Daily Activity Levels & The Measurable Difference They Make To Brain Health

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If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Shocking nobody, exercise is good for the brain. But: how vigorous does it have to be and how often?

  • Today’s main feature looks at what cognitive fitness improvements can be gained from different activity levels over the course of just 9 days (and, good news, the intensity wasn’t as important as the frequency)!

• As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily. Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints.

  • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

• Today’s featured book is about improving your gut, to improve your brain

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

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Daily Activity Levels & The Measurable Difference They Make To Brain Health

Most studies into the difference that exercise makes to cognitive decline are retrospective, i.e. they look backwards in time, asking participants what their exercise habits were like in the past [so many] years, and tallying that against their cognitive health in the present.

Some studies are interventional, and those are most often 3, 6, or 12 months, depending on funding. In those cases, they make a hypothesis (e.g. this intervention will boost this measure of brain health) and then test it.

However, humans aren’t generally great at making short term decisions for long term gains. In other words: if it’s rainy out, or you’re a little pushed for time, you’re likely to take the car over walking regardless of what data point this adjusts in an overarching pattern that will affect your brain’s amyloid-β clean-up rates in 5–20 years time.

Nine days

The study we’re going to look at today was a 9-day observational study, using smartphone-based tracking with check-ins every 3½ hours, with participants reporting their physical activity as light, moderate, or intense (these terms were defined and exemplified, so that everyone involved was singing from the same songsheet in terms of what activities constitute what intensity).

The sample size was reasonable (n=204) and was generally heterogenous sample (i.e. varied in terms of sex, racial background, and fitness level) of New Yorkers aged 40–65.

So, the input variable was activity level, and the output variable was cognitive fitness.

As to how they measured the output, two brain games assessed:

1. cognitive processing speed, and

2. working memory (a proxy for executive function).

What they found:

1. participants active within the last 3½ hours had faster processing speed, equivalent to being four years younger

2. response times in the working memory (for: executive function) task reflected similar processing speed improvements, for participants active in the last 3½ hours

And, which is important to note,

Source: Cognitive Health Benefits of Everyday Physical Activity in a Diverse Sample of Middle-Aged Adults

Practical take-away:

Move more often! At least every couple of hours (when not sleeping)!

The benefits will benefit you in the now, as well as down the line.

See also:

The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

and, for that matter:

Do You Love To Go To The Gym? No? Enjoy These “No-Exercise Exercises”!

Take care!

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One-Minute Book Review

Genius Gut: 10 New Gut-Brain Hacks to Revolutionise Your Energy, Mood, and Brainpower – by Dr. Emily Leeming

When it comes to the gut-brain information interchange, 90% of it is the gut talking to the brain (the brain is a good listener). As such, one of the best things we can do for our brain is ensure our gut has good things to say.

Dr. Leeming talks us through doing a quick initial assessment to judge the general goodness/badness of our current gut situation (based on output, not input, so it’s about the actual goodness/badness, not what we expect it should be), before going on to explain a lot of the anatomy and physiology at hand.

The hacks themselves may be, in their titles, things you already know—but where the real value of this book lies is in all the data and science collated under each of those hacks, allowing the reader to optimize everything rather than just guessing. Which can mean optimize by doing things as close to perfectly as possible, or it can mean optimize by doing/using the things that get the best results for the minimum effort. It’s up to you!

The style is very casual and friendly, even conversational, while not skimping on science (and indeed, citations are frequently provided for such).

Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your gut health, especially with the goal of improving your brain health, this is an excellent book for that.

Click here to check out Genius Gut, and make yours better for you!

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Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday full of wellness,

The 10almonds Team