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Tag Archives: exercise
An 81-year-old brain doctor’s 7 ‘hard rules’ for keeping your memory ‘sharp as a whip’
Like any other part of your body, your brain needs daily exercise. Neglecting your brain health can make you vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
As a neuroscientist, I’ve spent decades guiding patients with memory problems through brain-enhancing habits and exercises — many of which I practice, too.
Here are seven brain rules I follow to keep my memory sharp as a whip at 81 years old:
1. Choose fiction when you can.
You can learn a lot from non-fiction works, but they are often organized in ways that allow you to skip around based on personal interests and previous familiarity with the subject.
Fiction, on the other hand, requires you to exercise your memory, as you proceed from beginning to end and retain a variety of details, characters and plots.
Incidentally, I’ve noticed over my years as a neuropsychiatrist that people with early dementia, as one of the first signs of the encroaching illness, often stop reading novels.
2. Never leave an art museum without testing your memory.
“Western Motel” by Edward Hopper 1957. Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 50 1/8 inches (77.8 x 128.3 cm). Located in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
Fine Art | Getty
My favorite painting to do visualization exercises with is Edward Hopper’s “Western Motel,” which depicts a woman sitting in a sunlit motel bedroom.
Start by intently studying the details until you can see them in your mind’s eye. Then describe the painting while looking away from it.
Illustration: Olivia de Recat for CNBC Make It
Did you include the tiny clock on the bedside table? The gooseneck lamp? The piece of clothing on the chair at the lower right of the painting? Can you recall the colors and the composition of the room?
You can do this with any piece of art to boost your memory.
3. Keep naps under 90 minutes.
Naps lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half, between 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., have been shown to increase later recall for information encoded prior to the nap.
Several studies have also found that naps can compensate for poor sleep at night. If you struggle with insomnia, a mid-afternoon nap can boost memory performance.
Over the years, I’ve trained myself to nap for exactly half an hour. Some people I know have learned to nap for only 15 minutes, and then wake up refreshed and reinvigorated.
4. No party is complete without brain games.
My favorite activity is “20 Questions,” where one person (the questioner) leaves the room and the remaining players select a person, place or thing. The questioner can ask up to 20 questions to guess what the group decided.
Success depends on the questioner’s ability to keep clearly in mind all of the answers and mentally eliminating possible choices on the basis of the answers.
Bridge and chess are also great for exercising your memory: In order to do well, you have to evaluate previous games, while also considering the future consequences of your decisions in the past and present.
5. Eat brain foods.
Dr. Uma Naidoo, a nutritional psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, has a great acronym for a BRAIN FOODS:
- B: Berries and beans
- R: Rainbow colors of fruits and vegetables
- A: Antioxidants
- I: Include lean proteins and plant-based proteins
- N: Nuts
- F: Fiber-rich foods and fermented foods
- O: Oils
- O: Omega-rich foods
- D: Dairy
- S: Spices
And good news for chocoholics (like me): A 2020 study found that cocoa flavonoids, the ingredients in dark chocolate, can enhance episodic memory in healthy young adults.
6. Use images for hard-to-remember things.
My wife’s dog, Leah, is a Schipperke (pronounced “SKIP-er-kee”). It is a distinctive name, but I’d have the hardest time remembering it. So to finally be able to answer “What kind of breed is that?” at the dog park, I formed the image of a small sailboat (small dog) with a burly skipper holding a huge key.
Get in the habit of converting anything which you find hard to remember into a wild, bizarre or otherwise attention grabbing image.
7. Don’t sit on the couch all day.
One recent study of 82,872 volunteers found that participants 80 years or older who engaged in moderate to high level of physical activity were at lower risk for dementia, compared with inactive adults aged 50 to 69 years.
Even just a shift from sedentary non-activity (prolonged sitting, a “never walk when you can drive” attitude), to active movement (standing, climbing stairs, walking a mile daily) made a difference.
Housework has also been linked to higher attention and memory scores and better sensory and motor function in older adults.
Dr. Richard Restak, MD, is a neuroscientist and author of 20 books on the human brain, including “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind” and “Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance.” Currently, he is the Clinical Professor of Neurology at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. In 1992, Dr. Restak was a recipient of The Chicago Neurosurgical Center’s “Decade Of The Brain Award.”
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Strength training may be as important as aerobic exercise for a longer life
In a recent meta-analysis combining 16 studies and data from over 1.5 million subjects, muscle-strengthening activities were associated with almost a 20 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, lung cancer and all-cause mortality.
“Strength training confers a host of health benefits independent of aerobic exercise,” said Daniel J. McDonough, a researcher at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health and co-author of a large study that looked at the effect of aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise on mortality. Adding some muscle also improves physical fitness and bone mineral density and reduces the risk of musculoskeletal injury.
Running, swimming, playing soccer and other aerobic exercise do a lot for the cardiovascular system — our heart and blood vessels — but they don’t do much for overall muscle mass or strength.
Perhaps most important for health, studies have found that strength training improves the body’s response to insulin and, therefore, leads to better control of blood sugar after meals — which means a reduced risk of diabetes or insulin resistance, conditions that can harm the heart and cardiovascular system by thickening the heart wall and increasing arterial plaque formation.
