity for older adults could lead to higher brain volumes and a reduced risk for developing dementia. It particularly affected the size of the hippocampus, which controls short-term memory, and its protective effect against dementia was strongest in people age 75 and older
Using the landmark Framingham Heart Study to assess how physical activity affects the size of the brain and one's risk for developing dementia, UCLA researchers found an association between low physical activity and a higher risk for dementia in older individuals. This suggests that regular physical activity for older adults could lead to higher brain volumes and a reduced risk for developing dementia.
The researchers found that physical activity particularly affected the size of the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain controlling short-term memory. Also, the protective effect of regular physical activity against dementia was strongest in people age 75 and older.
Though some previous studies have found an inverse relationship between levels of physical activity and cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's disease, others have failed to find such an association. The Framingham study was begun in 1948 primarily as a way to trace factors and characteristics leading to cardiovascular disease, but also examining dementia and other physiological conditions. For this study, the UCLA researchers followed an older, community-based cohort from the Framingham study for more than a decade to examine the association between physical activity and the risk for incident dementia and subclinical brain MRI markers of dementia.
The researchers assessed the physical activity indices for both the original Framingham cohort and their offspring who were age 60 and older. They examined the association between physical activity and risk of any form of dementia (regardless of the cause) and Alzheimer's disease for 3,700 participants from both cohorts who were cognitively intact. They also examined the association between physical activity and brain MRI in about 2,000 participants from the offspring cohort.
What this all means: one is never too old to exercise for brain health and to stave off the risk for developing dementia.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160802103723.htm
Believe it or not: Exercise does more good if you believe it will
August 11, 2016
Science Daily/Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
People benefit more from exercise when they believe it will have a positive effect, new research indicates. A psychologist and his team have conducted a study demonstrating that test subjects derive more psychological as well as neurophysiological benefits from exercise if they already have positive mindsets about sports. Moreover, the team provided evidence that test subjects can be positively or negatively influenced in this regard before engaging in the exercise.
Everyone knows exercise is supposed to be good for your health, but is the belief that exercise will have a positive effect more important for our well-being than the exercise itself? The psychologist Hendrik Mothes from the University of Freiburg's Department of Sport Science and his team have conducted a study demonstrating that test subjects derive more psychological as well as neurophysiological benefits from exercise if they already have positive mindsets about sports. Moreover, the team provided evidence that test subjects can be positively or negatively influenced in this regard before engaging in the exercise. The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine.
The researchers invited 76 men and women aged between 18 and 32 years to their research laboratory, where they had to exercise for 30 minutes on a bicycle ergometer. Beforehand, the test subjects were separated into different groups and shown one of several short films that either praised the positive effects of cycling on health or not. In addition, the researchers asked the test subjects whether they had already believed in the positive effects of physical activity before beginning the study. The participants filled out questionnaires asking them about their well-being and their mood before and after the exercise. Moreover, the researchers measured the participants' brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG).
"The results demonstrate that our belief in how much we will benefit from physical activity has a considerable effect on our well-being in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy," sums up Mothes. The results provide evidence for a placebo effect during exercise: Test subjects who already believed the physical activity would have positive effects before participating in the study enjoyed the exercise more, improved their mood more, and reduced their anxiety more than less optimistic test subjects. In addition, the study revealed a neurophysiological difference between the test subjects: According to the measurements of brain activity, the participants with greater expectations before the beginning of the study and those who had seen a film about the health benefits of cycling beforehand were more relaxed on a neuronal level.
The results likely also apply to other endurance sports like jogging, swimming, or cross-country skiing, reports Mothes. "Beliefs and expectations could possibly have long-term consequences, for instance on our motivation to engage in sports. They can be a determining factor on whether we can rouse ourselves to go jogging again next time or decide instead to stay at home on the couch." The psychologist is now working on his next project. He aims to study further effects of mindsets and investigate the question of whether and how they influence the experience of exertion during physical activity.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811090039.htm
The golfer's steady gaze
August 19, 2016
Science Daily/Universitaet Bielefeld
Researchers are investigating motor learning by studying the golfer's steady gaze. Not only can the researchers measure what advantages professionals have over novices: in their studies, they are also testing training concepts that can be used by golfers to optimize how they perform their movements on the green.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/08/160819084629_1_540x360.jpg
The gaze of a professional golfer rests on the ball for up to three seconds before he takes a swing. The screen shows where exactly the golfer’s gaze falls.
Credit: CITEC/Bielefeld University
For the first time in 112 years, golf is again an Olympic event. Olympic golfers hone the skills to ensure their accuracy not only with practical training, but also with mental exercises. Researchers at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology at Bielefeld University are investigating the question of how the brain of a professional golfer works in comparison to that of a novice. Not only can the researchers measure what advantages professionals have over novices: in their studies, they are also testing training concepts that can be used by golfers to optimize how they perform their movements on the green.
"One characteristic in particular that distinguishes professional athletes is that they use the 'Quiet Eye' technique -- whether consciously or unconsciously," says Professor Dr. Thomas Schack. The sports scientist and cognitive psychologist heads the "Neurocognition and Action -- Biomechanics" research group at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC). The idea behind this concept of the so-called Quiet Eye is that of the stead gaze: before an athlete makes a move, he directs his gaze at an important point. In golf, this is the ball. "The Quiet Eye stands for that moment when the brain is planning the forthcoming motor action," says Thomas Schack.
The role played by the Quiet Eye can be seen, for instance, when a golfer putts, meaning he takes the last swing that is meant to land the ball in the hole. The golfer first executes a backswing before striking the ball with a forward stroke. As the golfer readies himself to take the backswing, his eyes are already fixed on the golf ball -- and his eyes remain glued on the ball even after hitting it. "Our research confirms that professionals focus on the ball longer than novices. When taking a putt, this occurs for up to three seconds," says Thomas Schack, who adds that the more difficult the task, the longer the golfer maintains his visual focus on the ball.
