[HN Gopher] Brain endurance training improves older adults' cogn...
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Brain endurance training improves older adults' cognitive, physical
performance
Author : gnabgib
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-10-21 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| graypegg wrote:
| I can understand this, I'd probably describe the effect as being
| "more awake" if I do a crossword puzzle AND a walk in the
| morning, vs one or the other. I really can't quantify that at
| all, and I think this study had a bit of trouble doing the same
| (using results from 1 cognitive test across a pretty small
| cohort), but it does feel real.
| pants2 wrote:
| It's crazy to me how I can be completely stumped on a crossword
| puzzle, and then after a jog I come home and knock it out.
| Really kicks your brain into high gear.
| Cpoll wrote:
| My experience is that time away from the crossword doing
| _anything_ else works this way.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| There's a real tendency to overthink, and be too close to a
| complex problem, in just about any intellectual endeavor.
|
| I believe that it's important to try and refrain from
| making big decisions, or big changes, in a project before
| you've had an opportunity to step away from it and clear
| your mind: with a shower, a jog, a nap, or all of the
| above.
|
| It's amazing how my perspective can change after stepping
| away, sometimes voluntarily. My hot temper has an
| opportunity to cool down. My analytical neurons have
| opportunities to chew on the problem for a while. I make
| better connections and get a better "big picture" view
| after zooming out.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Daily walks too, rain or shine.
| bloopernova wrote:
| A dog makes it much easier to find the motivation to walk. Mine
| needs about 5 miles of walks a day; after a few months of
| building up to that I feel pretty good each day. I still suffer
| from back pain and sciatica and other crap, but it feels like I
| have more capacity to cope with things nowadays (as compared to
| how shitty I felt in the year between our previous dog passing
| and adopting our current dog)
|
| Moving also helps digestion, fresh air is great, vitamin D from
| sunlight on skin does wonders for you, and you can turn over
| work problems as you walk.
|
| When I worked in the Renaissance Centre in Detroit, I used the
| many flights of stairs (39 floors in the outer towers) in
| addition to walking. Walking is great, but those stairs really
| got the blood pumping and muscles working. I never did stay
| long enough to train up enough to tackle the central tower's 73
| flights of stairs. I think some firefighters ascend the central
| tower in full protective gear as a commemoration of the world
| trade centre attacks.
| gcanyon wrote:
| I worked in the Century City Twin Towers about twenty years
| ago. There was a firefighter who would come out to the
| building every month or so and climb the stairs, basement to
| roof, with 100lbs of gear/hose on his back. Twice. That's
| something like 1400 feet of vertical.
|
| He did it just for the exercise, and to be prepared in case
| he had to actually do it someday.
| jerlam wrote:
| Stairs are great exercise, and a bit too unsafe/unnatural
| to do in a gym. Requires a lot more coordination than
| walking.
|
| It's too bad that in most modern buildings, the stairs are
| only to be used in case of fire, and usually locked from
| the outside and alarmed.
| elijaht wrote:
| There are stairstepper machines in gyms! They're great
| (IMO one of the best bang for your buck in terms of time
| and injury risk)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| >He doesn't know about Bulgarian split squats
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't have a dog. But I occasionally have a squirrel. But
| they're evanescent
| senkora wrote:
| > Mine needs about 5 miles of walks a day
|
| That's a lot of walking. Mine gets about 2 miles a day and it
| takes about 60 minutes. Sometimes I do a 2 mile jog with him
| which he loves.
|
| If you don't mind me asking, how long do you spend walking
| your dog? Is it a fast pace and/or do you count dog park time
| somehow?
| bloopernova wrote:
| Generally we'll do a couple of half mile 10 minute walks in
| the morning. Then a longer hour mid afternoon which usually
| covers about 3 miles. My mile time varies from 16 minutes
| to about 19. Lastly, at night we walk a slower pace, taking
| 30 minutes to do a mile. Where I live, there's lots of
| options to change routes and to see/smell new things.
|
| I unfortunately can't run: scar tissue messed up some left
| foot tendons. To let my dog run, we go to tennis courts,
| baseball fields, and throw a ball for him.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I have an issue with this study. It reads as though the cognitive
| activity they did throughout the training period is the same as
| the cognitive test used at the beginning and the end for
| measurement.
|
| Wouldn't a person doing the same test for several weeks perform
| better than a person who experienced the test once? Are we sure
| they just didn't get better at the test at the end by practicing
| vs actually improving cognitive performance that would help them
| other than taking these specific tests (psychomotor vigilance and
| stroop).