Also, emerging evidence shows contracting skeletal muscles produce myokines, which are small strings of amino acids existing between muscles and the rest of the body that can help regulate various metabolic processes conducive to better cardiometabolic health, McDonough says. German researchers last spring reported that “by stimulating the skeletal muscle in a certain way, we can make use of this cross talk and improve health.”
Because aging and inactivity tend to reduce muscle mass, resistance training is even more crucial for older adults as it helps slow the natural loss of muscle mass with age, McDonough says. Reducing muscle loss with advanced age is crucial to maintaining independence and helping older adults stay active. This also lowers the risk of chronic disease from disability and inactivity.
Strength training appears to have positive effects on brain health and function, perhaps decreasing the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, experts say.
Michael Valenzuela is a researcher at the University of New South Wales and one of the leaders of a study that looked at the effect of resistance exercise on cognitive function and brain structure in 100 subjects with mild cognitive impairment. He found that strength training appeared to protect areas of the brain, specifically the hippocampus, normally targeted by Alzheimer’s.
That may give strength training a potential role in prevention of the disease, Valenzuela says. “We also found these changes mediated better general cognitive performance in those older people that did the training, so it was not just an incidental finding,” he says.
A 2022 study in JAMA Network Open based on the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging found that the presence of low muscle mass was associated with faster future cognitive function decline in adults at least 65 years old. The researchers theorized that greater muscle mass may result in more physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness, which leads to more blood flow to the brain.
So how much strength training is enough?
The federal Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends two or more strength-training sessions each week. Ideally, the sessions should include four to six different exercises that use as many muscle groups as possible (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms). For each exercise, complete 10 to 12 repetitions two to three times.
“We found that just 1-3 hours per week of moderate exercise — brisk walking and/or vigorous aerobic exercise such as [high intensity interval training] training — and just 1-2 times per week of strength exercise substantially reduced the risk of death by all-causes,” McDonough says.
Given that walking to the bus or store counts, most people should be able to get in 60 minutes a week of aerobic exercise, McDonough says. And the two sessions of strength training doesn’t have to be at the gym, he adds. They can be with any form of resistance, such as gravity, hand weights, resistance bands, or even water bottles or cans from the cupboard, or hefting grocery bags.
So cardio or weights or both? If you’re looking to live longer, doing both is your best bet, experts say.
“We consistently found that the greatest health benefits, whether it was reduced risk of death or chronic diseases or improvement in risk factors like blood pressure or cholesterol, were seen among people who performed both types of exercise rather than one or the other,” said Angelique Brellenthin, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University and co-author of a recent review article titled “Aerobic or Muscle-Strengthening Exercise: Which is Better for Health?”
The review found that while aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise independently reduced the risk of death by all causes, people who hit the cardio and the weights realized the largest benefit, including an approximately 40 percent reduced risk of all-cause mortality and 50 percent reduced risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.
Researchers Have Pinpointed the One Type of Exercise That Makes People Live Longer—It’s Not What You May Think
This article originally appeared on Outside
If you’re looking to reboot your health this year, you might sign up for your first triathlon, kickstart a meditation habit, or cut down on ultra-processed foods. But the latest science suggests the best way to improve long-term health isn’t physical, it’s social: connection.
Strengthening relationship ties by exercising what experts call “social fitness” is the most influential brain and body hack. Like weight training staves off bone density loss as you age, social fitness counters the downstream effects of chronic stress.
“Not exercising your social fitness is hazardous to your health,” says Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Waldinger directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. According to the psychiatrist, who recently summed up eighty-plus years of data in his book The Good Life (January 2023, Simon & Schuster), the formula for health and happiness hinges on positive relationships.
“If you regularly feel isolated and lonely, it can be as dangerous as smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day or being obese,” Waldinger cautions.
But even though humans are wired to connect, exercising social fitness can be tricky. There’s no clear roadmap for building–or maintaining–a solid social life.
“Like unused muscles, neglected relationships atrophy,” Waldinger says.
Luckily, Waldinger’s data points to actionable exercises we can all use to supercharge our social fitness.
Studying the Good Life
In 1938, amid the worst economic depression in American history, researchers rounded up 268 Harvard sophomores to better understand how early psychosocial and biological factors influence life outcomes. For over eighty years, a team–now led by Waldinger–has tracked the students and their families, following them through marriages, careers, births, diseases, and deaths. In the 1970s, 456 Boston inner-city residents who were part of another study focused on juvenile delinquency and resilience were incorporated into the Harvard study.
The researchers check in with participants every two years, posing thousands of questions on topics like mood and life satisfaction. Every five years, they take physiological measurements including brain scans and blood work. As of 2023, the ongoing study is still tracking all living members of the original participant set and over 500 members of their offspring. The trove of data provides an unparalleled window into what makes up a good life.
When Waldinger first joined the study as a young psychiatrist at Harvard, he had an inkling that conventional measures of success like achievement, status, and awards were mere distractions on the path to real happiness. As he delved deeper in the data, hundreds of subjects confirmed this suspicion. Across the study, neither wealth nor social class were correlated with happiness levels or longevity. Positive relationships, on the other hand, were consistently linked to happier, longer lives.