In their learning studies, Schack's research group tests how golf novices can best memorize the sequences of motion in the game of golf and the impressions associated with them. Is this better accomplished by physical practice -- actually performing the movements -- or by mental practice, that is, by imagining the sequences of motion in one's head? In one study conducted by the sports scientist Dr. Cornelia Frank, 45 people practiced their golf putts over three days: one group only did physical pracitce, and the second group did both physical and mental practice (combined practice). During the mental practice, the study participants were instructed to mentally rehearse a putt. The study participants were told to vividly imagine what they see, feel, and hear from their own perspective before, during, and after striking the ball. This mental training exercise was repeated ten times on each of the three days.
A pair of eye-tracking glasses recorded both before and after the training whether -- or how long -- the study participants fixated with their eyes on the ball. In addition to the golfer's gaze, Cornelia Frank also recorded the study subjects' putts and evaluated how proper the pattern of movement was stored in their memory. At the end, she compared both groups: how did the golfers' gaze (the Quiet Eye), participants' knowledge of movement representations, and the execution of golf movements change?
A key finding was that "the combined training contributed to a longer duration of visual fixation on the ball. The gaze thus remained focused longer on the ball both before and after the decisive swing -- similar to professional golfers," explains Frank. At the same time, the mental practice also ensured that the participants' movements were stored more accurately in memory. "Their movement representations in memory shifted more significantly towards that of a professional golfer's," explains the sports scientist. "We could show that the duration of Quiet Eye is directly linked to the motion imagery stored in their memory." The study also showed that the purely physical practice had less of an impact on the duration of the visual fixation.
A new study is aimed at establishing the relationship between memory activity and the Quiet Eye. For his master's thesis, golfer Daniel Boxberger is pursuing the assumption: "Particularly at the moment when the Quiet Eye takes place, there is a lot of information being processed in order to adapt the upcoming movement to the situation." In his learning study, which has been running since late June 2016, Boxberger is measuring how the pupils dilate both before and after practice. Based on these results, the researchers can make inferences about the mental demands of the activity because "the more dilated the pupil is at the moment of the Quiet Eye, the greater the mental load," explains Frank, who is supervising Boxberger's thesis.
With the findings from their studies, CITEC researchers can, in the future, more reliably determine how well golfers have learned a new motion sequence. To do this, they are also using virtual reality technology, and want to investigate the role of the Quiet Eye in the virtual coaching space "ICSpace." Among the developments created by the "Neurocognition and Action -- Biomechanics" research group is a software that determines how well golfers and other athletes have mastered relevant techniques by measuring movement representations in memory. The research group has been working together with golf coaches and golfers from various performance classes for approximately ten years.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160819084629.htm
Use it or lose it: Stopping exercise decreases brain blood flow
August 29, 2016
Science Daily/University of Maryland
Researchers examined cerebral blood flow in master athletes (ages 50-80 years) before and after a 10-day period during which they stopped all exercise. Using MRI brain imaging techniques, they found a significant decrease in blood flow to several brain regions important for cognitive health, including the hippocampus, after they stopped their exercise routines.
We all know that we can quickly lose cardiovascular endurance if we stop exercising for a few weeks, but what impact does the cessation of exercise have on our brains? New research led by University of Maryland School of Public Health researchers examined cerebral blood flow in healthy, physically fit older adults (ages 50-80 years) before and after a 10-day period during which they stopped all exercise. Using MRI brain imaging techniques, they found a significant decrease in blood flow to several brain regions, including the hippocampus, after they stopped their exercise routines.
"We know that the hippocampus plays an important role in learning and memory and is one of the first brain regions to shrink in people with Alzheimer's disease," says Dr. J. Carson Smith, associate professor of kinesiology and lead author of the study, which is published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience in August 2016. "In rodents, the hippocampus responds to exercise training by increasing the growth of new blood vessels and new neurons, and in older people, exercise can help protect the hippocampus from shrinking. So, it is significant that people who stopped exercising for only 10 days showed a decrease in brain blood flow in brain regions that are important for maintaining brain health."
The study participants were all "master athletes," defined as people between the ages of 50 and 80 (average age was 61) who have at least 15 years history of participating in endurance exercise and who have recently competed in an endurance event. Their exercise regimens must have entailed at least four hours of high intensity endurance training each week. On average, they were running ~36 miles (59 km) each week or the equivalent of a 10K run a day! Not surprisingly, this group had a V02 max above 90% for their age. This is a measure of the maximal rate of oxygen consumption of an individual and reflects their aerobic physical fitness.
Dr. Smith and colleagues measured the velocity of blood flow in brain with an MRI scan while they were still following their regular training routine (at peak fitness) and again after 10 days of no exercise. They found that resting cerebral blood flow significantly decreased in eight brain regions, including the areas of the left and right hippocampus and several regions known to be part of the brain's "default mode network" -- a neural network known to deteriorate quickly with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. This information adds to the growing scientific understanding of the impact of physical activity on cognitive health.
"We know that if you are less physically active, you are more likely to have cognitive problems and dementia as you age," says Dr. Smith. "However, we did not find any evidence that cognitive abilities worsened after stopping exercising for just 10 days. But the take home message is simple -- if you do stop exercising for 10 days, just as you will quickly lose your cardiovascular fitness, you will also experience a decrease in blood brain flow."
Dr. Smith believes that this could have important implications for brain health in older adults, and points to the need for more research to understand how fast these changes occur, what the long term effects could be, and how fast they could be reversed when exercise is resumed.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160829140440.htm
Yoga may be viable option for people with generalized anxiety disorder
October 3, 2016
Science Daily/Georgia State University
Yoga could help reduce symptoms for people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, according to a new study.
The research focuses on the effects of yoga on three people with the disorder and whether or not yoga could be helpful and serve as an alternative or additional treatment option.
"When people have this diagnosis, they worry a lot-uncontrollably-about the future, which causes physical symptoms like muscle tension and trouble sleeping, and their lives and their relationships are impaired because of it," said Jessica Morgan Goodnight, former graduate student at Georgia State and lead author on the study. "Psychotherapy usually works really well for anxiety disorders, but it doesn't seem to work as well for Generalized Anxiety Disorder."
The researchers found yoga tended to reduce worry, the main symptom of the disorder.
