Exercise helps your brain as much as your body

Exercise helps your brain as much as your body

By J. David Creswell

We start to think differently about exercise.

Decades of exercise science research show that when people or animals are given a new exercise routine, they become healthier. But when thinking about the benefits of exercise, most people have a strong body bias; they focus on how regular exercise increases lean body mass, helps increase your strength and balance, or improves heart health. It turns out that exercise is even more important for our brains, in ways that are often overlooked.

That’s how we know. Animal exercise studies typically use rats for weeks on treadmills. Animals run happily every night, sprinting several kilometers in one night. There are wonderful health benefits in these studies of voluntary running: improved muscle tone and cardiovascular health, and many benefits for the brain as well. But in some studies, there is an additional experimental condition in which some rats exercise with a crucial difference: it is no longer voluntary exercise. Instead of a free-standing wheel, the rats run on a rotating mechanized wheel, forcing that the animals cover the same distance as the volunteer runners.

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What’s going on? When rats are forced to exercise daily for several weeks, their bodies become fitter, but their brains suffer. Animals forced to exercise regularly have the equivalent of an anxiety disorder, behaving in new tasks in a highly anxious and avoidant manner. These animals are more anxious not only compared to voluntary runners, but also to animals that are not given the opportunity to exercise. Yes, forced exercise can be worse than no exercise at all. This work suggests something important about the health benefits of exercise: It’s not just about making our muscles work, it’s about what exercise does to our brains. When exercise gives us a sense of control, mastery, and joy, our brains become less anxious. If we remove it, by forcing exercise, we can change it from helpful to harmful.

For us free-ranging humans, there are certainly analogues to this forced running, which makes us feel like we’re in our own rat race: we’re forced to run through the airport when we’re late for a flight, or they force us to do a treadmill. tests in the cardiologist’s office. But it’s more than just feeling forced; Studies show that even our everyday attitudes and expectations of exercise shape our health. Studies that manipulate whether exercise is framed as helpful (versus exercise alone) find that changing our exercise expectations to be more positive significantly improves mood and improves some markers of physical health, such as lowering resting blood pressure. Our attitudes toward exercise have even been linked to longevity. For example, the confident belief that one exercises more than others has been associated with greater longevity, an effect that persists even after accounting for the actual amount of exercise behavior. But if there’s one take-home message from the human exercise studies, however, it’s that exercise significantly improves mental health. A groundbreaking paper published in February analyzed hundreds of clinical trials of exercise training to treat major depression. It found that while taking antidepressant medication has some benefits, exercise programs such as walking, running or dancing had two to three times greater effects on improving mental health.

It is not just our psychology that shapes the benefits of exercise, the wider social context of exercise is also important. A to study in Denmark, collected information on the average weekly exercise routines of more than 8,000 adults, then looked at which types of exercise were associated with greater longevity 25 years later. While physical activities such as cycling, swimming, running or going to the gym had some longevity benefits (about 2.4 extra years of longevity relative to people in the sample who did not exercise), it was social sports those that were associated with greater longevity gains. Tennis and badminton were associated with more than three times the longevity benefit, with more than eight additional years of longevity.

When I talk to the public about this study, I often ask them to predict which forms of physical activity are associated with the greatest longevity benefits. There is usually a heavy body bias; people often choose cycling and running as longevity winners because they are good for our joints or train our cardiovascular systems more rigorously. We easily forget that exercise is for our brains too, and social connection has all sorts of benefits for brain health. Scientific studies of relationships suggest that greater social connectivity is associated with twice the longevity benefits compared to regular physical exercise. But we must not pit them against each other; social sports combine the best of both, linking exercise to social connection. And yes, it’s important to remember that all forms of physical activity offer opportunities for social connection. Denmark’s Longevity Study also showed that slower (and less vigorous) forms of running were associated with greater longevity benefits, suggesting that we don’t always need a heart-pumping workout, but might also invite at a slow jog. with a friend. Or maybe a game of pickleball.

Modern science reminds us that we need to pay new attention to the old Roman saying: “A sound mind in a sound body.” Instead of asking questions about how exercise affects our bodies, we also consider questions about how it affects our brains. How can I find a way to take my dreaded exercise routine and turn it into something fun? Under what conditions does my exercise provide a sense of mastery and achievement? What type of exercise helps me feel mentally stronger and in control? Is exercise giving me ways to nurture important relationships with others?

My lab and others show that the mindsets we bring to life’s challenges and hassles are really important in shaping our resilience and health. Exercise, when done wisely, can become a welcome discomfort that not only improves the health of our bodies, but also our brains.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily those of American scientist