Other large-scale data reinforces this link between connection and longevity. One systematic research review from 2010, including over 300,000 participants, suggests people with strong social ties are 50 percent more likely to survive over a given period than those with weak ties. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with immune dysfunction and may even spike the risk of heart attack or stroke by an estimated 30 percent. To help prevent these negative health outcomes, it’s essential to foster social fitness.
What Is Social Fitness?
Scientists have been studying humans’ social psychology in formal labs and universities for over a century, but the idea of flexing your “social muscle,” like you would a bicep or quad, didn’t emerge until 2011. That’s when social neuroscientists John and Stephanie Cacioppo shared results from testing a 10-hour social fitness training program with the U.S. military. The team found that social fitness exercises such as doing someone a favor or practicing conflict resolution reduced loneliness and boosted well-being in soldiers.
While scientists and philosophers had linked positive relationships and optimal health for decades, the Cacioppos and their research team were among the first to suggest positive relationships could be analogous to physical fitness. And just like you can’t remain physically fit without exercising, social fitness–the ability to cultivate and maintain positive relationships– withers without consistent effort.
Social Fitness and the Loneliness Epidemic
When the first Harvard study subjects were in their 80s, Waldinger and his team asked them to look back on their lives and share what they were proudest of. Nearly everyone talked about relationships.
“Almost all said: I was a good parent or a good mentor. I had a good marriage or I was a good friend,” Waldinger recalls. “Almost nobody said: I made a lot of money, I won these awards, or I got to be the chief executive of my organization.”
The team went on to ask subjects: Who could you call in the middle of the night, if you were sick or scared? Some people rattled off a long list. Others couldn’t list anyone.
“That’s real loneliness–this sense that nobody in the world has my back,” Waldinger says. “The costs of that are huge. It makes us feel unloved and unsafe, and eventually breaks down our health.”
In 2023, at the most technologically connected moment in human history, people report feeling farther apart than ever. Forty percent of older adults in the U.S. report chronic loneliness. Add in pandemic-related lockdowns and loneliness has hit record highs, culminating in what Vivek Murthy, physician, and former United States surgeon general classifies as a loneliness epidemic.
“When you lose emotional and social fitness, you lose everything,” says Emily Anhalt, a clinical psychologist, co-founder of Coa, a gym for mental health, and expert on emotional fitness who is not involved in the Harvard Study. “Everything in life is going to feel better if you feel connected to other people to get through the tough things and enjoy the good things.”
Like prescribing a dose of time outside, some physicians go as far to say that encouraging social interactions has the potential to have a healing effect on patients. Emerging data suggests cancer patients have higher chances of survival if they feel satisfied by their levels of social support. Some experts even liken social connection to a vital sign–that measuring people’s loneliness levels hints at general health as accurately as blood pressure or pulse.
A Social Cure
To combat widespread loneliness and reap the positive benefits of social connection, it may seem like we’re all supposed to be extroverts or party animals. That’s a common misconception.
Humans are social creatures, but we’re not all social butterflies. Loneliness is a subjective experience. It’s not about the quantity of friends or family you have, but how fulfilling those relationships feel. The antidote to loneliness for some may entail a vast social network, while a few close relationships work for others.
Anhalt says people should treat social fitness proactively. Rather than wait until they feel isolated, people should regularly nurture their social life, which elevates mental well-being by default.
“Our culture’s way of thinking about mental health is very reactive–we make people feel like they have to wait until things are falling apart to get support.” To Anhalt, that’s like waiting until you have early signs of heart disease to do cardio. “I want to help people think about working on their mental health more like going to the gym and less like going to the doctor.”
To exercise your social fitness, try this training plan outlined by Waldinger in his new book, The Good Life:
Map Your Social Universe
To kickstart social fitness, start with self-reflection. Like completing a basic strength training circuit to pinpoint weak muscle groups, the following mental exercises can reveal your shaky social muscles. First, in a journal or notes app, outline how you are devoting your time weekly, and to who. Then ask yourself: What am I giving and what am I receiving? Am I having enough fun with loved ones? Am I getting enough emotional support? Waldinger suggests taking this comprehensive social evaluation annually, maybe every new year or birthday.
Strengthen Keystones of Support
Rather than aim for a total social rehaul, focus on improving the valued relationships you already have. An easy way to do this is by asking loved ones: Is there anything I can do better in our relationship? Can I communicate differently, or should we spend more time together? Based on their answers, tailor your communication or quality time to benefit your inner circle.
Build Routine
A great way to level up–and maintain–healthy relationships is by scheduling regular contact, virtual or in-person. Pencil in a weekly coffee date with a mentor or plan a monthly Zoom call with high school friends. Remove some of the logistical barriers that make connecting feel like a chore. There’s no exact rep of weekly social interactions to hit. For some, one or two a week will suffice, while others may want to schedule daily opportunities for connection. Reflecting on how these interactions make you feel–energized or drained–can help you find your sweet spot.