"Two participants showed decreases in daily worry ratings after they started yoga and reported less worry on a daily basis," said Goodnight. "The third participant was steadily increasing worry before starting yoga, but the increasing trend ended and began leveling out after she started practicing yoga."
The findings show yoga has some promise in helping people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder reduce their symptoms. The researchers say pilot studies like this pave the way for more conclusive research to be conducted in the future.
"It's nice to provide options for people with mental health conditions to try to reduce their symptoms and increase the quality of their lives," said Goodnight. "My research is a first step showing yoga could be an option for people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161003184157.htm
A new exercise partner is the key to exercising more
October 4, 2016
Science Daily/University of Aberdeen
Researchers have been investigating whether having an exercise companion increases the amount of exercise we do. Researchers found that finding a new exercise companion increased the amount of exercise people took. This was increased even more when the new partner was emotionally supportive.
The study reported that finding a new exercise companion increased the amount of exercise people took. This was increased even more when the new partner was emotionally supportive.
This is the first study to investigate the benefits of a new exercise companion and to look into the specific qualities in a partner that make a good gym buddy.
Dr Pamela Rackow from the Institute of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Aberdeen gathered the data whilst at the University of Zurich. Dr Rackow and her team asked half of the participants to find a new 'gym buddy' and the other half continued with their normal routine. The results showed that the group who found a new exercise partner exercised more than those who followed their regular exercise routine.
Dr Rackow said: "The idea of this study was to test in a very natural setting what is happening when two people get together with the aim to exercise more. I had read motivation tips in a leaflet that suggested that having an exercise companion would help me to exercise more but I wanted to know if this was true.
"This study is unique in that it reflects natural life relatively well because when you decide to exercise with a friend -- you ask someone in your normal social network regardless of whether they fit certain criteria or not. "
The team were also interested in what qualities makes a good partner. They asked participants to rate how supportive their partners are and what kind of support was most effective.
They divided support into two types, emotional and instrumental. They found that people exercised more when their companion offered emotional support and encouragement and rather than practical support like never missing a session.
Dr Rackow added: "Once we found that having a new exercise companion increases exercise frequency we wanted to find out why this is beneficial and what quality of support they offer that has this effect. Our results showed that the emotional social support from the new sports companion was the most effective. Thus, it is more important to encourage each other than doing the actual activity together. "
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161004081548.htm
Your fingers show your athletic potential and anxiety
October 12, 2016
Science Daily/The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
By comparing your index and ring fingers, a neuroscientist can tell if you are likely to be anxious, or if you are likely to be a good athlete.
Both women and men with this characteristic are -- on average -- better equipped to solve mentally demanding 3D rotation tasks as adults. As a group, they also have better physical and athletic abilities, but are more prone to having ADHD and Tourette's syndrome.
Why on earth is this the case? Both boys and girls are exposed to testosterone in the womb. Everyone has different levels of male and female sex hormones. Some men have a lot of testosterone, some have less, and the same applies to women. Women who have received a lot of prenatal testosterone don't need much testosterone as adults.
The level of testosterone in utero affects one's finger length as an adult.
24 women and a drop of testosterone
"The relationship between the index finger and ring finger in particular indicates how much testosterone you have been exposed to in utero," says Carl Pintzka, a medical doctor and researcher at the National Competence Service for Functional MRI.
In his doctoral dissertation at NTNU, Pintzka investigated how the brain functions differently in women and men. As part of this study, he tested an established theory about the significance of finger length and how the brain works.
He measured the finger length of 42 women and gave half of them a drop of testosterone. The other half were given a placebo. Afterwards, the women had to solve various mental tasks.
Short index finger, more testosterone
"We could then look at how testosterone levels affect different abilities in healthy women both in the womb and in adulthood," says Pintzka.
An index finger that is relatively short compared to the ring finger indicates that one has been exposed to a lot of testosterone in utero, whereas a relatively long index finger suggests a lower exposure to testosterone in the womb.
"One mechanism behind this relationship is the difference in the receptor density for oestrogen and testosterone in the various fingers in utero. This relationship has also been shown to remain relatively stable after birth, which implies that it's strictly the fetal hormone balance that determines this ratio," says Pintzka.
More testosterone, better sense of place
The relationship between the index finger and ring finger in humans is associated with a variety of abilities in adulthood.
"The greatest effect has been found for various physical and athletic measures, where high levels of prenatal testosterone are consistently linked with better capabilities," Pintzka says. "Beyond this we find a number of uncertain results, but a general feature is that high levels of testosterone generally correlate with superior abilities on tasks that men usually perform better, such as various spatial tasks like directional sense," he adds.
Conversely, low levels of testosterone are associated with better abilities in verbal memory tasks, such as remembering lists of words. Fetal hormonal balance also likely affects the risk of developing various brain-related diseases.
… but also more ADHD and autism
Pintzka says studies show that high levels of testosterone in utero correlate with an increased risk of developing diseases that are more common in men, such as ADHD, Tourette's and autism. Low levels of testosterone are associated with an increased risk of developing diseases that are more common in women, like anxiety and depression.
His study primarily involved researching how testosterone affects different spatial abilities in women. The women were asked to navigate a virtual maze, and to mentally rotate different three-dimensional objects.
More study needed According to Pintzka, the study results indicate a trend towards a positive effect of high testosterone levels on spatial abilities in utero. He believes that a larger study would be able to show a significant correlation. Furthermore, the results suggest that these hormone levels are important both in utero and in adulthood.
In other words, no definite conclusions can be drawn quite yet. Pintzka found no prenatal hormonal effects on study participants' ability to navigate a virtual maze.
"The women who scored best on the mental rotation tasks had high levels of testosterone both prenatally and in their adult lives, while those who scored worst had low levels in both," says Pintzka.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161012095619.htm
Want to exercise more? Get yourself some competition
New research finds that competition pushes people to exercise far better than friendly support
October 27, 2016
Science Daily/University of Pennsylvania
Competition is a far stronger motivation for exercise than friendly support, and in fact, giving people such support actually made them less likely to go to the gym less than simply leaving them alone, new research indicates.
