All right, this allows me the opportunity to upload “labeled for noncommercial reuse” photos of sexy younger guys working out. But in fact, the NY Times recently published an article titled “Which Type of Exercise is Best for the Brain?” And while it doesn’t discuss Parkinson’s per se, there’s a lot of text about regenerating neurons in the brain, so I think we should all pay attention.
But first, another snapshot of a hunky guy exercising:
OK…Where was I?
Let’s cherry-pick some excerpts. First:
For the first time, scientists compared head-to-head the neurological impacts of different types of exercise: running, weight training and high-intensity interval training. The surprising results suggest that going hard may not be the best option for long-term brain health.
And…
Exercise … augments adult neurogenesis, which is the creation of new brain cells in an already mature brain. In studies with animals, exercise, in the form of running wheels or treadmills, has been found to double or even triple the number of new neurons that appear afterward in the animals’ hippocampus, a key area of the brain for learning and memory, compared to the brains of animals that remain sedentary. Scientists believe that exercise has similar impacts on the human hippocampus.
Wait…that’s enough about hippos. Back to sexy athletes:
Of course, a group of researchers set about experimenting with rats. Different groups of rats performed different kinds of exercises for seven weeks, with a control group of sedentary rodents who sat around watching “The Mickey Mouse Club,” “Rat Patrol,” “The Mouse that Roared,” and similar video fare.
To wit:
So for the new study, which was published this month in the Journal of Physiology, researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland and other institutions gathered a large group of adult male rats. The researchers injected the rats with a substance that marks new brain cells and then set groups of them to an array of different workouts, with one group remaining sedentary to serve as controls.
Some of the animals were given running wheels in their cages, allowing them to run at will. Most jogged moderately every day for several miles, although individual mileage varied.
Others began resistance training, which for rats involves climbing a wall with tiny weights attached to their tails.
Still others took up the rodent equivalent of high-intensity interval training. For this regimen, the animals were placed on little treadmills and required to sprint at a very rapid and strenuous pace for three minutes, followed by two minutes of slow skittering, with the entire sequence repeated twice more, for a total of 15 minutes of running.
So I suppose we need to jump to the conclusion. But first:
Mmmmm. OK. The conclusion(s).
Those rats that had jogged on wheels showed robust levels of neurogenesis. Their hippocampal tissue teemed with new neurons, far more than in the brains of the sedentary animals. The greater the distance that a runner had covered during the experiment, the more new cells its brain now contained.
There were far fewer new neurons in the brains of the animals that had completed high-intensity interval training. They showed somewhat higher amounts than in the sedentary animals but far less than in the distance runners.
And the weight-training rats, although they were much stronger at the end of the experiment than they had been at the start, showed no discernible augmentation of neurogenesis. Their hippocampal tissue looked just like that of the animals that had not exercised at all.
Uh huh. Right.
And the final discussion?
Obviously, rats are not people. But the implications of these findings are provocative. They suggest, said Miriam Nokia, a research fellow at the University of Jyvaskyla who led the study, that “sustained aerobic exercise might be most beneficial for brain health also in humans.”
Just why distance running was so much more potent at promoting neurogenesis than the other workouts is not clear, although Dr. Nokia and her colleagues speculate that distance running stimulates the release of a particular substance in the brain known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor that is known to regulate neurogenesis. The more miles an animal runs, the more B.D.N.F. it produces.
Of course, there are great reasons for working out with weights. Better sleep and a sexy physique are two. But according to this article, sustained aerobic workouts are your best bet for generating new brain growth.
Now, where was I?
Oh, yes…