Create New Connections
One exercise to keep your social muscles in good shape is by expanding your network. But making friends in adulthood isn’t as easy as it once was on the playground or soccer pitch. A surefire way to connect with someone new? Get involved in something you care about. If you love cross country skiing in winter, join a local club. If you enjoy getting your hands dirty outside, volunteer at a local community garden. These activities provide an immediate conversation starter with those who have similar interests. If you’re worried that no one would enjoy your company, volunteer your time to those who may be lonely like the elderly. Forging new connections at an older age may feel impossible– like running a marathon after years spent jogging 5Ks– but the effort leads to major benefits. Friendship shapes mental health and in turn, our physical well-being.
Do Emotional Push-Ups
And here’s a bonus tip from Anhalt: Do “emotional push-ups.” These include striking up conversations with strangers, saying thank you, or accepting compliments without deflection. Start small–Practice one or two emotional push-ups weekly. While there’s no shortcut to social fitness, regularly flexing your social muscles will add up to stronger relationships over time.
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Using Running to Escape Everyday Stresses May Lead To Exercise Dependence Instead of Mental Well-being
Summary: Running can help some escape from their everyday stresses, however, some recreational runners show signs of exercise dependence. Exercise dependence could be the result of maladaptive escapism where one self-suppresses to avoid negative experiences. This can be detrimental to overall well-being.
Source: Frontiers
Recreational running offers a lot of physical and mental health benefits – but some people can develop exercise dependence, a form of addiction to physical activity which can cause health issues. Shockingly, signs of exercise dependence are common even in recreational runners.
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology investigated whether the concept of escapism can help us understand the relationship between running, well-being, and exercise dependence.
“Escapism is an everyday phenomenon among humans, but little is known regarding its motivational underpinnings, how it affects experiences, and the psychological outcomes from it,” said Dr Frode Stenseng of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, lead author of the paper.
Running to explore or to evade?
“Escapism is often defined as ‘an activity, a form of entertainment, etc. that helps you avoid or forget unpleasant or boring things’. In other words, many of our everyday activities may be interpreted as escapism,” said Stenseng.
“The psychological reward from escapism is reduced self-awareness, less rumination, and a relief from one’s most pressing, or stressing, thoughts and emotions.”
Escapism can restore perspective, or it can act as a distraction from problems that need to be tackled. Escapism which is adaptive, seeking out positive experiences, is referred to as self-expansion. Meanwhile, maladaptive escapism, avoiding negative experiences, is called self-suppression. Effectively, running as exploration or as evasion.
“These two forms of escapism are stemming from two different mindsets, to promote a positive mood, or prevent a negative mood,” said Stenseng.
Escapist activities used for self-expansion have more positive effects but also more long-term benefits. Self-suppression, by contrast, tends to suppress positive feelings as well as negative ones and lead to avoidance.
Self-suppression associated with exercise dependence
The team recruited 227 recreational runners, half men and half women, with widely varying running practices. They were asked to fill out questionnaires which investigated three different aspects of escapism and exercise dependence: an escapism scale which measured preference for self-expansion or self-suppression, an exercise dependence scale, and a satisfaction with life scale designed to measure the participants’ subjective wellbeing.
The scientists found that there was very little overlap between runners who favored self-expansion and runners who preferred self-suppression modes of escapism. Self-expansion was positively related with wellbeing, while self-suppression was negatively related to wellbeing.
Self-suppression and self-expansion were both linked to exercise dependence, but self-suppression was much more strongly linked to it. Neither escapism mode was linked to age, gender, or amount of time a person spent running, but both affected the relationship between wellbeing and exercise dependence.
Whether or not a person fulfilled criteria for exercise dependence, a preference for self-expansion would still be linked to a more positive sense of their own wellbeing.
Although exercise dependence corrodes the potential wellbeing gains from exercise, it seems that perceiving lower wellbeing may be both a cause and an outcome of exercise dependency: the dependency might be driven by lower wellbeing as well as promoting it.
Similarly, experiencing positive self-expansion might be a psychological motive that promotes exercise dependence.
“More studies using longitudinal research designs are necessary to unravel more of the motivational dynamics and outcomes in escapism,” said Stenseng. “But these findings may enlighten people in understanding their own motivation, and be used for therapeutical reasons for individuals striving with a maladaptive engagement in their activity.”
About this exercise addiction and psychology research news
Author: Angharad Brewer Gillham
Source: Frontiers
Contact: Angharad Brewer Gillham – Frontiers
Image: The image is in the public domain
See also
Original Research: Open access.
“Running to Get “Lost”? Two Types of Escapism in Recreational Running and Their Relations to Exercise Dependence and Subjective Well-Being” by Frode Stenseng et al. Frontiers in Psychology
Abstract
Running to Get “Lost”? Two Types of Escapism in Recreational Running and Their Relations to Exercise Dependence and Subjective Well-Being
Escapism is a fundamental motivation in many forms of activity engagements. At its core, escapism is “a habitual diversion of the mind … as an escape from reality or routine”.
Accordingly, escapism may entail many adaptive and maladaptive psychological antecedents, covariates, and outcomes. However, few studies have been conducted on escapism as a motivational mindset in running.
Here, in a sample of recreational runners (N = 227), we applied a two-dimensional model of escapism, comprising self-expansion (adaptive escapism) and self-suppression (maladaptive escapism), and examined how they were related to exercise dependence and subjective well-being.