Imagine you're a CEO trying to get your employees to exercise. Most health incentive programs have an array of tools -- pamphlets, websites, pedometers, coaching, team activities, step challenges, money -- but what actually motivates people? Is it social support? Competition? Teamwork? Corporate leaders often try a little bit of everything.
A new study published in the journal Preventative Medicine Reports from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found these efforts should hone in on one area: Competition. It was a far stronger motivation for exercise than friendly support, and in fact, giving people such support actually made them less likely to go to the gym less than simply leaving them alone.
"Most people think that when it comes to social media more is better," says Damon Centola, an associate professor in Penn's Annenberg School and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and senior author on the paper. "This study shows that isn't true: When social media is used the wrong way, adding social support to an online health program can backfire and make people less likely to choose healthy behaviors. However, when done right, we found that social media can increase people's fitness dramatically."
For this research, Centola and Jingwen Zhang, Ph.D., lead paper author and recent Annenberg graduate, recruited nearly 800 Penn graduate and professional students to sign up for an 11-week exercise program called "PennShape." The federally funded, university-wide fitness initiative created by Centola and Zhang provided Penn students with weekly exercise classes in the University fitness center, fitness mentoring, and nutrition advice, all managed through a website the researchers built. After program completion, the students who attended the most exercise classes for activities like running, spinning, yoga, and weight lifting, among others, won prizes.
What the participants didn't know was that the researchers had split them into four groups to test how different kinds of social networks affected their exercise levels. The four groups were: individual competition, team support, team competition, and a control group.
In the individual group, participants could see exercise leaderboards listing anonymous program members, and earned prizes based on their own success attending classes. For each team group, participants were assigned to a unit. In the team support group, they could chat online and encourage team members to exercise, with rewards going to the most successful teams with the most class attendance. In addition, those in the team competition group could see a leaderboard of other teams and their team standing. Participants in the control group could use the website and go to any class, but were not given any social connections on the website; prizes in this group were based on individual success taking classes.
Overwhelmingly, competition motivated participants to exercise the most, with attendance rates 90% higher in the competitive groups than in the control group. Both team and individual competition equally drove the students to work out, with participants in the former taking a mean of 38.5 classes a week and those in the latter taking 35.7. Members of the control group went to the gym far less often, on average 20.3 times a week.
The biggest surprise came in the number of workouts a week by members of the team support group: Just 16.8, on average -- half the exercise rate of the competitive groups.
"Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising," Zhang says, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. "Social support can make people more dependent on receiving messages, which can change the focus of the program."
How organizations use social media can affect how receptive people are to online signals, explains Centola, an expert on social networks and diffusion.
"Supportive groups can backfire because they draw attention to members who are less active, which can create a downward spiral of participation," Centola says. In the competitive groups, however, people who exercise the most give off the loudest signal. "Competitive groups frame relationships in terms of goal-setting by the most active members. These relationships help to motivate exercise because they give people higher expectations for their own levels of performance."
Competition triggers a social ratcheting-up process, he adds. "In a competitive setting, each person's activity raises the bar for everyone else. Social support is the opposite: a ratcheting-down can happen. If people stop exercising, it gives permission for others to stop, too, and the whole thing can unravel fairly quickly."
The positive effects of social competition go beyond exercise, to encouraging healthy behaviors such as medication compliance, diabetes control, smoking cessation, flu vaccinations, weight loss, and preventative screening, as well as pro-social behaviors like voting, recycling, and lowering power consumption.
"Social media is a powerful tool because it can give people new kinds of social influences right in their own home," Centola says. "Lifestyle changes are hard to make, but if you can give people the right kinds of social tools to help them do it, there's a lot of good that can be done at relatively little cost."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161027122554.htm
Athletic performance linked to mortality
November 1, 2016
Science Daily/University of Arizona
A study's participants who were asked to think about their own death before taking to the basketball court scored more points than those in a control group.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/11/161101103242_1_540x360.jpg
UA doctoral students Colin Zestcott (left) and Uri Lifshin (right) conducted two studies showing that athletes are subconsciously motivated by reminders of death. The skull shirt worn by Lifshin served as one of those reminders.
Credit: University of Arizona
It's not the locker room pep talk you'd expect, but new research from the University of Arizona suggests that athletes might perform better when reminded of something a bit grim: their impending death.
In two studies, the results of which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, basketball-playing participants scored more points after being presented with death-related prompts, either direct questions about their own mortality or a more subtle, visual reminder of death.
Researchers say the improved performance is the result of a subconscious effort to boost self-esteem, which is a protective buffer against fear of death, according to psychology's terror management theory.
"Terror management theory talks about striving for self-esteem and why we want to accomplish things in our lives and be successful," said UA psychology doctoral student Uri Lifshin, co-lead investigator of the research. "Everybody has their own thing in which they invest that is their legacy and symbolic immortality."
The reason people don't live in constant fear of their inevitable death is because they have this system to help them deal with it, Lifshin said.
"Your subconscious tries to find ways to defeat death, to make death not a problem, and the solution is self-esteem," he said. "Self-esteem gives you a feeling that you're part of something bigger, that you have a chance for immortality, that you have meaning, that you're not just a sack of meat."
Participants in the studies were male college students who indicated that they enjoy playing basketball and care about their performance in the sport. None of them played for a formal college basketball team.
"Our idea was that the study effect should only work for people who are motivated to perform well in sports. For individuals that derive less self-esteem from sport, whether they win or lose shouldn't matter as much," said UA doctoral student Colin Zestcott, the other lead investigator.
The Proof Is on the Court
In the first study, 31 participants played a pair of one-on-one basketball games with Zestcott, who posed as another study participant. In between the two games, which lasted about seven minutes each, participants were randomly assigned questionnaires to complete.
Some participants received packets that included prompts about death: "Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you," and, "Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead."
Others were asked instead to think about playing basketball: "Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of playing basketball arouses in you," and, "Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you play basketball."
The questions were followed by several delay tasks to allow death thoughts to work outside of conscious attention. Researchers were blind to which prompts each player received.
