Exercise

Posted on Exercise

20 minutes of exercise can boost your brain after a bad night’s sleep

A study has revealed moderate intensity exercise can improve cognitive function in people who are sleep deprived and have low levels of oxygen
A study has revealed moderate intensity exercise can improve cognitive function in people who are sleep deprived and have low levels of oxygen

New research has explored how sleep, oxygen levels, and exercise affects our ability to perform mental tasks.

Sleep is fundamental in maintaining a healthy lifestyle, with adults recommended between seven and nine hours a night. However, recent reviews indicate that 40 per cent of the global population don’t get enough.

Consequences of chronic sleep deprivation include cardiovascular disease, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders, and depression. In the short term, a lack of sleep can reduce cognitive performance (CP), which takes a toll on your attention span, judgement, and emotional state.

A study, led by the University of Portsmouth, has found cognitive performance improves during a bout of moderate intensity exercise, regardless of a person’s sleep status or oxygen levels.

Dr Joe Costello, from the University’s School of Sport, Health & Exercise Science (SHES), said: “We know from existing research that exercise improves or maintains our cognitive performance, even when oxygen levels are reduced. But this is the first study to suggest it also improves CP after both full and partial sleep deprivation, and when combined with hypoxia.

“The findings significantly adds to what we know about the relationship between exercise and these stressors, and helps to reinforce the message that movement is medicine for the body and the brain.”

The study, published in Physiology and Behaviour, involved two experiments, each with 12 participants (24 in total). The first looked at the impact of partial sleep deprivation on a person’s cognitive performance, and the second examined the impact of total sleep deprivation and hypoxia. In both, all participants experienced an improvement in cognitive performance after a bout of 20 minutes of cycling.

“Because we were looking at exercise as a positive intervention, we decided to use a moderate intensity programme as recommended in existing literature”, added Dr Costello.

“If the exercise was any longer or harder it may have amplified the negative results and became a stressor itself.”

In the first experiment, individuals were only allowed five hours of sleep a night, over three days. Each morning they would be given seven tasks to perform at rest, and then while cycling. They were also asked to rate their sleepiness and mood before completing the tasks.

The results showed the effects of three nights of partial sleep on executive functions were inconsistent. The paper says an explanation for this could be that some people are more resilient to a mild or moderate sleep deficit. However, regardless of sleep status, moderate-intensity exercise improved performance across all the tasks. 

In the second experiment, participants went an entire night without sleep and were then put in an hypoxic (low levels of oxygen) environment at the University’s Extreme Environment Labs. Despite oxygen levels being lowered, exercise continued to improve cognitive performance. 

Co-lead author, Dr Thomas Williams from the University’s Extreme Environments Research Group, explained why the team decided to examine a combination of stressors for the study: “Sleep deprivation is often experienced in combination with other stressors. For example, people who travel to high altitude are also likely to experience a disruption to their sleep pattern.

“One potential hypothesis for why exercise improves cognitive performance is related to the  increase in cerebral blood flow and oxygenation, however, our findings suggest that even when exercise is performed in an environment with low levels of oxygen, participants were still able to perform cognitive tasks better than when at rest in the same conditions.”

The paper says explanations for why CP improves during exercise – even when a person’s sleep deprived and low on oxygen – could be changes to the amount of brain regulating hormones, as well as a number of psychophysiological factors including cerebral blood flow, arousal and motivation. 

It suggests that cognitive performance is not solely dependent upon the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) area of the brain, despite it playing an integral role in the performance of tasks. 

“The PFC is highly sensitive to its neurochemical environment and is highly susceptible to stress”, explained co-lead author Juan Ignacio Badariotti from the University’s Department of Psychology.

“It regulates our thoughts, actions and emotions and is considered to be the primary part of the brain associated with executive functions.

“But our findings suggest the mechanisms behind CP may not be isolated to this area, and instead we should consider it being the product of a series of coordinated processes widely distributed across different cortical and subcortical regions.”

The paper recommends further investigation to reveal what neurobiological mechanisms are behind the cognitive function process. This discovery would support anyone who experiences broken sleep or low oxygen, including climbers and skiers, but also parents of young children and shift workers. 

Posted on Diabetes, Exercise

Researchers caution people’s use of fitness video games.

Researchers caution diabetes patients’ use of fitness video games
Researchers caution diabetes patients’ use of fitness video games

The authors of a new study warn people with type-1 diabetes to use fitness video games with caution.

The study by Staffordshire University and Federal University of Vale do Sao Francisco has found that ‘exergames’ can change people’s perceptions of how fatigued they are – which is potentially harmful for those with the condition.

Dr Pooya Soltani, Senior Lecturer in Games Technology at Staffordshire University, explained: “Type-1 diabetes patients need to control their blood glucose regularly, both before and after exercise, to prevent complications. As part of this, it is important to regulate the intensity of exercise, whether real or virtual.

“Most patients use a simple chart to measure how exerted they feel on a scale of 1 – 10, from hardly at all to using maximum effort. While this has proven to be effective for traditional exercise, we wanted to investigate whether this scale can also be used when exercising with video games.”