First, confirmatory factor analyses showed that the escapism dimensions were highly diversifiable in the sample. Then, correlational analyses showed that self-expansion was positively correlated to subjective well-being, whereas self-suppression was negatively related to well-being.
Self-suppression was more strongly related to exercise dependence compared to self-expansion.
Finally, path analyses evidenced an explanatory role of self-expansion and self-suppression in the inverse relationship between exercise dependence and well-being. In conclusion, the present findings support escapism as a relevant framework for understanding the relationship between exercise dependence in running and subjective well-being.
Gardening and the exercise it involves reduce disease risk factors: study
Though research on gardening abounds, the researchers wrote that they were able to find only three other studies that tested gardening’s effects on disease risk factors by assigning participants randomly to groups who did and didn’t garden, then comparing their health.
In this case, the researchers ran a study at 37 community gardens in Denver and Aurora, Colo. After raising awareness of the program in a variety of neighborhoods, they recruited those on the waiting lists for the study. All 291 participants were adults and had not gardened within the last two years. More than half were from low-income households.
The group assigned to garden was provided with a garden plot, seeds, seedlings and an introduction to gardening course. Those assigned to the non-gardening group were offered the same deal during the next gardening season. Participants were all given health surveys that looked at such factors as body weight, waist circumference, physical activity and diet.
During the study, researchers found, those who gardened ate more fruit and vegetables than their counterparts, increasing their consumption by about 1.13 servings per day. They consumed 1.4 grams more fiber a day than the control group, and increased their fiber intake by 7 percent over the course of the program. They were slightly more active, too, increasing their moderate to vigorous physical activity during the study period. Gardeners also reported less stress and anxiety than their non-gardening counterparts.
Though the gains were modest, researchers said that they are the types of small changes recommended by experts as a way to prevent the risk of chronic diseases. Smoking, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle all contribute to that risk.
“These findings provide concrete evidence that community gardening could play an important role in preventing cancer, chronic diseases and mental health disorders,” said Jill Litt, a professor of environmental health at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the paper’s senior author, in a news release.
The researchers, who received funding from the American Cancer Society, said it’s worth looking further into community gardening as a potential health intervention in urban areas.
How Exercise Might Mitigate Age-Related Decline in Skeletal Muscle Structure and Function
Summary: Study reveals exercise is associated with myonuclear remodeling and may contribute to the protective effects of exercise on muscle function throughout the lifespan.
Source: King’s College London
Research has found that exercise is associated with changes to the nucleus in muscle fibres and may contribute to the protective effects of exercise on muscle function throughout the lifespan.
The paper’s authors, from the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences and the Centre for Human & Applied Physiological Sciences, isolated single muscle fibres from young and older exercise trained individuals.
In particular, they used tissue from young marathon runners and elderly master cyclists – with the latter capable of cycling 100km in under 6.5 hours (with an average age of 76).
Strikingly, they found that myonuclei – commonly referred to as the ‘control centre’ of muscle fibres – were more spherical, less deformable, and contained more of a protein called lamin A than untrained individuals. Parallel studies in mice confirmed changes in lamin A, and showed that myonuclei were stiffer as a result of exercise.
Writing in the Journal of Physiology, they concluded that exercise is associated with myonuclear remodelling, which is preserved in older people, and may contribute to the protective effects of exercise on muscle function throughout the lifespan.
Age-related decline in skeletal muscle function, such as muscle strength and endurance, can result in reduced quality of life. Whilst it is appreciated that exercise can mitigate the decline in muscle function, the precise mechanisms that control this process are not fully understood.
Characterizing the subcellular changes associated with exercise may therefore improve our understanding of how exercise can extend functionality in old age.
Apart from housing the genome of the cell, the nucleus is capable of sensing and responding to physical forces, which can alter nucleus shape and activate cell communication pathways.
Defects in proteins that control the mechanics of nuclei, such as lamin A, are hallmarks of some diseases including heart disease, muscular dystrophy and premature aging disorders.
In these conditions, nuclei are misshapen and more deformable, with aberrant cell communication. However, whether these particular properties are affected in aging and exercise was previously unknown.
The researchers speculated that nuclei in muscle cells, called myonuclei, would show similar abnormalities to laminopathies in aging individuals.
Dr Matthew Stroud, Principle Investigator of the Stroud Lab, said: “Whilst we know that exercise is able to overcome various detrimental aspects of the aging process, our molecular understanding of this is incomplete. Here we used both humans and mice to show that changes to nucleus shape and structure in muscle are strongly associated with exercise.”
As gatekeepers of the genome, nuclei govern cell fate and function, and the nuclear alterations we observed may promote muscle adaptation to exercise. This may help to mitigate muscle dysfunction with age.”
Human lifespan has increased substantially over the past half-century and this trend is projected to continue. One concern, however, is that this has not been accompanied by an equivalent extension of healthspan – the part of a person’s life when they are generally in good health – in old age.
Instead of this, morbidity has been extended, and independence and quality of life has reduced. The authors hope that unraveling the beneficial effects of exercise may guide treatments to improve the healthspan of our ever-expanding aging population.
About this exercise, aging, and muscle function research news
Author: Press Office
Source: King’s College London
Contact: Press Office – King’s College London
Image: The image is in the public domain
See also
Original Research: Open access.
