We know that rodents enjoy running wheels because they use them voluntarily. It's not surprising that the exercise they enjoy is the one that seems to produce the most benefits.
For humans: Doing any exercise is better than doing no exercise. Doing frequent exercise is better than doing infrequent exercise.
The most important thing is to pick an exercise that you enjoy, so you'll be more likely to get out and do it and less likely to come up with excuses to skip a day.
Even better: Find an exercise that includes some social activity, even if it's just getting outside and seeing other people in passing as you run past or being in a gym near other people. Social exposure is great for mental health, so combining it with exercise is a good one-two punch.
We do have some human studies on BDNF (measured via serum, because we can't get into human brains obviously) and exercise: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772595/ They didn't study different types of exercise, but they did find that longer duration exercise produced greater elevations of BDNF. You don't have to run marathons to capture some of this benefit. A long walk is good enough to get started.
Sports are great for getting in the zone but usually too mentally taxing for background thinking. Boxing, for example, is amazing relaxation but you really can’t think about anything else during a round.
Sometimes high intensity stop all other thoughts is exactly what the brain needs. Other times prolonged low intensity gives just the space you need to hear yourself think.
In my experience, both is necessary in different life situations. And sometimes both. First reduce stress, then evaluate the source and remove it. Otherwise it’s permanent rollercoaster.
HIIT has been great for the rest of the day as long as I don't overdo it, but yeah, completely focused on the workout during that.
But I would like to point out that besides subjective preference and enjoyment, it is quite clear to me that humans are pretty crap compared to everything physical, except for long-distance running.
We are not the fastest. Not the strongest. Not the best swimmers or climbers.
But as an animal, and on a population level, we are really good at jogging.
So besides being useful for endurance hunting, perhaps it is also the kind of upkeep we need to stay healthy physically as well as mentally?
> We are not the fastest. Not the strongest. Not the best swimmers or climbers.
Are humans the best in aggregate at all of these? Sure, there is always going to be an animal that is faster in one aspect, but are there other animals that are better than humans at all of them?
I can think of a lot of behaviors that humans engage in voluntarily that we would not call 'enjoyable', so I am not certain we can state this categorically.
I totally agree with the rest of your statement though, and I would add that people tend to overlook variety as well. Enjoyment is so key, and we tend to enjoy things that are novel. Relative to the cost of a gym membership, it's pretty reasonable to pick up a new activity/active hobby every so often to add to the mix. A plastic kayak, some old skis, a tennis racket. If you are saving 50-100 bucks a month by not paying for a gym, allow yourself the luxury of some new (to you) equipment every couple of months and keep things fresh.
There is nothing social about that at all, that's just not what the word means.
When I drive my Jeep and do that little Jeep wave to other Jeeps, that gives me a sense of community with those people(no matter how dumb or weird people driving other cars think it is).
When you run and someone runs past you and you do the little head nod, that is absolutely social, you absolutely relate to that person and create a small social bond.
Obviously having a conversation with someone is more of a social interaction than sitting quietly in a room with your peers or walking past another person, but any amount of being around people is still more social exposure than being isolated alone in a room.
It's the same reason that coding alone in a private office is different than coding quietly in an open office: Being around people is social exposure.
He sometimes listens to music and audiobooks so that he wouldn't get bored during his runs. Then one day, when his headphones were dead, he went without any music. He found himself having a conversation in his head, addressing questions that he hadn't asked himself in years. Now, it's some truly coveted alone and reflection time. He very often comes back from his runs energized with new ideas or an organized plan of what he needs to tackle next in his job (he's in academia).
I have also found the quiet of running to be invaluable at on some days and will often choose the conversation of myself as opposed to tuning in and out of an audiobook.
For me, the biggest blocker was that I perceived sweating as a bad thing to avoid, until I realized that I could buy clothes to sweat in, and shower at arbitrary times, not just in the morning.
My guess is that increased heart rate and blood pressure increases, and sustains for a long time, blood flow in the brain compared to sedentary activity or short, high intensity exercise. From my experience, lots of lifting was great for improving mood, but it wasn't until I began running medium and long distances regularly that I felt any smarter than my couch potato baseline.
Which Type of Exercise Is Best for the Brain? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11117929 - Feb 2016 (118 comments)
Past large related threads — quality not guaranteed:
Dance is superior to repetitive physical exercise for brain plasticity (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23946732 - July 2020 (214 comments)
Evolutionary history and why physical activity is important for brain health - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865579 - Dec 2019 (123 comments)
Ultra-Time-Efficient Exercise Lowers Blood Pressure, Boosts Brain Function - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19626995 - April 2019 (43 comments)
This is Your Brain on Exercise (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474967 - March 2019 (38 comments)
How Exercise Might “Clean” the Alzheimer's Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228627 - Oct 2018 (209 comments)
Exercise Increases Brain Size - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691885 - Nov 2017 (11 comments)
Training exercise boosts brain power, Johns Hopkins researchers say - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714 - Oct 2017 (138 comments)
Exercise as a Preventive or Disease-Modifying Treatment for Dementia Brain Aging - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14717547 - July 2017 (72 comments)
Exercise Releases Brain-Healthy Protein - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995637 - June 2016 (180 comments)
Which Type of Exercise Is Best for the Brain? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11117929 - Feb 2016 (118 comments)
Exercise during pregnancy gives newborn brain development a head start - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7653274 - April 2014 (17 comments)
How exercise boosts brain health - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6548908 - Oct 2013 (42 comments)
What happens to our brains when we exercise and how it makes us happier - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4580977 - Sept 2012 (80 comments)
How exercise could lead to a better brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3881206 - April 2012 (27 comments)
How Exercise Fuels the Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620529 - Feb 2012 (18 comments)
Forced Exercise's Effects on the Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106799 - Oct 2011 (57 comments)
How Exercise Can Strengthen the Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3047554 - Sept 2011 (60 comments)
Brain shifts from glucose to lactate fuel source during exercise. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=320714 - Oct 2008 (8 comments)
Furthermore, exercise involves inflammation and cellular damage. Does extreme exercise volume increase the risks of cancer, aging, and/or reduction in lifespan?
I wonder how exactly they were "required" to maintain this pace. Sounds like it could easily have been traumatic, which would have its own effects on neurogenesis.
Pickup basketball is pretty good too, if you can stay on the court and try hard on defense.
It’s movement meditation and has existed for thousands of years.
Probably there was a reason why the Chinese didn’t find weight training and endurance exercises as useful, although it was as accessible to them as it is to us.
Difficult to do in rats though.
"[It's] nearly impossible to study using non-invasive measures in humans. However, there is a paper on effects of exercise in humans where the authors talk about an in vivo correlate of adult neurogenesis:
Pereira AC, Huddleston DE, Brickman AM, Sosunov AA, Hen R, McKhann GM, Sloan R, Gage FH, Brown TR & Small SA (2007). Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104, 5638–5643.
This is pretty old, so maybe there would be more recent studies to be found. However, thinking about the relevance of using rodents to study human brain (because we are of course interested in the human brain, not the rat brain), there is close resemblance in terms of structure and function. Please see the following papers for details: Clark RE, Squire LR. 2013. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 110 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):10365-70 Bergmann E, Zur G, Bershadsky G, Kahn I. 2016. Cereb Cortex. 26(12):4497-4512."
- Miriam Nokia