The trial assessed correlations between physiological measurements of exercise intensity, including metabolic equivalent (MET), oxygen consumption and heart rate in both real and virtual sessions.

Type-1 diabetes patients performed two 30-minute sessions of moderate-intensity exercise, either running or playing the Kinect Adventures! video game. A rate of perceived exertion (RPE) was measured on the 6 – 20 point Borg scale after the sessions.

The study’s co-author Jorge Luiz de Brito Gomes, from the Federal University of Vale do Sao Francisco, said: “The RPE and MET values were strongly correlated in real exercise but were moderately correlated during the virtual exercise session. Other metabolic and physiological variables were mostly low and lacked statistical significance during the virtual exercise.

“This highlights that it is crucial to exercise caution when extending use of the 6 – 20 point RPE scale to other types of exercise, especially virtual sessions, as they may not accurately reflect the physiological and metabolic intensity of the exercise.”

The researchers recommend that older measurement tools such as the 6 – 20 point RPE scale should be adapted to newer types of virtual game platforms.

Dr Soltani added: “Active video games and virtual reality are recent exercise trends that can provide motivation to participants and might increase their adherence to physical activity. Light to vigorous-intensity exergaming sessions may also benefit people with type-1 diabetes.

“But our research shows that the current 6 – 20 RPE scale needs to updated so that everyone can safely benefit from using immersive games. In the meantime, healthcare professionals who want to incorporate virtual sessions with exergames into their practice, should cautiously use methods like this which subjectively measure physical activity.”

Read the full article – Is rating of perceived exertion a valid method for monitoring exergaming intensity in type-1 diabetics?

Posted on Exercise

Walking more than five flights of stairs a day can cut risk of heart disease by 20%, study says

Forget walking 10,000 steps a day. Taking at least 50 steps climbing stairs each day could significantly slash your risk of heart disease, according to a new study from Tulane University.

The study, published in Atherosclerosis, found that climbing more than five flights of stairs daily could reduce risk of cardiovascular disease by 20%.

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) along with coronary artery disease and stroke are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide.

“Short bursts of high-intensity stair climbing are a time-efficient way to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and lipid profile, especially among those unable to achieve the current physical activity recommendations,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Lu Qi, HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “These findings highlight the potential advantages of stair climbing as a primary preventive measure for ASCVD in the general population.”

Using UK Biobank data collected from 450,000 adults, the study calculated participants’ susceptibility to cardiovascular disease based on family history, established risk factors and genetic risk factors and surveyed participants about their lifestyle habits and frequency of stair climbing. Median follow-up time was 12.5 years.

The study found that climbing more stairs daily especially reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in those who were less susceptible. However, Qi said the increased risk of heart disease in more susceptible people could be “effectively offset” by daily stair climbing.

Qi touted the public availability of stairs as a low-cost, accessible way to incorporate exercise into daily routines.

Posted on Exercise

Running throughout middle age keeps ‘old’ adult-born neurons ‘wired’

Network of the neurons

Long-term running substantially modifies the network of the neurons generated in young adult mice upon middle age. Importantly, exercise increases input from hippocampal interneurons (red cells) onto ‘old’ adult-born neurons. These interneurons may play a role in reducing ageing-related hyperexcitability of the hippocampus and thereby benefit memory function. CREDIT Carmen Vivar, Ph.D.

Ageing often is accompanied by cognitive decline. Among the first structures of the brain affected are the hippocampus and adjacent cortices, areas essential for learning and memory. Deficits in cognitive ability are associated with reduced hippocampal volume and degradation of synaptic connectivity between the hippocampus and the (peri)-entorhinal cortex. 

Increasing evidence indicates that physical activity can delay or prevent these structural and functional reductions in older adults. A new study by Florida Atlantic University and CINVESTAV, Mexico City, Mexico, provides novel insight into the benefits of exercise, which should motivate adults to keep moving throughout their lifetime, especially during middle age.

For the study, researchers focused on the effects of long-term running on a network of new hippocampal neurons that were generated in young adult mice, at middle age. These “mice on the run” demonstrate that running throughout middle age keeps old adult-born neurons wired, which may prevent or delay ageing-related memory loss and neurodegeneration.

Adult-born neurons are thought to contribute to hippocampus-dependent memory function. During the so-called ‘critical period’ at about three to six weeks of cell age, they are believed to be temporarily important when they can fleetingly display increased synaptic plasticity. However, these new neurons do remain present for many months, but it was unclear whether those born in early adulthood remain integrated into neural networks and whether their circuitry is modifiable by physical activity in middle age.

To address these questions, researchers used a unique rabies virus-based circuit tracing approach with a long-time-interval between the initial labelling of new neurons and subsequent analysis of their neural circuitry in rodents. More than six months after tagging the adult-born neurons with a fluorescent reporter vector, they identified and quantified the direct afferent inputs to these adult-born neurons within the hippocampus and (sub)cortical areas, when the mice were middle-aged. 