“Myonuclear alterations associated with exercise are independent of age in humans” by Matthew Stroud et al. Journal of Physiology
Abstract
Myonuclear alterations associated with exercise are independent of age in humans
Age-related decline in skeletal muscle structure and function can be mitigated by regular exercise. However, the precise mechanisms that govern this are not fully understood. The nucleus plays an active role in translating forces into biochemical signals (mechanotransduction), with nuclear lamina protein
Lamin A regulating nuclear shape, nuclear mechanics, and ultimately gene expression. Defective Lamin A expression causes muscle pathologies and premature ageing syndromes, but the roles of nuclear structure and function in physiological ageing and in exercise adaptations remain obscure.
Here, we isolated single muscle fibres and carried out detailed morphological and functional analyses on myonuclei from young and older exercise-trained individuals.
Strikingly, myonuclei from trained individuals were more spherical, less deformable, and contained a thicker nuclear lamina than untrained individuals. Complementary to this, exercise resulted in increased levels of Lamin A and increased myonuclear stiffness in mice.
We conclude that exercise is associated with myonuclear remodelling, independently of age, which may contribute to the preservative effects of exercise on muscle function throughout the lifespan.
Scientists Discover Species of Gut Microbes That Can Boost the Motivation To Exercise
If the gut-to-brain pathway found in mice also exists in humans, it could be used as an effective method to enhance exercise and promote better overall health.
Researchers have discovered a gut-to-brain pathway in mice that increases exercise performance.
According to a study published in Nature, led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, certain types of gut bacteria can activate nerves in the gut to increase the drive to exercise. The study in mice identified a gut-to-brain pathway that explains how these bacteria can enhance exercise performance.
The study found that variations in running performance among a group of lab mice were mainly caused by the presence of specific gut bacterial species in the mice with better performance. The researchers identified that this effect is linked to the small molecules called metabolites that these bacteria produce. These metabolites activate sensory nerves in the gut which in turn, increase activity in a brain region that controls motivation during exercise.
“If we can confirm the presence of a similar pathway in humans, it could offer an effective way to boost people’s levels of exercise to improve public health generally,” said study senior author Christoph Thaiss, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Microbiology at Penn Medicine.
Thaiss and colleagues set up the study to search broadly for factors that determine exercise performance. They recorded the genome sequences, gut bacterial species, bloodstream metabolites, and other data for genetically diverse mice. They then measured the amount of daily voluntary wheel running the animals did, as well as their endurance.
The researchers analyzed these data using machine learning, seeking attributes of the mice that could best explain the animals’ sizeable inter-individual differences in running performance. They were surprised to find that genetics seemed to account for only a small portion of these performance differences—whereas differences in gut bacterial populations appeared to be substantially more important. In fact, they observed that giving mice broad-spectrum antibiotics to get rid of their gut bacteria reduced the mice’s running performance by about half.
Ultimately, in a years-long process of scientific detective work involving more than a dozen separate laboratories at Penn and elsewhere, the researchers found that two bacterial species closely tied to better performance, Eubacterium rectale and Coprococcus eutactus, produce metabolites known as fatty
Apart from possibly offering cheap, safe, diet-based ways of getting ordinary people running and optimizing elite athletes’ performance, he added, the exploration of this pathway might also yield easier methods for modifying motivation and mood in settings such as addiction and depression.
Reference: “A microbiome-dependent gut–brain pathway regulates motivation for exercise” by Lenka Dohnalová, Patrick Lundgren, Jamie R. E. Carty, Nitsan Goldstein, Sebastian L. Wenski, Pakjira Nanudorn, Sirinthra Thiengmag, Kuei-Pin Huang, Lev Litichevskiy, Hélène C. Descamps, Karthikeyani Chellappa, Ana Glassman, Susanne Kessler, Jihee Kim, Timothy O. Cox, Oxana Dmitrieva-Posocco, Andrea C. Wong, Erik L. Allman, Soumita Ghosh, Nitika Sharma, Kasturi Sengupta, Belinda Cornes, Nitai Dean, Gary A. Churchill, Tejvir S. Khurana, Mark A. Sellmyer, Garret A. FitzGerald, Andrew D. Patterson, Joseph A. Baur, Amber L. Alhadeff, Eric J. N. Helfrich, Maayan Levy, J. Nicholas Betley and Christoph A. Thaiss, 14 December 2022, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05525-z
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation, the Agilent Early Career Professor Award, the Global Probiotics Council, the IDSA Foundation, the Thyssen Foundation, the Human Frontier Science Program, and Penn Medicine, including the Dean’s Innovation Fund.
Six Minutes of Intense Exercise Boosts a Crucial Molecule in Your Brain : ScienceAlert
Six minutes of high-intensity exercise is enough to produce a key protein in the brain, one that’s important in brain formation, function, and memory, and which has been implicated in the progress of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The specialized protein in question is called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and it promotes both the growth and survival of neuron cells in the brain, as well as facilitating the development of new links and signaling pathways.
“BDNF has shown great promise in animal models, but pharmaceutical interventions have thus far failed to safely harness the protective power of BDNF in humans,” says environmental physiologist Travis Gibbons, from the University of Otago in New Zealand.
