Running and the brain

How Exercise Can Strengthen the Brain

30 minutes of jogging may let you work out more, have cognitive benefits that occur even when not working out, and help against neurodegenerative diseases.

In an article posted on today’s New York Times online, researchers at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina wanted to see if exercise affects existing brain cells like it strengths muscles, by “whipping those cells into shape.”

They followed two groups of mice for 8 weeks. The treatment group ran on a treadmill for an hour a day, whereas the control group was sedentary. Everything else about their environments was the same.

Unremarkably, after the 8 weeks, the mice who had been running daily had more cardiovascular endurance, lasting for an average of 126 min on a run-to-exhaustion test vs 74 minutes for the control group.

As for the real test, though, this was the first study to show that the runners’ brain cells had new mitochondria  (increased “mitochondrial biogenesis”) and no new activity in the sedentary mice’s brains, exciting because this shows that this occurs in tissues other than muscle, having implications for things like neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

That is, along with research from other studies, this shows thhat runners have a lower risk for neurological diseases.

For now, and what might spark people to get off their couches, working out for just 30 minutes (which the scientists equate to the mice’s workouts) may train the brain to let you exercise more and also help you cognitively, by “reducing mental fatigue and sharpen[ing] your thinking,” even when not working out.

randi morse, randi.morse@gmail.com, newton, ma