Contact Never Give Up Fitness
Exercise – The Best Medicine for Depression
December 18, 2012 – 12:30 pm
How Much Exercise is Best for Mental Health?
December 12, 2012 – 1:06 pm
Study finds too much can be as ineffective as too little.
By Scott Douglas, Runner’s World, Published, December 05, 2012
Interesting Study.
You’re probably well aware of running’s and other activities’ positive effect on your mental health. That’s especially true for many people this time of year, with less daylight contributing to seasonal affective disorder. But if some exercise is good at warding off the blues, is more inherently better?
Not necessarily, according to a study published in Preventive Medicine. Researchers compared self-reported data from more than 7,600 Americans on two matters: mental health, as measured by a standardized depression score, and hours per week of physical activity. Not surprisingly, mental health was better in people who reported some physical activity than in those who said they were sedentary. Moreover, as you can see in the graph below, there were marked differences in mental health with just a little physical activity, supporting the notion that the biggest gains from exercise often come from moving from being sedentary to just slightly active.
After about two hours per week of activity, however, there wasn’t significant continued gain in mental health. And then, after about 7.5 hours of physical activity, the gains in mental health plateued, and then started to reverse. That reversal was ever so slight at first, as weekly physical activity climbed to 10 hours. But with more and more activity, the mental-health benefits of exercise declined significantly. Nearing 25 hours a week, reported mental health was no better than in barely active people. At the extreme end of the scale–a reported five hours a day of vigorous activity–mental health was as bad as in sedentary people.
Of course, people who average five hours of exercise a day might very well have mental health issues not amenable simply to a good workout. And some of the sedentary people may be so depressed that regular exercise seems impossible to them. But for most of us between the two extremes, “[t]he optimal threshold volume for mental health benefits was of 2.5 to 7.5 [hours] of weekly physical activity,” the researchers concluded.
Contact Never Give Up Fitness
Exercise Might Beat Puzzles For Protecting the Aging Brain
October 26, 2012 – 1:11 pm
By JENNIFER CORBETT DOOREN, Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2012
To help stave off the cognitive decline of aging, you might want to drop the crossword puzzle and head out for a brisk walk or a bike ride.
In a study published in the journal Neurology of almost 700 people born in 1936, researchers found physically active people showed fewer signs of brain shrinkage and other deterioration than those who got less exercise.
At the same time, social and intellectual activities such as visiting family and friends, reading, playing intellectually stimulating games or learning a new language did nearly nothing to ward off the symptoms of an aging brain, the study said.
“People who exercise more have better brain health,” said Alan Gow, one of the study’s researchers and a senior research fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The researchers noted, however, that “the direction of causation is unclear,” meaning they couldn’t tell if a healthier brain was a result of physical activity, or if people showing signs of cognitive decline weren’t able to exercise. Other studies have also suggested exercise can improve brain health. Exercise increases circulation in the body and helps bring more oxygen, glucose and other needed substances to the brain.
This research is just the latest looking at cognitive function in the so-called Lothian Birth Cohort, which involves a group of people born in 1936. In 1947, almost all 11-year-old children attending school in Scotland were given intelligence and mental-health tests.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh then recruited people from that age group who underwent those intelligence tests when they were about age 70. Participants filled out questionnaires about the types and frequency of leisure and physical activities they participated in. Physical activity was rated on a six-point scale with the lowest being “moving only in connection with necessary household chores,” to heavy exercise or a competitive sport several times a week. Then at about age 73, 700 study participants were given a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scan. Brains normally shrink with age.
“What we want to do is understand more about how people age better with respect to cognitive function,” Dr. Gow said.
Researchers found that higher levels of physical activity were associated with less brain atrophy, or shrinkage, and less brain damage. They found no link between brain health and leisure activities.
“We are coming to appreciate the fact that people who remain physically active are less likely to show cognitive decline,” said Stephen Rao, the director of the Cleveland Clinic Schey Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging. Dr. Rao, who wasn’t involved in the Scottish study, noted, however, that it looked at exercise and other activities at one point in time rather than over a lifetime. Dr. Rao is completing his own study comparing exercise and cognitive training in a different group of people.
Dr. Gow said previous research with the Lothian group suggested people who participated in more social and intellectual activities at age 70 and had better cognitive abilities were the ones who scored higher on mental ability tests at age 11.
Study participants are currently in the process of undergoing a second MRI scan now that they are age 76. Researchers said they plan to compare the two scans to see if links between exercise and better brain health hold up.
Write to Jennifer Corbett Dooren at jennifer.corbett-dooren@dowjones.com
Contact Never Give Up Fitness
A Warm-Up To Beat Exercise-Induced Asthma
October 15, 2012 – 1:55 pm
By Alex Hutchinson, Runner’s World, October 8, 2012
A few months ago, I wrote an article about “exercise-induced bronchoconstriction,” which is an asthma-like narrowing of the airways that is triggered by exercise in some people. (It feels like an asthma attack, and is most common among people with asthma, but can also strike people without asthma. It’s particularly common, for example, among Olympic endurance athletes.)
One of the bits of practical advice I mentioned in that article was that a good warm-up can help prevent a subsequent attack of EIB. I just noticed that the British Journal of Sports Medicine has published a summary of a systematic review published earlier this year in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise on what kind of warm-up is best to avoid attacks. They divided the studies into four different kinds of warm-up:
- intervals;
- continuous low-intensity;
- continuous high-intensity;
- variable intensity (which includes, e.g., progressive acceleration).
The conclusion:
The most consistent and effective attenuation of EIB was observed with high-intensity interval and variable intensity pre-exercise warm-ups. These findings indicate that an appropriate warm-up strategy that includes at least some high-intensity exercise may be a short-term non-pharmacological strategy to reducing EIB.
The study also found that the protection can last for up to 80 minutes (and perhaps longer: the studies only tested responses up to 80 minutes later). The length of the intervals used in the studies was as short as 30 seconds, but in general these finding agree with the sample warm-up guidance that I gave in my previous article, based on discussions with research Michael Koehle at the University of British Columbia:
- Total duration should be at least 20 to 30 minutes.
- Start with a gentle jog, cycle or swim, and gradually increase the pace.
- Include several bursts at 80 to 90 per cent of maximum intensity, each lasting two to five minutes.
Contact Never Give Up Fitness
New Way to Help Some Slow Walkers
October 12, 2012 – 12:43 pm
By ANN LUKITS, Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2012
A study published in Infant Behavior and Development suggested a novel technique to help babies who are slow to begin walking because of disorders like spina bifida and Down syndrome. The study found that placing young babies on a small, motorized treadmill with a patterned belt encouraged them to take steps more effectively than when the belt was a single color. The patterned belt encourages stepping by imitating the visual experience of moving forward, the researchers said.
The study, conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, tested two groups of 24 babies. Half of the babies were age 2 to 5 months and the others 7 to 10 months.
The treadmills used in the experiment had belts that were either black-and-white checked, solid white or solid black. The babies were held over the treadmill with their feet resting on the surface. They were tested in three, 30-second trials on each belt. Video cameras recorded their attention to the belt.
On average, the older babies took 130 steps over the nine trials and the younger babies took 60 steps. Both groups took significantly more steps on the checked belt than the solid belts and spent more time looking down at the checked belt than away from it. The older babies also took more complex steps on the checked belt, using alternating legs, for example, or moving both legs together like a hop.
Caveat: Infants who looked away from the treadmill may have detected its movement using peripheral vision, which wasn’t measured in the study, researchers said. The examiner who held the infants on the treadmill was familiar with the hypothesis of the study.
Contact Never Give Up Fitness
Join Email List