“We saw the need to explore non-pharmacological approaches that can preserve the brain’s capacity which humans can use to naturally increase BDNF to help with healthy aging.”
In this study, 12 physically active volunteers (aged 18 to 56 years) were put through three tests to see which was best at generating BDNF in the brain: 20 hours of fasting, 90 minutes of cycling, or 6 minutes of vigorous cycling.
The brief and intensive burst of cycling saw the best results in terms of BDNF production. In fact, it boosted BDNF levels in the blood by four or five times, compared with a slight increase after light exercise, and no change with fasting.
The next question is why this is happening – and that’s something for a subsequent study. Ultimately, high-intensity exercise could be used as a convenient, inexpensive way of keeping the brain healthy and protecting against the development of disease.
It’s possible that the increase in blood platelets that naturally occurs with exercise could explain these findings. Platelets store a large amount of BDNF, which might account for the spike that coincides with intense cycling.
Alternatively, the increase might be caused by the brain switching between fuel sources following intense exercise, the researchers say, forcing the body to draw on lactate rather than glucose reserves.
“This substrate switch allows the brain to utilize alternative fuels and initiates the production of key neurotrophic factors such as BDNF,” says Gibbons.
The team is now keen to add more experiments to the mix, such as three whole days of fasting, to see how this affects BDNF levels in the blood. The combined effects of fasting and intense exercise are another potential avenue to explore.
We now have numerous studies linking together exercise with benefits that can be noticed in the brain, whether it’s improving concentration or giving a boost to cognitive function, and it’s likely that there are many more discoveries to come.
“It is becoming more and more clear that exercise benefits brain health at all stages of life,” says Kate Thomas, exercise physiologist and study author at the University of Otago.
“These data show one avenue by which intense exercise may play a role. Fortunately, exercise is widely accessible, equitable, and affordable.”
The research has been published in the Journal of Physiology.
How To Get Out Of A Bad Mood, According To Experts
Moods are a part of life, and while it’s normal to feel down sometimes, it is never pleasant and likely isn’t how you want to feel for much of the day.
While you can’t just tell yourself to feel better, you can change the thoughts and behaviors that help influence your mood, according to Ruth Ellingsen, a clinical assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Oregon.
The first step in turning your bad mood around is identifying what kind of mood you’re in, Ellingsen explained.
″[It] sounds simple but really involves being mindfully aware of our current state,” she said. It’s fairly common to ignore our emotions as we go through our daily lives, which makes it pretty impossible to improve your mood, Ellingsen added. How can you feel better if you don’t know how you’re feeling?
To determine your mood, Ellingsen said that she recommends doing a feeling temperature check using what is known as a feeling thermometer. She said a feeling thermometer has four zones —green (which represents comfortable feelings or a good mood), yellow (which is the next level up on the thermometer, indicating you may feel a little tired, for example), orange (which is another level up, so nervous or frustrated) and red (which is very uncomfortable — like feeling sad, angry or another negative emotion). This easy resource to determine your mood is an excellent tool for measuring your feelings.
Once you’re aware of how you’re feeling, you can figure out what to do about it and take steps to control your mood before you hit that red zone, which, she said, is an emotional state, and it’s hard to snap out of it.
But if you’re in the yellow or orange zones, you can easily employ some strategies to turn your mood around. Here are some ways to do so.
Try breathing exercises.
“The one thing that’s at all of our disposals is using our breath” to get out of a bad mood, said Gregory Sullivan, the program director of the positive coaching and athletic leadership masters program at the University of Missouri.
He recommends trying one of two breathing exercises the next time you feel down. One option is the “physiological sigh,” consisting of two quick inhales followed by one long exhale.
“What that does is it removes [carbon dioxide] from our body and makes us feel a little bit more relaxed,” Sullivan said.
This double inhale increases the lung’s ability to fill with air and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the body, Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford Medicine, told the school’s podcast. According to Huberman, increased levels of carbon dioxide activate our body’s stress response, so being able to push out carbon dioxide also decreases our stress.
And, Sullivan added, breathing impacts the body’s vagus nerve and “takes us out of that fight, flight or freeze mentality.” So, that long exhale helps you relax.
You can also try the 6-7-8 breathing exercise, which is breathing in through your nose for six seconds, holding your breath for seven seconds, and then exhaling for eight seconds, he noted.
When it comes to breathing exercises, Sullivan said they allow the body to control the mind rather than the mind controlling the mind. And “it shifts our focus away from what may be troubling us,” he added.
Turn to fitness.
You’ve likely heard many times that exercise is good for your mental health, and the same goes for its impact on helping you get out of a bad mood, according to Sarah Sarkis, an executive coach and senior director of performance psychology at Exos, a corporate wellness company.
“Move your body for 15 [to] 20 minutes,” Sarkis said. “You will get a shot of endorphins and adrenaline, which can help us quickly shift perspectives.”
When you’re not feeling your best, turn to a favorite fitness routine like running, yoga, tennis or indoor cycling. If you’re in a bad mood, you won’t want to put more pressure on yourself by doing a workout you don’t like.
Westend61 via Getty Images
Focus on others instead of yourself.