| julianeon wrote:
| I've noticed that surfing & bodyboarding are (maybe surprisingly)
| VERY cognitively challenging: watching the waves, moving your
| body through the water to intersect correctly, timing the
| launching of your board to coincide with a coming one and then
| making many micro-movements to stay on it, etc.
|
| I wonder if this is an argument for prioritizing exercises like
| that, with a big mentally taxing component.
| elijaht wrote:
| This resonates with me - I primarily run and lift weights,
| neither of which require much quick thinking or movement
| outside of specific patterns. So while it's not my primary
| focus, I do try to include a few sessions of rock climbing and
| pickup soccer in my week.
|
| I've definitely noticed an improvement in my ability to
| "express" the strength/endurance since I started doing that
| (more agile, coordinated, sense of how to apply force, general
| feeling of fitness).
|
| In general I feel like novelty in exercise is
| understudied/appreciated
| hammock wrote:
| >novelty in exercise
|
| "Cross training"
|
| Although usually it is more about the physical qualities than
| the neurological ones
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Yes, body mind connection is a real attribute in sports
| science. All kinds of exercises help the brain too
| agumonkey wrote:
| Complex balancing, shifting viewpoints, concurrent decision
| making.. all felt extremely beneficial to stimulate the brain
| bubaumba wrote:
| sure, how about chess? bad news, even champions show no
| exceptional skills outside of chess world. the same goes for
| tetris players.
|
| in other word specialized training does not result in general
| abilities by default. I'm not saying is not beneficial or
| bad. but athletes and dancers aren't the smartest people for
| a reason.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| If you do it for a while it becomes a thoughtless process
| though. I no longer have to think about when to start paddling
| to catch the wave, I just know without any active thinking.
| Same with the balance, my muscles just know what to do.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I skimmed it but couldn't figure out what "brain endurance
| training" consists of here. I have heard that multilingual people
| and musicians never end up with alzheimers, though, so maybe this
| is an attempt to measure that relationship.
| elric wrote:
| Hate to burst your bubble, but Belgium (where very nearly
| everyone is multilingual) has roughly the same dementia rate as
| the UK (where, you know, people tend to just speak English):
| ~1.69% of the population vs ~1.56%.
|
| Sauce: https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/dementia/prevalence-
| dementi...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| The studies I've read on bilingualism state that it delays
| onset by a few years, not that it prevents it. Let me duck
| for a cite though...
|
| Here's one "Recent meta-analyses report that active
| bilingualism is related to later onset of symptoms and, thus,
| diagnosis of dementia by as much as 5-7 years relative to
| comparable monolinguals, despite brains in both cases
| accruing increased pathology similarly"
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8847162/
|
| It also notes.. "However, as outlined below, simply being bi-
| or multilingual it is not sufficient for protection against
| cognitive decline, otherwise, a clear majority of the world's
| population would be equally protected (considering that more
| than half of the world population speaks more than one
| language; De Houwer, 2021). It is important to keep in mind
| that only certain types of so-called 'active ' bilingualism
| will have the maximum effect upon brain health, i.e., those
| who are amply exposed to their languages, use them regularly
| and are otherwise highly engaged in contexts that require
| linguistic switching."
| capitainenemo wrote:
| (that 5-7 years is "maximum effect" there are others that
| simply using two to some degree adds a few years of brain
| health - and that might be mentioned elsewhere in this meta
| analysis)
| gnabgib wrote:
| BET is described in a different (linked) paper: _Prior brain
| endurance training improves endurance exercise performance_
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/17461391.2022.21...
| xtrapol8 wrote:
| There is a mythical and near magical capacity of the mind to
| manipulate a virtualized potential such that a sixth sense
| (spacial conceptual awareness) manifestation may be explored.
|
| Beginning purely as a phantasm of the mind, this inner
| extradimentionality may become every bit as important to some as
| anything an ordinary person would consider of the "real world."
|
| This sense and muscular manipulation may be developed beyond
| comprehension of conventional minds. Entire worlds may be built
| within. Some might be satisfied with a well fortified library, or
| citadel sanctuary. The ordinary mind is savage or stunted not to
| know it is there.
|
| For better or worse, exercising this development within will
| acquaint you with true personal power. And it will keep your mind
| from growing feeble.
| nurettin wrote:
| I find the whole serious scientific tone amusing because the
| simplest explanation to their somewhat better performance may be
| due to having a good mood for having people to socialize with and
| being attended to.
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