? Study: Carding - Housework Benefits the Brain

[Teacher]

At least when it comes to the elderly. This conclusion was made by scientists from Canada.

The work was published in the BMC Geriatrics journal. Exercise is known to have a positive effect on cognitive performance. However, scientists from the Rotman Research Institute in Canada have shown that housework can have a beneficial effect on the brain as well. We are talking about the elderly, with the participation of which (66 people) and conducted the study.

Participants were asked how much time they spend on household chores: for example, cleaning, cooking, shopping in the store, minor repairs, etc. It turned out that those older people who spend more time doing this kind of activity had more brain volume than those who avoided such work. These features are found in the hippocampus, which plays an important role in the processes of remembering and learning, and in the frontal lobe, which is involved in many aspects of cognition.

On the other hand, scientists do not exclude that the effect and cause in this case can be reversed: people with a large brain volume are more willing to do household chores than those who do not have this feature.

However, there is indirect evidence that this is not the case, and that brain development is a consequence, not a cause, of such activity. After all, it is known that physical activity has a positive effect on heart health. Therefore, it is possible that housework affects both the heart and blood vessels, and therefore is associated with brain health.

In addition, planning and organizing household chores can contribute to the formation of new neural connections over time as the body ages. It is also possible that older people who were more busy around the house spent less time on a sedentary lifestyle. And this is also associated with better brain function.

In the future, researchers intend to more objectively study physical activity at home using wearable devices. Thus, they will be able to develop recommendations for the elderly in order to prevent brain diseases.

 

[CarderPlanet]

Train your brain. Loads improve memory​

The more you exercise, the better you learn​

So, you can think that reading books, and in large quantities, is a direct way to increase mental alertness and good memory training. But it turns out that this is by no means enough. Swiss neurophysiologists argue that good physical condition of the body, especially the cardiovascular system, not only has a beneficial effect on the brain, but can also promote the growth of new nerve cells (neurons). In other words, running regularly or exercising in the gym improves both physical and mental (mental) health. What is the nature of this relationship?

Exercise can increase the secretion of chemicals in the brain, which in turn enhances brain activity. Since 2003, for nine years, Ingegard Eriksson from the University of Malmö (Sweden) has examined 220 children in grades 1-3. 91 children did physical education twice a week. The remaining 129 trained daily and had the opportunity to increase loads to develop motor abilities. As expected, the students from the second group showed a higher level of physical fitness than their peers. Moreover, when conducting repeated tests, when these children were already in the ninth grade, it was found that the subjects from the second group showed the best results in learning.

Ericsson's observations were not limited to this. She found that a lot of physical activity increased the ability of children to mental concentration. In the second grade these students read and spoke English and Swedish much better than their peers, and solved complex mathematical problems.

Exercise supports intelligence​

The link between the physical condition of a person and his brain activity was confirmed in later studies, also carried out in Sweden in 2009 by Mikael Nilsson and Georg Kuch from the University of Gothenburg. They surveyed 1.2 million 18-year-old boys preparing for military service. The subjects with the help of tests checked physical and mental development, as well as assessed the ability to solve logical problems. The results showed a direct relationship: the cognitive ability of the brain increases with an improvement in the state of the cardiovascular system.

To confirm their findings, the scientists looked at the data on the physical and mental health of young people over the previous three years. It turned out that young men who maintained a high level of physical activity, and mentally looked worthy, while lazy ones degraded.

It turns out that if you want to develop your intellectual abilities, then you cannot limit yourself to monotonous physical exercises, and special attention should be paid to those that train the cardiovascular system. Walk fast, jog, squat - in short, load your heart, do not let it relax and grow old.

Interesting research was conducted at the American University of Georgia in 2011. Overweight children aged 7-11 years passed the quick wits test better if they ran a little in front of it, played outdoor games. The participants in this experiment were divided into three groups. The first group was engaged in physical education for 13 weeks for 40 minutes daily, the second - for 20 minutes, and the third, control, rested. It turns out that you do not need to expose yourself to exhausting stress in order to improve the functioning of the brain. A 20-minute brisk walk just before testing is enough and the brain activity rate increases by 5%.

Another interesting study was conducted by American scientists using a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. We studied the brain structures of 9-10-year-old children, divided into two groups: with good and poor physical fitness. We scanned one of the brain structures - the basal nucleus, which is responsible for attention and motor activity. In 75% of the examined children, well developed physically, the basal nucleus was markedly enlarged.

Load improves memory​

Physical health does not only promote better brain function in children. American scientists have found that if older people regularly exercise, especially in the fresh air, they perform better on memory tests. The reason is associated with the activation during exercise of a special area of the brain - the hippocampus, which is responsible for memorization. The hippocampus shrinks with age, which leads to memory impairment, and exercise helps to optimize the functioning of certain brain centers.

In 2009, physiologists from the universities of Illinois and Pittsburgh (USA), after examining a group of elderly people with good physical fitness, found that they had high memorization abilities and a not too small hippocampus. The participants in the experiment had to memorize the location of the colored dots on the computer screen. The image appeared for a very short period of time. The best results were shown by people with the largest hippocampus size.

Scientists are well aware that the brain is plastic - it is constantly changing due to the formation of new connections between neurons, its individual parts can increase or decrease in size. Such changes are closely related to learning: as soon as you have mastered or memorized something new, it is instantly stored in the brain through the growth or change of its neurons. Thus, if fitness maintains good mental health, which is in turn related to the size of certain areas of the brain, then exercise should be expected to promote growth and improved brain function. Neurophysiologists studying the relationship between hippocampus size and memory in older adults continued their research in 2011. For the experiment, 120 people were selected at the age of "well over 60" who do not exercise regularly, and those on the move for about 30 minutes a day. They were divided into two equal groups - active and passive. The active woman was engaged in brisk walking daily for 40 minutes, while their heart rate increased by 60-75%. People from the passive (control) group performed stretching exercises, kept their balance, in a word, did not overwork too much. Their heart rate remained almost unchanged.

A year later, using magnetic resonance imaging and a memory test, the scientists examined the effect that exercise had on the hippocampus and memory of the participants in the experiment. The results were amazing. In the passive group, the size of the hippocampus decreased by an average of 1%, and in the active group it increased by 2%. Memorization has changed accordingly. This once again confirmed the conclusion that physical activity improves brain function. But how does this happen?

Running from Alzheimer's​

To answer this difficult question, scientists measured the level of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) - a neurotropic factor in the brain - in the blood of the participants in the experiment. BDNF is a protein produced in the brain that stimulates and supports the development of neurons. It is especially active in the hippocampus, and Alzheimer's disease and memory problems are associated with low amounts. Scientists have shown that the level of BDNF in the blood is clearly associated with the size of the hippocampus and physical fitness of the subject. The higher (within reasonable limits) the load, the more BDNF is produced, the better the memory and learning ability of a person. It will take a long time before it is fully understood how exercise improves both memory and mental abilities in people of all ages, but this fact has been proven. It works! So run, bike, swim.