Shifting your focus away from yourself is a great way to lift your spirits, Sullivan said. He added that one of the earliest contributors to positive psychology, Chris Peterson, stressed the importance of other people when it comes to your mental health. Helping or building relationships with others will only make you feel better (and help kick that bad mood).
“The simple thing would be deciding that during the day you’re going to do some random acts of kindness or [ask] a coworker if they could use some help,” Sullivan said.
So, if you find yourself in a bad mood, you could try reaching out to a friend who is going through a tough time or donating items to an organization that needs support.
Sullivan added that shifting your focus away from yourself is one of the most powerful ways to defeat a bad mood.
Spend time outside.
Study after study has found that nature is good for your mental health — spending time outside can lower stress levels, lower anxiety and, generally, just put a smile on your face.
“Nature can be medicine if we use it that way, and getting outside and changing your perspective can sometimes shift your mood rather quickly,” Sarkis added.
She said that adding music to your time outside can be even more beneficial and can “interrupt the cognitive loop that gets set very quickly once we are ‘in a bad mood.’”
Practice gratitude.
“The most powerful and helpful of all positive emotions is gratitude — being grateful just makes us happier,” Sullivan said, ”and being happy and in a bad mood is certainly incompatible behavior.”
To tune into your inner gratitude, think about two or three things in your life for which you’re grateful, he said. These don’t have to be big things, they can be something simple like the smell of a new candle or the weather.
You can practice gratitude at the beginning or the end of the day, though Sullivan said he prefers to do it to close out his day.
“Thinking about gratitude, it helps me sleep,” he said. Bonus: Sleep is an important tool for avoiding bad moods.
Stay in the moment.
“Oftentimes when we’re in a bad mood, we are ruminating about something that happened in the past, or we’re worrying about something in the future,” Ellingsen said.
“Experts believe that about 90% of the things that we worry about never happen,” Sullivan explained. So, most of those worries contributing to your mood are usually pretty pointless.
“We can very intentionally do something behaviorally to bring ourselves to the present moment, whether that’s deep breathing or just tuning into our senses to really bring ourselves away from what [we’re] worrying about,” Ellingsen stated.
In other words, practicing mindfulness in these moments is a good idea, which can mean doing the breathing exercises mentioned above or trying out meditation.
Sullivan added that another way to get rid of worrisome thoughts about the past or future is to argue with yourself. So, say you are nervous about an upcoming conversation with your boss. Instead of giving in to those thoughts, question why you feel that way. On top of that, remind yourself of the previous talks with your boss that went well. This may help calm you down.
If you’re upset, grab an ice pack.
According to Ellingsen, you can do things that act on your body’s chemistry and kind of trick yourself into being calm.
“One thing that is actually quite effective, particularly if you are really angry … is to literally cool down your body, so taking an ice pack and putting it on your forehead,” she said.
There is something about the physical cooling effect that brings on a sense of relaxation, Ellingsen added.
Focus on your muscles.
Ellingsen said you could also try progressive muscle relaxation to help better your mood.
For this, you practice tensing and then relaxing certain parts of your body — so, you can start by making a fist and then relaxing or shrugging your shoulders up high and then letting them go, she said.
“Again, that can trick your body into relaxation mode,” Ellingsen noted.
And don’t discount your unpleasant emotions — they’re normal.
“While snapping out of a bad mood may be really helpful in the short term, learning to accept our emotions, both positive and negative, might be the better strategy in the long term,” Sullivan said.
“Positive psychology is the study of well-being, and while being happy is part of well-being, well-being doesn’t mean that we’re happy all the time,” he added.
According to Sullivan, a key aspect of well-being is the ability to accept the full array of human emotions — from excitement and joy to boredom and pain.
“It’s also important to note how ephemeral [our emotions] are; they come and go,” Sullivan said, “knowing that is a huge step in dealing with a bad mood and negative emotions.”
Meaning even if you do feel upset, you won’t feel that way forever.
What’s more, Sullivan said we are genetically predisposed toward negativity, which goes back to our caveman ancestors who used negativity to stay safe from real threats.
To an extent, this still keeps us safe today, “but at times, we can be overwhelmed by that negative bias. It’s important to find a level of emotional harmony, and that’s where positive psychology and the interventions that have been created through research can really help with that,” Sullivan said.
In the spirit of listening to your moods, Sarkis added that “moods don’t have to hijack your day if you practice … how to move through your moods in an emotionally healthy way.”
This can mean following some of the practices above, like breathing exercises, fitness and general mindfulness, to better equip you for all of the moods — unpleasant and not — that come your way.
While it’s normal to be in a bad mood occasionally, you should be aware of certain warning signs.
Simply snapping out of a bad mood is not a reality for some people. “Moods can also be influenced by other psychological factors such as the diagnosis of a mood disorder,” Sarkis said.
Suppose you feel sad for most of the day for at least two weeks. In that case, it is worth talking to a therapist, Alayna L. Park, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, previously told HuffPost.
Or, if you are feeling hopeless or fatigued or have lost interest in activities you once enjoyed, you should also find someone to talk to. But, again, this may be more than just a “bad mood” and cannot be helped solely using the tips above.
If you want help from a professional, you can use Psychology Today’s online database to find a therapist near you.
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