You May Live Longer if You Start Exercising Now
A study in the March 6 issue of the journal BMJ finds that men who increase their level of physical activity after age 40 had lower risk of death after 35 years. The study was completed in Sweden by researchers at Uppsala University and the Karolinska Institute. The change in mortality still held true in statistical models that included things that might be related to someone exercising, such as smoking, weight, self-reported health, and alcohol use. Those who had the lowest level of physical activity had greater risk of dying over the 35-year follow-up.
The authors studied a group of 2,841 men (yes, men only) who were born between 1920 and 1924 in the area around Uppsala, Sweden. They were followed up on several occasions, the most recent in 2006. At the end of the study, 20% more of the men in the most active group were still alive compared to men in the least active group. Again, this was after controlling for a number of variables that might have also been different in the two groups.
Most interesting to me was how activity levels were defined. The researchers asked participants only four questions. The first asked whether the man spent most of his time reading, watching TV, or engaged in sedentary activities. Persons who answered yes were placed in the lowest activity group. The second question asked whether the man walked or bicycled freqently for pleasure. Persons answering yes to this question were in the middle group. The last two questions asked whether the men participated regularly in sports or other active recreational sport, and whether they engaged regularly in hard physical training. People who answered yes to either of these questions were placed in the high activity group.
People in the lowest activity had the highest chances of dying in the followup period, while those in the middle activity group had an intermediate risk of death. Those in the highest activity level group had the lowest risk of death.
Based on this study, almost any increase in physical activity is probably beneficial. Many other studies have shown that increasing physical activity helps you lose weight, makes it more likely that you’ll quit smoking, and means that you’ll feel better about your health. This study is new in showing that the health benefits of exercise may have effects that last a lifetime.
This article is freely available on the Web at the BMJ site: Click here to view the abstract. You can read the entire article by clicking on the words “Full Text” at the upper left of the page.
Latest
- Meditation as Brain Training
- Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
- Brain Fitness Tip: Training Without a Computer
Mindfulness meditation as practiced over a long period by experts makes clear changes in someone’s brain function. But what about those of us who don’t have a few years to sit in a monastery in the Himalayas? A new study shows that even brief meditation practice can improve attention.
Researchers at Wake Forest University studied whether just four days of training (at just 20 minutes a day) could make a difference in participants’ mood, energy, and cognition. Undergraduate students (average age 22 years) either participated in the meditation sessions or spent a similar amount of time sitting quietly and listening to an audio book.
Participants in the meditation condition showed decreases in anxiety and improvements in several mental processing tasks compared to those in the audio book group. The meditators’ performance on one aspect of a working memory task (how many answers they got correct in a row) suggested that they may have improved their attention.
This is a small and very preliminary study that extends others’ work on meditation and the brain.It shows that even brief meditation practice can make a difference. you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to learn to still your mind and pay better attention. Paying attention may be one of the most important things you can do to improve your brain’s functioning.
Reference:
Zeidan F et al.(in press) Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. Priscilla Warner writes about the contrast between Tibetan monks’ apparent calm, evident even on brain scans, and her own anxiety disorder. Ms. Warner says that she suffers from panic disorder, a severe form of anxiety in which a person can have multiple anxiety attacks every day, even in the middle of the night. Her post is titled “I Want the Brain of a Monk” Although most people don’t suffer from anxiety this severe, many people have symptoms of anxiety. And research has consistently shown that higher levels of anxiety are related to more memory problems.
What’s the relation to brain fitness? In my brain fitness class, I often mention the usefulness of meditation in helping reduce stress and anxiety, both of which have negative effects on memory. You don’t have to go to Tibet to get the benefits of meditation. If you simply take 10 minutes several times a day to break in to the ongoing rush of getting things done, you’ve made a start. Use those 10 minutes to sit quietly, relax your muscles, and breathe deeply.
If you do that every day for two weeks, I think you’ll notice that you feel calmer and better able to focus. And if you’re better able to focus, you will be better able to pay attention and remember things.
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.