Those asked about death improved their personal performance in the second game by 40 percent, while those asked about basketball saw no change in performance.
Those who thought about death also performed 20 percent better as a whole in the second game than those in the other group. Before the questionnaires, the performance of both groups was roughly even.
"When we're threatened with death, we're motivated to regain that protective sense of self-esteem, and when you like basketball and you're out on the basketball court, winning and performing well is the ultimate way to gain self-esteem," Lifshin said.
The researchers' second study looked at how participants performed in an individual basket-shooting challenge when presented with a more subtle reminder of death.
For the study, Lifshin wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with a large white skull, made up of several iterations of the word "death."
Study participants were brought one-at-a-time onto the court, where Lifshin gave each person a 30-second description of the challenge and rules. He wore the skull T-shirt in front of half of the participants. With the other half, he had his jacket zipped up to cover the shirt. A coin flip was used to randomly determine which participants saw the skull.
Participants then completed a one-minute basket-shooting challenge, in which they could score one point for a layup, two points from the free-throw line and three points from the three-point line. To ensure that they kept moving, they were told they couldn't attempt the same types of shots back-to-back. They were scored by a different experimenter, who didn't know who saw the shirt.
Participants who saw the shirt outperformed those who did not by approximately 30 percent. They also attempted more shots -- an average of 11.85 per minute versus an average of 8.33 by those who did not see the shirt.
"They took more shots, better shots, and they hustled more and ran faster," Lifshin said.
UA psychology professor Jeff Greenberg, one of the originators of terror management theory, said the research provides important new support for the theory.
"We've known from many studies that reminders of death arouse a need for terror management and therefore increase self-esteem striving though performance on relatively simple laboratory tasks. However, these experiments are the first to show that activating this motivation can influence performance on complex, real-world behaviors," said Greenberg, who was another co-author of the studies, along with UA psychology doctoral student Peter Helm.
Coaches Already Tap Into Death
While it may seem strange that something as dark as death could be motivating, coaches have in some ways intuitively known this for years, the researchers note.
For example, a coach at halftime who says, 'You win this and they'll remember you forever,' plays into the human desire for immortality, Zestcott said.
And while the researchers looked specifically at basketball, they think the effects aren't limited by sport.
"There's no reason why it shouldn't work in soccer as it does in basketball. We don't believe this is sport-specific and we don't believe this is gender-specific," said Zestcott, a former student-athlete who played football as an undergraduate at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Zestcott and Lifshin hope future research might replicate their studies in collegiate or professional athletes and look at other sports, as well as possible effects on team performance.
They say that their findings might be applied in other areas as well.
"This is a potentially untapped way to motivate athletes but also perhaps to motivate people in other realms," Zestcott said. "Outside of sports, we think that this has implications for a range of different performance-related tasks, like people's jobs, so we're excited about the future of this research."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161101103242.htm
Stimulating the brain makes exercising the legs feel easier
November 1, 2016
Science Daily/University of Kent
Stimulation of the brain impacts on endurance exercise performance by decreasing perception of effort, new research shows.
The study examined the effect of a technique called transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), a form of non-invasive brain stimulation, on the neuromuscular, physiological and perceptual responses to exhaustive leg exercise.
Researchers led by Dr Lex Mauger from Kent's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences found that tDCS delayed exhaustion of the leg muscles by an average of 15% during an exercise task, and that this was likely caused by the participants feeling less effort during the exercise. However, tDCS elicited no significant effect on the neuromuscular response to exercise.
The performance effects of tDCS only occurred when the tDCS electrodes used to deliver the electrical current were positioned in a particular way. This study therefore provides important methodological guidance for the application of tDCS and provides further evidence that brain stimulation can improve endurance exercise performance, although the authors warn against the uncontrolled use of tDCS.
'Transcranial direct current stimulation improves isometric time to exhaustion of the knee extensors' (A. R. Mauger, L. Agnius, J. Hopker, S. M.Marcora, all University of Kent and B.Pageaux, Universite de Bourgogne) is published in the journal Neuroscience.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161101133449.htm
Psychological well-being and physical activity in older adults
December 2, 2016
Science Daily/Chapman University
New findings showed associations between psychological well-being and physical activity in adults ages 50 and older.
"Researchers have long studied how physical activity can lead to improved mood and feelings of well-being," says Julia Boehm, Ph.D., and lead author on the study, "however, less well understood is whether being happy and optimistic might actually encourage a person to be physically active."
Physical activity is a key health behavior linked to better physical and mental functioning, as well as reduced risk of the leading causes of death including cancer and heart disease. Further, psychological well-being is associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and mortality. Psychological well-being may be linked with improved health because happier people may be more likely to engage in physical activity.
Rates of physical activity are relatively low among middle-aged adults and decline further in older adulthood -- worsening substantially after age 75 -- so a key challenge is to identify not only modifiable factors that reduce the likelihood of declining activity levels, but also factors that contribute to the initiation and maintenance of physical activity in older age. Interventions that increase the number of people who are physically active may reduce the burden of poor health later in life.
"What we wanted to do in this study was to assess psychological well-being before assessing physical activity to determine if happier adults are more likely to exercise than their less happy peers," said Dr. Boehm.
During the 11-year study, participants were asked about the frequency and intensity of their physical activity both at work and during leisure time and then classified into categories of sedentary activity, low activity, moderate activity, and high activity.
The researchers found that higher psychological well-being at the start of the study was associated with greater levels of physical activity across more than a decade. Moreover, people at the start of the study who had high levels of psychological well-being and who were also physically active initially were less likely to become inactive over time.
"These findings have implications for health care as medical professionals often have difficulty persuading adults to increase physical activity," noted Dr. Boehm. "Results from this study suggest that higher levels of psychological well-being may precede increased physical activity; therefore, it is possible that psychological well-being could be a novel way of not only enhancing psychological health but also increasing physical activity -- which in turn could improve the physical health of a large segment of people in an aging society."
The study included 9,986 English adults over the age of 50 who were assessed up to six times across an average of 11 years. The average age of participants was 63.7 years, with 55 percent of participants being women, and 97 percent of the sample identifying as White.
