Research reveals that a few minutes of vigorous activity activates the brain

Editor’s note: Seek advice from your health care provider before starting any workout program.

CNN
—

Go from room to room, prepare a presentation at your desk, climb up and down the stairs to deliver your folded laundry, jog around the city block, and everything else you do every day to find out which works best. What if you could know or hurt your brain?

A new study sought to answer this question by wearing activity monitors on the thighs of about 4,500 people in the UK and tracking their 24-hour movements over 7 days. The researchers then looked at how the participants’ behavior affected their short-term memory, problem-solving ability, and processing ability.

Here’s the good news: “People who spent even a fraction of the time doing more vigorous activity compared to sitting, sleeping, or doing moderate activity had higher cognitive scores,” says a medical study. John Mitchell, Council for Exercise and Health, Institute of Sport, University College London, PhD student, via email.

Moderate physical activity is usually defined as brisk walking, biking, or climbing stairs. Vigorous activity such as aerobics dancing, jogging, running, swimming, or biking up a hill increases your heart rate and breathing.

the study, Published Monday in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community HealthLess than 10 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise daily improved study participants’ working memory, but had the greatest impact on executive processes such as planning and organization.

Cognitive improvements were modest, Mitchell said, but the benefits increased as more time was spent on more energetic workouts.

“Given that we have not monitored participants’ cognition over the years, this may simply be that those who move more tend to have higher cognition on average. “But yes, it could also imply that even small changes in our daily routines can have downstream consequences for our cognition.”

Stephen Mullin, an associate professor of kinesiology and health at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told CNN that the study provides new insights into how activity interacts with sedentary behavior and sleep. Told.

“Understanding the interplay between sleep and various physical activities is often unexplored,” said Malin, who was not involved in the new study.

Although this study had some limitations, such as a lack of knowledge about the health of the participants, the findings suggest that “accumulation of exercise patterns over the course of a day, week, or It’s just as important, if not more important, than what you do.” Go outside for one workout,” he said.

There was also bad news. Sleeping, sitting, and spending time doing only light exercise were associated with negative effects on the brain. Cognition was found to decline by 1% to 2% after substituting for the repetitive behavior, 6 minutes of light intensity, or 7 minutes of sleep.

“In most cases, reducing MVPA (moderate-to-vigorous physical activity) by just seven to 10 minutes was shown to be harmful,” Mitchell said.

According to the study’s observational methods, Mitchell emphasized that the changes were only related, not cause and effect.

What’s more, he said, sleep findings shouldn’t be taken at face value. Quality sleep is essential for the brain to function at peak performance.

“The evidence for the importance of sleep for cognitive performance is strong,” Mitchell said. First, oversleeping may be associated with cognitive decline.

“Second, sleep quality may be even more important than duration. Our accelerometer devices can estimate how long people slept, but they can’t tell how well they slept.”

Additional studies need to be performed to validate these findings and understand the role of each type of activity. But Mitchell said the study “shows how even very small differences in people’s daily movements (less than 10 minutes) relate to very real changes in our cognitive health.” emphasized,” he said.