In 2020, the world spent more than $ 7 billion on supplements that promised to improve brain health. You may want to light the money. The quest for the perfect IQ boost pill, memory game, or creativity secret has not been successful.
If you’re looking for strange tricks to improve your brain health, your feet may be the best place to look. This is a conclusion reached after traveling hundreds of studies evaluating brain zapping, microdosing, games, and other common interventions in my book. Tailored Brain.. It turns out that one of the only legitimate ways to regulate our brain has always been available to us: physical activity.
Moving has many effects that are directly related to the resilience of the brain, from increasing blood flow to refreshing connections in the brain itself. However, one of the lesser-rated ways to further enhance these effects is to engage with other brains during exercise.
Humans are social species, like the elephant and the naked mole rat. Evolution has shaped us to interact, solve problems, create, and so on, literally move the world together, not as a single brain in life, but as a collection of brains. rice field.A fascinating new hypothesis from evolutionary biology assumes that physical activity builds a buffer against age insults and is healthy enough for us to stick and support. Other people, So we can sit alone in a cave or castle and become a lonely genius.
By interacting with others as we move, we can leave space for vivid new ideas, increased attention, memory, and a brighter mood without straining our minds. I can do it. The best news is that even a modest amount of activity will benefit. Science says so.
How physical activity and social interaction work together
If you’re moaning for more exercise ideas, it may be because “exercise” is an artificial form of physical activity that can include many pursuits from gardening to shopping. And doing something social while we are moving around may come naturally to us.
Harvard Evolutionary Biologist Daniel Lieberman co-authored a recent review of evidence of the debate that physical activity is an evolutionary adaptation that supports brain health in old age. The idea is that as humans evolved, we moved around a lot to feed and care for ourselves, supporting our brain health. Both physical activity and a healthy brain have made it possible for us to take care of old age from the younger generation.
This idea is an evolutionary explanation of why humans survive well beyond the reproductive year, which is extremely rare among animals. It is closely related to the “grandmother hypothesis” of sticking to take care of younger generations of young children who carry our genes in our post-reproductive years. By keeping them alive, we will also make use of the genes we have inherited. Lieberman and co-authors add to this painting by proposing that physical activity supports a “healthy span” of the brain and body that enables physically active old age.
Exercise also moves molecules for repair and remodeling
According to Lieberman and his co-authors, physical activity causes damage in the form of the release of oxidant molecules that destroy and damage muscles. But scientists provide evidence that when we repair this damage, we overshoot a bit and make things even better than when we started. For example, the release of large amounts of antioxidants in response to oxidants by exercise may alleviate the inflammation associated with degenerative brain disease.
Even a small amount of exercise, such as 20-30 minutes a few days a week, can be very helpful. As you move around, blood moves and molecules move more efficiently to the brain. For example, it is well known that physical activity can send more oxygen to the energy-intensive brain. The presence of oxygen triggers cells to begin using glucose, the preferred energy molecule for the brain.
The use of low glucose in the brain is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, even in asymptomatic people with altered genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A 2017 study examined how well the brains of 93 late-middle-aged adults metabolized glucose after physical activity. Researchers used the device to objectively track weekly physical activity and found a link between moderate physical activity and increased glucose use in the brain. This is an indicator of good brain health.
Another study using the device for objective physical activity measurement found that people with high levels of daily physical activity and good athletic performance had higher cognitive test scores. 454 participants in the 2019 study agreed to be monitored and tested several years before their death and to donate their brains for their post-mortem analysis. Physical activity level and athletic performance were separately associated with improved cognitive test performance, even when the brain showed changes associated with conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers speculate that factors such as physical activity may increase the brain’s “cognitive reserve,” the ability to avoid damage to the brain and maintain function.
Another measure of brain flexibility and health is how easy it is to switch from one task to another. This is called a “set shift”. Setshifting is different from multitasking, where you do two things at the same time, such as talking on the phone and making a supper. For example, use setshifts in social situations. For example, think of a way to redirect mental resources at a party when shifting from talking to someone about food to talking to someone about the state of the country. In a 2021 meta-analysis of 22 trials on how easily people engaged in setshifts, the authors found that light physical activity was associated with easier setshifts, especially for older people. Did.