The paper, called Maintaining Healthy Behavior: a Prospective Study of Psychological Well-Being and Physical Activity, is published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Authors were: Dr. Julia Boehm of Chapman University; Eric Kim, Ph.D., Laura Kubzansky, Ph.D, and Jackie Soo, Ph.D., all of Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161202101114.htm
The loneliness of the individual athlete
December 12, 2016
Science Daily/British Psychological Society (BPS)
Athletes in individual sports are more prone to developing depressive symptoms than athletes in team sports.
That is one of the findings being presented today, Monday 12 December 2016, to the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology in Cardiff by Professor Juergen Beckmann from the Technical University of Munich.
In his research on burnout and depression, Professor Beckmann and his team surveyed 162 elite and 199 junior elite athletes in two cross-sectional studies. They also conducted a longitudinal study of 85 junior athletes, surveying them three times over the course of a year.
These three studies were complemented by a qualitative study, in which 134 elite athletes were interviewed about perceived causes of their experienced stress, drop-out intentions and depressive symptoms.
The two cross-sectional studies found that sport-specific stress combined with insufficient time for recovery was associated with symptoms of depression. They also found that athletes in individual sports showed significantly higher scores for depressive symptoms than athletes in team sports.
The longitudinal study found that dysfunctional attitudes in athletes and a resigned coping style both predicted higher rates of depressive symptoms and burnout.
Although burnout and depression were significantly correlated, perfectionism and chronic stress predicted burnout but not depression. Depression was linked with a lack of time to recover from stress.
Professor Beckmann says: "Our research suggests that depression is particularly high in young athletes, with athletes in individual sports being more vulnerable. In Germany, we have developed a burnout and screening instrument for junior athletes and a website to give them advice on coping with stress and other psychological problems they may experience."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161212084649.htm
Want to improve your memory? Go to the gym
December 13, 2016
Science Daily/British Psychological Society (BPS)
Exercise improves your short-term memory, new research concludes. In two experiments, healthy and active participants were given lists of words to learn and recall either after or before exercise, or before or after a period of rest. Exercise consisted of 30 minutes of moderate intensity cycling.
That is the conclusion of research being presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology in Cardiff by Dr David Marchant from Edge Hill University, Lancashire.
In two experiments, healthy and active participants were given lists of words to learn and recall either after or before exercise, or before or after a period of rest. Exercise consisted of 30 minutes of moderate intensity cycling.
The results showed that, when recalling the words immediately after learning, exercising before learning produced the best results than rest. When asked to wait 30 minutes between learning and recall, exercising before or after learning was better than resting, but the best recall was when participants exercised after learning the words.
Dr Marchant says: "Our research suggests that an acute bout of aerobic exercise improves your short-term memory. Exercise before learning benefited immediate recall. But when people had to wait to recall the words, they performed best when they exercised after learning the lists. This improved memory didn't come at the expense of making more mistakes during remembering.
"Our findings are consistent with the idea that physical arousal improves memory, and those who need to learn information may benefit from taking part in exercise."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161213074341.htm
Jet lag impairs performance of major league baseball players
January 23, 2017
Science Daily/Northwestern University
A new study of how jet lag affects Major League Baseball players traveling across just a few time zones found that when players travel in a way that misaligns their internal 24-hour clock with the natural environment and its cycle of sunlight, they suffer negative consequences.
The researchers found that when people, in this case Major League Baseball players, travel in a way that misaligns their internal 24-hour clock with the natural environment and its cycle of sunlight, they suffer negative consequences.
"Jet lag does impair the performance of Major League Baseball players," said Dr. Ravi Allada, a circadian rhythms expert who led the study. "The negative effects of jet lag we found are subtle, but they are detectable and significant. And they happen on both offense and defense and for both home and away teams, often in surprising ways."
In a study of data spanning 20 years and including more than 40,000 games, the researchers identified these effects of jet lag on player and team performance:
• The offense of jet-lagged home teams is much more affected than that of jet-lagged away teams. Surprisingly, in terms of offensive performance, jet lag from eastward travel had significant negative effects on home teams (after returning from a road trip) and much less of an effect on away teams.
• Negative effects on offense are related to base running. The negative effects on the home team's offense were related to base running, such as stolen bases, number of doubles and triples, and hitting into more double plays.
• Both home and away teams suffer on defense, specifically by giving up more home runs. With defensive performance, strong effects of eastward jet lag were found for both home and away teams, primarily with jet-lagged pitchers allowing more home runs. "The effects are sufficiently large to erase the home field advantage," Allada said. Besides home runs allowed, few other effects were seen on pitching or defense.
• There is a difference between traveling east and traveling west. Most significant jet-lag effects were generally stronger for eastward than westward travel. "This is a strong argument that the effect is due to the circadian clock, not the travel itself," Allada said.
The study, "How Jet Lag Impairs Major League Baseball Performance," will be published the week of Jan. 23 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Allada and his team, Alex Song (first author) and Thomas Severini, used an unprecedented amount of MLB data (from 1992 to 2011), which gave the researchers the statistical power to identify the effects of jet lag on offensive and defensive performance metrics. The researchers considered if teams were traveling east or west; if the team was home or away; and the team itself.
They also looked at the number of hours players would be jet-lagged, based on the number of time zones traveled across, to determine which games were "jet-lag games" and which were not. (The human body clock can roughly shift about an hour each day as it synchronizes to the new environment.) If players were shifted two or three hours from their internal clocks, the researchers defined them as jet-lagged.
What does all this data analysis mean going forward? With MLB spring training less than a month away, Allada has some advice based on his research.
"If I were a baseball manager and my team was traveling across time zones -- either to home or away -- I would send my first starting pitcher a day or two ahead, so he could adjust his clock to the local environment," Allada said.
Allada provides an example from the 2016 National League Championship Series illustrating the potential impact of jet lag on player performance. In game 2, Los Angeles Dodgers' ace Clayton Kershaw shut out the Chicago Cubs, giving up only two hits, but game 6 was a different story.