Results of the study, published in the journal eNeuro, show long-term running wires ‘old’ new neurons, born during early adulthood, into a network that is relevant to the maintenance of episodic memory encoding during ageing.

“Long-term exercise profoundly benefits the ageing brain and may prevent ageing-related memory function decline by increasing the survival and modifying the network of the adult-born neurons born during early adulthood, and thereby facilitating their participation in cognitive processes,” said Henriette van Praag, Ph.D., corresponding author, an associate professor of biomedical science in FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine and a member of the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.

Findings from the study showed long-term running significantly increased the number of adult-born neurons and enhanced the recruitment of presynaptic (sub)-cortical cells to their network.

“Long-term running may enhance pattern separation ability, our ability to distinguish between highly similar events and stimuli, a behavior closely linked to adult neurogenesis, which is among the first to display deficits indicative of age-related memory decline,” said Carmen Vivar, Ph.D., corresponding author, Department of Physiology, Biophysics and Neuroscience, Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN in Mexico.

Aging-related memory function decline is associated with the degradation of synaptic inputs from the perirhinal and entorhinal cortex onto the hippocampus, brain areas that are essential for pattern separation, and contextual and spatial memory.

“We show that running also substantially increases the back-projection from the dorsal subiculum onto old adult-born granule cells,” said van Praag. “This connectivity may provide navigation-associated information and mediate the long-term running-induced improvement in spatial memory function.”

Results from the study show that running not only rescued perirhinal connectivity but also increased and altered the contribution of the entorhinal cortices to the network of old adult-born neurons.

“Our study provides insight as to how chronic exercise, beginning in young adulthood and continuing throughout middle age, helps maintain memory function during aging, emphasizing the relevance of including exercise in our daily lives,” said Vivar.

Posted on Exercise, Multiple Sclerosis

Walking can improve cognitive processing speed in folks with multiple sclerosis

Promising results support the development of large-scale randomized controlled trials of remote aerobic exercise training in individuals with MS-related cognitive impairment.

Promising results support development of large-scale randomized controlled trial of remote aerobic exercise training in individuals with MS-related cognitive impairment

Results of a pilot study funded by Kessler Foundation showed that remote aerobic walking exercise training is a feasible and highly promising method for improving cognitive processing speed impairment in fully ambulatory persons with multiple sclerosis (MS). The findings of this single-blind randomized control trial support the design of a randomized, controlled trial in large sample of persons with MS

The study, titled “Feasibility of Remotely Delivered and Supported Aerobic Walking Exercise Training for Cognitive Processing Speed Impairment in Fully Ambulatory Persons with Multiple Sclerosis,” (doi: 10.1016/j.msard.2023.104709) was published online by Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders on April 07, 2023. The authors are Brian M. Sandroff, PhD, Carly L.A. Wender, PhD, Erica Weber, PhD, and Grace Wells, BS, of Kessler Foundation, and Robert W. Motl, PhD, of the University of Illinois Chicago.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211034823002134?via%3Dihub

The research team followed a group of 25 fully ambulatory persons with MS who were prescreened for deficits in cognitive processing speed; 19 completed the study as prescribed. The researchers employed the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), a widely used neuropsychological test for assessing information processing speed in individuals with MS, and the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-II) as a widely used test of verbal learning and memory. Evaluations were conducted at baseline and after 16 weeks.

Participants were randomly assigned to 16 weeks of either remotely delivered and supported aerobic walking exercise training (intervention condition), or remotely delivered and supported stretching and range-of-motion activities (control condition). Participants were provided with wearable fitness trackers and weekly video consultations with an exercise specialist to ensure proper technique, safety, and adherence to the prescribed exercise regimen.

The results of the study were promising. Participants who were randomly assigned into the intervention condition demonstrated strong improvements in their SDMT scores after the 16-week study period relative to participants who were randomly assigned into the stretching condition, indicating that the remotely delivered aerobic walking exercise training had a positive impact on their cognitive processing speed. Additionally, the study showed that the participants had high adherence rates to the exercise program, with an average of 80% of the prescribed sessions being completed.

These findings are particularly significant because cognitive processing speed impairment is a common symptom of MS, affecting up to 70% of patients. Impairment is associated with reduced quality of life, increased unemployment, and decreased social functioning. With limited effective treatments available, this study is promising for individuals with this disabling symptom.

The remote delivery and support of the aerobic walking exercise training program also has major implications for the accessibility and convenience of care for individuals with MS. Many patients face barriers to attending in-person exercise programs, such as transportation issues or financial constraints. This study demonstrates that remotely delivered exercise programs can be just as effective as traditional in-person interventions, providing a more inclusive solution for persons with MS.

The researchers are optimistic about the potential applications of their findings. “Our study shows that remote aerobic walking exercise training is not only feasible but also might be efficacious for treating cognitive processing speed impairment in persons with MS,” said lead author Dr. Sandroff, senior research scientist in the Center for Neuropsychology and Neuroscience Research. “We anticipate that these findings will encourage the development of more accessible, convenient, and broad-scale exercise interventions, ultimately leading to improved quality of life for those affected by this challenging disease.”