We’ve seen studies that offer valuable insights into the different ways exercise can be beneficial for brain health, from fight depressiona fighting dementiaa enhancing our memory. New research has taken a long-term view of this issue, leveraging a year’s worth of Fitbit data to measure the impacts of different types of physical activity, and has yielded some interesting results.
The study is the work of scientists at Dartmouth College, who set out to delve into the nuances of exercise’s effects on brain function and mental health. They sought to expand on studies in this area that had examined the effects of exercise over periods of days or weeks, using data from 113 Fitbit users over a 12-month period.
Throughout that year, those users were also asked to answer questions about their mental health and take different memory tests. Fitness data included daily step counts, average heart rate, and how long you spent exercising in different heart rate zones. Meanwhile, the memory tasks were designed to individually test the ability to recall autobiographical events, locations, and connections between concepts and other memories.
The results demonstrated just how complicated the relationship between exercise and brain health is. While the researchers expected to find an overall positive trend between increased physical activity and memory and mental health, it wasn’t that simple. Low-intensity exercise brought improvements to specific memory tasks, while high-intensity exercise brought improvements specifically to others.
More surprisingly, those who did more high-intensity exercise reported higher stress levels. Meanwhile, those who performed lower-intensity exercise reported lower rates of anxiety and depression.
“Mental health and memory are central to almost everything we do in our daily lives,” says lead author Jeremy Manning. “Our study is trying to build a foundation for understanding how different intensities of physical exercise affect different aspects of mental and cognitive health.”
Although it is early days of research and the study was unable to reveal any causal effects, the scientists believe further work could lead to exciting new tools for monitoring cognitive health. Just as you can do a particular workout at the gym to strengthen a particular muscle group, you can have a training program designed to keep anxiety at bay or improve your learning and memory before exam season.
“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 simple sentences like ‘walking improves memory’ or ‘stress damages memory,'” says Manning. “Instead, specific forms of physical activity and specific aspects of mental health seem to affect each aspect of memory differently.”
The research was published in the journal scientific reports.
Font: dartmouth college via MedicalXpress
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