"For game 6, the teams had returned to Chicago from LA, and this time the Cubs scored five runs off of Kershaw, including two home runs," Allada said. "While it's speculation, our research would suggest that jet lag was a contributing factor in Kershaw's performance."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170123153835.htm
Your brain on exercise
February 13, 2017
Science Daily/University of California - Santa Barbara
Psychologists have designed an experiment to investigate whether human vision is more sensitive during physical activity.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2017/02/170213171459_1_540x360.jpg
Participants rode stationary bikes while wearing a wireless heart rate monitor and an EEG cap.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara
It's universally accepted that the benefits of exercise go well beyond fitness, from reducing the risk of disease to improving sleep and enhancing mood. Physical activity gives cognitive function a boost as well as fortifying memory and safeguarding thinking skills.
But can it enhance your vision? It appears so.
Intrigued by recent findings that neuron firing rates in the regions of mouse and fly brains associated with visual processing increase during physical activity, UC Santa Barbara psychologists Barry Giesbrecht and Tom Bullock wanted to know if the same might be true for the human brain.
To find out, they designed an experiment using behavioral measures and neuroimaging techniques to explore the ways in which brief bouts of physical exercise impact human performance and underlying neural activity. The researchers found that low-intensity exercise boosted activation in the visual cortex, the part of the cerebral cortex that plays an important role in processing visual information. Their results appear in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
"We show that the increased activation -- what we call arousal -- changes how information is represented, and it's much more selective," said co-author Giesbrecht, a professor in UCSB's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "That's important to understand because how that information then gets used could potentially be different.
"There's an interesting cross-species link that shows these effects of arousal might have similar consequences for how visual information is processed," he continued. "That implies the evolution of something that might provide a competitive advantage in some way."
To investigate how exercise affects different aspects of cognitive function, the investigators enlisted 18 volunteers. Each of them wore a wireless heart rate monitor and an EEG (electroencephalogram) cap containing 64 scalp electrodes. While on a stationary bicycle, participants performed a simple orientation discrimination task using high-contrast stimuli composed of alternating black and white bars presented at one of nine spatial orientations. The tasks were performed while at rest and during bouts of both low- and high-intensity exercise.
The scientists then fed the recorded brain data into a computational model that allowed them to estimate the responses of the neurons in the visual cortex activated by the visual stimuli. They analyzed the responses while participants were at rest and then during low- and high-intensity exercise.
This approach allowed them to reconstruct what large populations of neurons in the visual cortex were doing in relation to each of the different stimulus orientations. The researchers were able to generate a "tuning curve," which estimates how well the neurons are representing the different stimulus orientations.
"We found that the peak response is enhanced during low-intensity exercise relative to rest and high-intensity exercise," said lead author Bullock, a postdoctoral researcher in UCSB's Attention Lab. "We also found that the curve narrows in, which suggests a reduction in bandwidth. Together, the increased gain and reduced bandwidth suggest that these neurons are becoming more sensitive to the stimuli presented during the low-intensity exercise condition relative to the other conditions."
Giesbrecht noted that they don't know the mechanism by which this is occurring. "There are some hints that it may be driven by specific neurotransmitters that increase global cortical excitability and that can account for the change in the gain and the increase in the peak response of these tuning profiles," he said.
From a broader perspective, this work underscores the importance of exercise. "In fact, the benefits of brief bouts of exercise might provide a better and more tractable way to influence information processing -- versus, say, brain training games or meditation -- and in a way that's not tied to a particular task," Giesbrecht concluded.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170213171459.htm
With beetroot juice before exercise, aging brains look 'younger'
April 19, 2017
Science Daily/Wake Forest University
Drinking a beetroot juice supplement before working out makes the brain of older adults perform more efficiently, mirroring the operations of a younger brain, according to a new study.
"We knew, going in, that a number of studies had shown that exercise has positive effects on the brain," said W. Jack Rejeski, study co-author. "But what we showed in this brief training study of hypertensive older adults was that, as compared to exercise alone, adding a beet root juice supplement to exercise resulted in brain connectivity that closely resembles what you see in younger adults."
While continued work in this area is needed to replicate and extend these exciting findings, they do suggest that what we eat as we age could be critically important to the maintenance of our brain health and functional independence.
Rejeski is Thurman D. Kitchin Professor and Director of the Behavioral Medicine Laboratory in the Department of Health & Exercise Science. The study, "Beet Root Juice: An Ergogenic Aid for Exercise and the Aging Brain," was published in the peer-reviewed Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. One of his former undergraduate students, Meredith Petrie, was the lead author on the paper.
This is the first experiment to test the combined effects of exercise and beetroot juice on functional brain networks in the motor cortex and secondary connections between the motor cortex and the insula, which support mobility, Rejeski said.
The study included 26 men and women age 55 and older who did not exercise, had high blood pressure, and took no more than two medications for high blood pressure. Three times a week for six weeks, they drank a beetroot juice supplement called Beet-It Sport Shot one hour before a moderately intense, 50-minute walk on a treadmill. Half the participants received Beet-It containing 560 mg of nitrate; the others received a placebo Beet-It with very little nitrate.
Beets contain a high level of dietary nitrate, which is converted to nitrite and then nitric oxide (NO) when consumed. NO increases blood flow in the body, and multiple studies have shown it can improve exercise performance in people of various ages.
"Nitric oxide is a really powerful molecule. It goes to the areas of the body which are hypoxic, or needing oxygen, and the brain is a heavy feeder of oxygen in your body," said Rejeski.
When you exercise, the brain's somatomotor cortex, which processes information from the muscles, sorts out the cues coming in from the body. Exercise should strengthen the somatomotor cortex.
So, combining beetroot juice with exercise delivers even more oxygen to the brain and creates an excellent environment for strengthening the somatomotor cortex. Post-exercise analysis showed that, although the study groups has similar levels of nitrate and nitrite in the blood before drinking the juice, the beetroot juice group had much higher levels of nitrate and nitrite than the placebo group after exercise.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170419091619.htm
How walking benefits the brain
Researchers show that foot's impact helps control, increase the amount of blood sent to the brain
April 24, 2017
Science Daily/Experimental Biology 2017
You probably know that walking does your body good, but it's not just your heart and muscles that benefit. Researchers found that the foot's impact during walking sends pressure waves through the arteries that significantly modify and can increase the supply of blood to the brain.