This ability to adapt fluidly in response to changing circumstances is the area of the CEO in our minds, also known as executive function. Executive function is the ability to manage oneself through working memory, self-control, and flexibility of thinking. A meta-analysis published in 2020 evaluated the results of 36 randomized controlled trials of the effects of physical activity on brain-related measurements of executive function. Such exams are considered the most rigorous type of study design. A total of 4,577 adolescents were included in these 36 studies, and the review noted a link between benefits in various aspects of physical activity and executive functioning.
A similar type of review, also published in 2020, examined the results of 33 randomized trials of people over the age of 55 and found the benefits of physical activity for executive function. Yet another analysis of 25 randomized trials showed exercise-related improvements in some of the executive functions of healthy adults over the age of 60.
These analyzes of findings from more than 100 studies suggest that physical activity benefits the aging CEO of our brain. If Lieberman and his colleagues are correct, one result could be a longer healthy life expectancy for our brain to match our life expectancy.
How the supplement turned out to be a “brain enhancer” unexploded ordnance
The pursuit of the Fountain of Youth has never produced a supplement that functions as well as physical activity.
Researchers initially thought that omega 3 fatty acids could provide some traction, especially as a mood improver. These fatty acids stood out in uncontrolled studies where scientists observed people exposed to the factor and compared them to those who did not. These so-called observational studies fully suggest the benefits of the brain from these fatty acids, and omega-3 has become very popular as an “evidence-based” brain supplement. Imaging also seemed to indicate that brain connections could be reconstructed in a possibly beneficial way with the use of omega-3.
Since we are using these molecules to build the brain, the protective intuition was that we could take them in the form of tablets and enjoy the benefits of the brain. However, when omega 3 supplements participated in more rigorous randomized controlled trials, they did not keep their brain-based promises of their effects on mood and anxiety. They weren’t even optimal with corn oil to improve the symptoms of depression when added to antidepressant therapy. And, along with mood, randomized studies of the effects of these fatty acids on cognitive impairment have found no benefit.
Generally speaking, there are no prominent supplements for the benefit of the brain. Longtime supporters of some circles, including ginkgo and vitamins B, D, and E, have not provided protection from cognitive impairment in their studies. Therefore, the best thing you can do to enhance cognitive function until you can incorporate the effects of exercise into your pills is regular physical activity … probably with other brain involvement.
The benefits of exercise and social interaction are bidirectional
When I talk about “social”, the definition is broad and mainly refers to direct or distant connections between the diencephalons in time and space. You and I are making a connection now. Hello!
What I found in writing Tailored Brain Is an interesting interaction between some of the easily accessible tools that seem to be most useful to our brain. You met one: physical activity. The other is the connection with other people. When we connect with others and listen to them, we can improve our general thinking ability and the influence of physical activity. Both can relieve stress and anxiety, hurt your mood, and reduce your cognitive burden.
Strong social ties, by themselves, provide life-long benefits comparable to smoking cessation. A 2020 survey in China of about 8,000 people over the age of 45 found that social behavior, including participation in sports, can help with cognitive skills. The authors also concluded that the window of opportunity to incorporate these practices and gain improvement remains open in old age.
The benefits of exercise and social interaction are bidirectional. Physical activity relieves anxiety, stress, and brain overload, creating space for us to be truly socially involved. It’s hard to sympathize when the brain is sitting there, like a burning “this is okay” meme of a dog in a room. There is no room for reacting, interacting with, or understanding others.
But if we move around with others, we create that space, just as there are generations of humans in front of us. And if you share the burden with each other on an evening walk, you can get the exercise that activates the brain and the comfort of the brain at the same time.
Emily Willingham is a science journalist and Tailored Brain: From Ketamine to Ketamine to Companionship, a user guide to feel good and think wisely (Basic Books, 2021) Fallacy: Life lessons from animal penis (Avery, 2020). She is a regular contributor to Scientific American.
