Aerobic Intensity Changes How Exercise Affects Our Minds

A new Dartmouth College study sheds light on how easy to moderate aerobic exercise affects the human mind differently than high-intensity workouts over a full calendar year. This first-of-its-kind research suggests that consistently doing cardio (eg, walking, jogging, swimming) at an easy or hard pace affects how the mind works in different ways. These findings (Manning et al., 2022) were published on August 15 in the peer-reviewed journal scientific reports.

For this longitudinal study, first author Jeremy Manning and colleagues used Fitbits to collect real-world exercise intensity data from 113 participants over an entire year. The study was designed to test the researchers’ hypothesis that “different intensities of physical activity have different measurable impacts on cognitive performance and mental health.”

Road-Tested Ways Exercise Intensity Affects the Mind of an Ultramarathoner

Before I dive into these evidence-based research findings, I’ll share some anecdotal observations and proven ways I deliberately mix up the intensity of my cardio to optimize the functioning of my mind based on the cognitive demands of each day.

as ultra resistance athlete who broke a Guinness World Record by running six consecutive marathons on a treadmill in 2004, I spent a lot of time deconstructing how various intensities of exercise affect my thought processes and mental health. Over the years, I’ve figured out how to tailor my daily workouts to help me think better and feel less. stressed either depressed based on dose-response of easy, moderate, or vigorous aerobic exercise.

My curiosity about how exercise affects the mind began decades ago. In the 1970s, my neuroscientist My father conducted experiments on sheep that involved putting them on a treadmill and monitoring how physical activity affected their brains. to bring about live research on how exercise affects the mammalian brain, Dad took a six-month sabbatical from his job as a neurosurgeon at Harvard Medical School to study live sheep housed at the Florey Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

Dad’s exercise-related brain research came at a time when the running craze was sweeping the nation, and the general public had begun to associate the so-called “corridor high” with the release of endorphins, which were discovered and named in the mid-1970s (Pert and Solomon, 1973).

In Boston, where my family lived at the time, the runners were fanatics; no amount of rain, sleet, or snow would stop them from getting their daily “exercise fix.” based on Thorndike’s law of effect (“all animals seek pleasure and avoid pain”), my father was eager to investigate the neuroscience behind runners finding “pleasure” in vigorous exercise, which is generally perceived as “painful.”

Unfortunately, my father’s animal research on how exercise might affect the electrochemical environment of the mammalian brain ultimately yielded no meaningful results. Nonetheless, his unanswered research questions inspired me to be attentive to the empirical evidence that advances our understanding of how aerobic exercise can alter the functioning of the mind and to draw insights from my own lived experience.

When I started jogging regularly as Teen in the summer of 1983, I turned into a human lab rat. Before and after each run, I would make mental notes on how vigorous training affected the way my mind worked, and I would share these anecdotal observations with my father. At that time, I was writing the manuscript for his book, The fabric of the mindpublished in 1986.

Beyond the “runner’s high” and feeling happier after high-intensity training, when I started college in the fall of 1984 it became clear that running almost every day my senior year of high school had made me think better .

For most of high school, I avoided vigorous exercise, and my brain seemed to have trouble retaining knowledge. I struggled academically. Before the summer of ’83, when running became part of my daily routine, I was a straight c-student and I got terrible scores on the SAT.

However, after a year of running at a moderate to vigorous pace most days of the week, my brain was transformed; me memory it was stronger and learning felt easier. Based on lived experience, it was clear that a year of regular aerobic exercise at a relatively high intensity had increased my cognitive and mental capacity. (Watch “The Neuroscience of Superfluid Thinking.”)

3 Ways Mixing Aerobic Intensity Can Alter Your Mind

1. Light intensity (easy “yellow” zone): Promotes wandering mind and daydream this anti-stress rhythm is relaxing and reduces anxiety.
2. Moderate intensity (“orange” flow channel): Facilitates problem solving and connects the dots between seemingly unrelated ideas; this is the sweet spot for flow state experiences and having “Eureka, I found it!“moments during a cardio workout.
3. High Intensity (Vigorous “Red” Zone): Cognitive benefits, such as verbal fluency and faster recall, are experienced in one to three hours. after a “red zone” HIIT workout has been completed. High intensity workouts are great 60-90 minutes prior to a job interview or take a test.

Until recently, there hasn’t been much evidence-based research to support my anecdotal observations (mentioned above) that doing cardio at different color-coded aerobic intensities: easy (yellow), moderate (orange), hard (red), alters fitness. in that the mind functions in predictable, dose-responsive ways.

To my knowledge, the latest study (2022) from Dartmouth College is the first of its kind to shed light on how specific exercise intensities can be prescribed to help students experiencing academic challenges or mental health issues based on the dose-response of light, moderate or high intensity cardio sessions.

Be patient: it takes time for exercise to improve the functioning of our mind

To date, most exercise studies on the link between physical activity and cognitive functions have not explicitly focused on the long-term impact of different aerobic intensities on cognition for a whole year.

“Most primary studies treat physical activity as a binary variable that is either present or not present for each participant,” the authors explain. “Most of the previous studies also tracked or manipulated exercise over relatively short periods (usually on the order of days or weeks).” The researchers note that the “true relationship” between physical activity, cognitive performance and mental health tends to “play out over much longer time scales than previously identified.”

Overall, during this one-year study, Manning et al. found that staying active (at any intensity) improved cognitive performance and benefited mental health. However, different intensities of exercise seem to affect memory in different ways. For example, the researchers found that people who exercised frequently at low to moderate intensities tended to perform better on episodic memory tasks. In contrast, participants who exercised at high intensities scored higher on spatial memory tasks.

“We found that the associations between fitness-related activities, memory performance, and mental health are complex. For example, participants who tended to perform physical activity of a particular intensity also tended to perform better on some tasks.” memory, but worse in others,” write the authors. “This suggests that engaging in one form or intensity of physical activity will not necessarily affect all aspects of cognitive or mental health equally (or in the same direction).”

In terms of mental health, people who did not regularly seek high-intensity exercise tended to be less stressed and had lower rates of anxiety. However, the researchers emphasize that these observations are correlative. It is impossible to know if you exercise at an easy to moderate pace. caused study participants were less stressed or whether those who tended to be less stressed in their daily lives, regardless of their exercise habits, were more inclined to exercise at an easy pace.

“When it comes to physical activity, memory and mental health, there’s a really complicated dynamic at play that can’t be summed up in single sentences like ‘Walking improves memory’ or ‘Stress impairs memory,'” Manning said. in a September 2022 report Press release. “Instead, specific forms of physical activity and specific aspects of mental health seem to affect each aspect of memory differently.”

Future research from this Dartmouth team will explore best practices for adjusting the intensity of exercise interventions to meet the unique needs of an individual. As Manning explains, specific exercise intensity regimens could be designed to help students prepare for exams, increase various types of cognitive performance, reduce anxiety, reduce depressive symptoms, and improve overall mental health.