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A new study from Dartmouth College sheds light on how moderately easy aerobic exercise affects the human mind differently than high-intensity exercise over a calendar year. The first-of-its-kind study suggests that consistent, easy or hard paced aerobic exercise (such as walking, jogging, or swimming) affects how the mind works in different ways. I’m here. These findings (Manning et al., 2022) were published in a peer-reviewed journal on August 15th. scientific report.
In this longitudinal study, lead author Jeremy Manning and colleagues used Fitbits to collect real-world exercise intensity data from 113 participants for a year. This study was designed to test the researchers’ hypothesis that different intensities of physical activity have different quantifiable effects on cognitive performance and mental health.
How Road-Tested Exercise Intensity Affects the Mind of an Ultramarathoner
Before diving into these evidence-based research findings, let me make a few anecdotal observations and suggest that I intentionally increase the intensity of my aerobic exercise to optimize how my mind works according to my daily cognitive demands. We share our mixed, field-tested method.
As an ultra-endurance athlete who ran six consecutive marathons on the treadmill in 2004 and set a Guinness World Record, to analyze how different exercise intensities affect my thought processes and mental health. have spent a lot of time on Over the years, we’ve figured out how to tailor your daily workouts to help you think better and feel less stressed and depressed, based on the dose-response of easy, moderate, or vigorous cardio.
My curiosity about how exercise affects the mind began decades ago. In the 1970s, my father, a neuroscientist, put sheep on treadmills to see how physical activity affected their brains.implement in vivo Researching how exercise affects the mammalian brain, my father took a six-month break from his job as a neurosurgeon at Harvard Medical School to join the Flory Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Researched live sheep in containment.
My father’s exercise-related brain research was conducted at a time when the jogging craze was sweeping the country, and the public began to associate the so-called “runner’s high” with the release of endorphins discovered and named in the mid-1970s. did. (Part & Solomon, 1973).
In Boston, where my family lived at the time, runners were a frenzy. Rain, sleet and snow won’t interfere with your daily “exercise fix”. Based on Thorndyke’s Law of the Effect (“All animals seek pleasure and avoid pain”), my father was the one behind runners finding “pleasure” in strenuous exercise normally perceived as “pain.” I have diligently researched a certain neuroscience.
Unfortunately, my father’s animal studies of how exercise affects the electrochemical milieu of the mammalian brain ultimately failed to yield meaningful results. His unanswered research questions deepen our understanding of how aerobic exercise can alter the way the mind works, and keep an eye out for empirical evidence that gleans insights from my own lived experience. I got
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In the summer of 1983, when I started jogging regularly as a teenager, I made myself a human lab rat. Before and after running, I kept in mind how strenuous exercise affected my mental functioning and shared these anecdotal observations with my father, who was writing the manuscript for his book at the time. but structure of mindwas published in 1986.
When I entered college in the fall of 1984, beyond my “runner’s high,” not only did I feel happier after a high-intensity workout, but running nearly every day during my senior year of high school helped me feel better. It turned out that he had good thinking ability.
For most of high school, I avoided strenuous exercise and my brain seemed to struggle to retain knowledge. Before running became part of my routine in the summer of 1983, I was a pure C student and my SAT scores were terrible.
But after a year of running at a moderate to vigorous pace most days of the week, my brain was transformed. My memory has become stronger and learning has become easier. Based on practical experience, it was clear that a year of regular, relatively high-intensity aerobic exercise improved my brain power and cognitive abilities. See Neuroscience.)
3 Ways Mixing Cardio Intensity Can Change How Your Mind Works
- Light intensity (easy “yellow” zone): Promotes mind wandering and daydreaming. This stress-relieving pace relaxes and reduces anxiety.
- Moderate strength (“orange” flow path): Facilitate problem solving and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated ideas. This is the sweet spot for flow state experiences and “Eureka, I found it!”moment in the meantime cardio workout.
- High intensity (active ‘red’ zone): Cognitive benefits such as increased verbal fluency and faster recall in 1-3 hours. rear Your HIIT workout in the “red zone” is complete.High intensity workouts are effective in 60-90 minutes Previous job interview or exam.
Until recently, I hadn’t been able to figure out how doing aerobic exercise at different color-coded aerobic intensities (easy (yellow), moderate (orange), hard (red)) would change how your body moves. There have been few evidence-based studies supporting the anecdotal observations (above) of The mind functions in a predictable, dose-responsive manner.
To my knowledge, the latest (2022) study from Dartmouth College shows how specific exercise intensities can be prescribed to help students experiencing academic challenges and mental health problems. This is the first study to demonstrate a dose-response basis for A light, moderate, or high-intensity cardio session.
Be Persevering: Exercise Takes Time to Improve Your Mind
To date, most exercise studies on the association between physical activity and cognitive function have not explicitly focused on the long-term effects of varying aerobic exercise intensities on cognition over a year.
“Most major studies treat physical activity as a dichotomous variable, present or absent for each participant,” the authors explain. “Most of the previous studies track or manipulate exercise over relatively short periods of time (usually days or weeks).” ‘relationships’ tend to ‘unfold over much longer timescales than previously identified’.
Overall, during this year’s study, Manning et al. Staying active (regardless of intensity) has been shown to improve cognitive performance and benefit mental health. However, different exercise intensities seem to affect memory in different ways. discovered. In contrast, participants who exercised at high intensity scored higher on the spatial memory task.
“We found that the links between fitness-related activity, memory and mental health are complex. For example, participants who tended to engage in a particular intensity of physical activity performed better on some memory tasks. tended to, but tended to perform poorly on other tasks,” the authors wrote. “This suggests that doing one form or intensity of physical activity does not necessarily affect all aspects of cognitive or mental health equally (or in the same direction). .”
Regarding mental health, those who did not seek regular high-intensity exercise tended to be less stressed and less anxious. However, researchers emphasize that these observations are correlated.Impossible to know if you are working out at a light to moderate pace cause Study participants who were less stressed or who tended to be less stressed in their daily lives tended to exercise at a moderate pace, regardless of their exercise habits.
“When it comes to physical activity, memory and mental health, there are very complex dynamics at work that cannot be summed up in a single sentence like ‘walking improves memory’ or ‘stress damages memory,'” Manning said. said in the month. 2022 news release. “Instead, certain forms of physical activity and certain aspects of mental health seem to affect each aspect of memory differently.”
Future research by this Dartmouth team will explore best practices for fine-tuning the intensity of exercise interventions to meet an individual’s unique needs. As Manning explains, it helps students prepare for exams, enhance different types of cognitive skills, reduce anxiety, reduce depressive symptoms, and improve overall mental health. Specific exercise intensity regimens can be designed to help