Until recently, the blood supply to the brain (cerebral blood flow or CBF) was thought to be involuntarily regulated by the body and relatively unaffected by changes in the blood pressure caused by exercise or exertion. The NMHU research team and others previously found that the foot's impact during running (4-5 G-forces) caused significant impact-related retrograde (backward-flowing) waves through the arteries that sync with the heart rate and stride rate to dynamically regulate blood circulation to the brain.
In the current study, the research team used non-invasive ultrasound to measure internal carotid artery blood velocity waves and arterial diameters to calculate hemispheric CBF to both sides of the brain of 12 healthy young adults during standing upright rest and steady walking (1 meter/second). The researchers found that though there is lighter foot impact associated with walking compared with running, walking still produces larger pressure waves in the body that significantly increase blood flow to the brain. While the effects of walking on CBF were less dramatic than those caused by running, they were greater than the effects seen during cycling, which involves no foot impact at all.
"New data now strongly suggest that brain blood flow is very dynamic and depends directly on cyclic aortic pressures that interact with retrograde pressure pulses from foot impacts," the researchers wrote. "There is a continuum of hemodynamic effects on human brain blood flow within pedaling, walking and running. Speculatively, these activities may optimize brain perfusion, function, and overall sense of wellbeing during exercise."
"What is surprising is that it took so long for us to finally measure these obvious hydraulic effects on cerebral blood flow," first author Ernest Greene explained. "There is an optimizing rhythm between brain blood flow and ambulating. Stride rates and their foot impacts are within the range of our normal heart rates (about 120/minute) when we are briskly moving along."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170424141340.htm
Aerobic, resistance exercise combo can boost brain power of over 50s
Effects independent of current state of brain health, finds evidence review
April 24, 2017
Science Daily/BMJ
A combination of aerobic and resistance exercises can significantly boost the brain power of the over 50s, finds the most comprehensive review of the available evidence to date.
And the effects were evident irrespective of the current state of an individual's brain health, the analysis shows.
Physical exercise for older adults is seen as a promising means of warding off or halting a decline in brain health and cognitive abilities. Yet the evidence for its benefits is inconclusive, largely because of overly restrictive inclusion criteria in the reviews published to date, say the researchers.
In a bid to try and plug some of these gaps, they systematically reviewed 39 relevant studies published up to the end of 2016 to assess the potential impact of varying types, intensities, and durations of exercise on the brain health of the over 50s.
They included aerobic exercise; resistance training (such as weights); multi-component exercise, which contains elements of both aerobic and resistance training; tai chi; and yoga in their analysis.
They analysed the potential impact of these activities on overall brain capacity (global cognition); attention (sustained alertness, including the ability to process information rapidly); executive function (processes responsible for goal oriented behaviours); memory (storage and retrieval); and working memory (short term application of found information).
Pooled analysis of the data showed that exercise improves the brain power of the over 50s, irrespective of the current state of their brain health.
Aerobic exercise significantly enhanced cognitive abilities while resistance training had a pronounced effect on executive function, memory, and working memory.
The evidence is strong enough to recommend prescribing both types of exercise to improve brain health in the over 50s, say the researchers.
The data showed that tai chi also improved cognitive abilities, which backs the findings of previously published studies, but the analysis was based on just a few studies, caution the researchers, so will need to be confirmed in a large clinical trial.
Nevertheless, it's an important finding, they suggest, because exercises like tai chi may be suitable for people who are unable to do more challenging forms of physical activity.
And in terms of how much and how often, the data analysis showed that a session lasting between 45 and 60 minutes, of moderate to vigorous intensity, and of any frequency, was good for brain health.
The researchers point to some potential limitations of their review: their evidence was confined only to studies of supervised exercise and which had been published in English.
Nevertheless, they conclude: "The findings suggest that an exercise programme with components of both aerobic and resistance type training, of at least moderate intensity and at least 45 minutes per session, on as many days of the week as possible, is beneficial to cognitive function in adults aged over 50."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170424215441.htm
Exercising can protect the brain from Alzheimer's disease
May 16, 2017
Science Daily/University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
The evidence is clear. Physical activity is associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease, a new study concludes.
The evidence is clear. Physical activity is associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease, says a panel of researchers and not-for-profit leaders, led by UBC's Okanagan campus.
The researchers also confirmed that regular physical activity may improve the performance of daily activities for people afflicted with Alzheimer's. Their conclusions may have significant implications for the 1.1 million Canadians affected directly or indirectly by dementia.
"As there is no current cure for Alzheimer's, there is an urgent need for interventions to reduce the risk of developing it and to help manage the symptoms," says study first author Kathleen Martin Ginis, professor in UBC Okanagan's School of Health and Exercise Sciences. "After evaluating all the research available, our panel agrees that physical activity is a practical, economical and accessible intervention for both the prevention and management of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias."
Martin Ginis and her cohort reviewed data from more than 150 research articles about the impact of physical activity on people with Alzheimer's. Some of the work explored how physical activity improves the patient's quality of life and the others examined the risk of developing Alzheimer's based on the amount of activity in which an individual participated.
The panel concluded that regular physical activity improves activities of daily living and mobility in in older adults with Alzheimer's and may improve general cognition and balance. They also established that older adults not diagnosed with Alzheimer's who are physically active, were significantly less likely to develop the disease compared to people who were inactive.
"This is exciting work," says Martin Ginis. "From here we were able to prepare a consensus statement and messaging which not only has community backing, but is also evidence-based. Now we have the tool to promote the protective benefit of physical activity to older adults. I'm hopeful this will move the needle on this major health concern."
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, characterized by progressive neurodegeneration that results in severe cognitive impairment, compromised physical ability and loss of independence. The number of worldwide cases is expected to increase from 30.8 million in 2010 to more than 106 million in 2050.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170516124023.htm