Most of the neurogenesis studies are done in rodents. So the conclusion should be carefully taken, especially for something like neurogenesis which varies wildly across species.
Running promotes neurogenesis, but also enriched environment, many drugs, genetics etc. Its effect in mice is also somewhat elusive at this point: we aren't sure whether it promotes learning or forgetting.
That being said, all the nice cognitive effects from exercise probably all due to endorphins (literally endogenous morphine) released in the brain afterwards.
If you google for studies citing the one above, you will find many more. Purely from a standpoint of scientific evidence, running if one of the best things you can do for your brain. Bilingualism and cognitively demand work are also a good ideathough its less clear whether they have cognitive protective effects or actually lead to neurogenesis.
Actually, runner's high is caused by endocannabinoids, not endorphins. This NYT article[1] has a decent writeup and a link to the actual journal article. So, not sure how well your startup idea will work, THC infusions maybe?
Thank you for this. Our hordes of bright-eyed would-be disrupters and world changers need to hear this a hundred time, a thousand times, and then ponder carefully in precisely what direction they want to actually have the world moving.
A treatment for PTSD, called EMDR, involves trying to enhance the right/left communication in the brain. This is done by eye tracking back and forth from left to right. I personally know two people that this was effective on, but there is a lack of hard data on whether this works or not in general.
However, the PTSD specialist that worked with these two individuals suggested that running (and walking) long distances can create the same effect since the person is continually scanning the environment. This would alleviate PTSD symptoms plus anxiety and depression in her patients.
If scanning the environment while walking or jogging works, then I'd recommend learning how to identify edible mushrooms. Whenever you're outside you go into 24/7 extreme scanning mode that is pretty much impossible to turn off.
Beginning mushroom hunters find mushrooms by seeing them. Expert mushroom hunters just see things in their peripheral vision that are consistent with a mushroom being there. (E.g. some leaves out of place, a pop of color where there shouldn't be, a wisp of smoke, etc.) By the time you actually consciously focus your eyes/attention on the area and get close enough to see whether or not there really is a mushroom, you're already pretty sure whether or not you've found something.
If the mushrooms are older you can sometimes see the spores before seeing the actual mushroom. This obviously happens with puffballs, but I've also seen it with Honey Mushrooms and Maitake.
These are really bad for you to breathe in though, so if you see this happening then definitely go in the other direction.
I like the suggestion here that one of the ways running could help is by the eye tracking back and forth. Going for a run works, full stop. You can search my comment history and see that I recommend four specific things to help immediately alleviate PTSD symptoms like depression and anxiety (take a shower and do some laundry, do some exercise and run, hydrate and eat some leafy greens, and make an appointment with your doc), in which "going for a run" is a central ingredient. I've helped a pretty big group of people over the last ten years (myself, former members of my unit, friends and family, etc), and it works. Incidentally, people always seem to have an opinion about this, even when they've never experienced the problems themselves. It's a bit surprising actually how many people rush to get a word in edgewise, when it concerns someone else's feelings. Anyway, this is a very interesting theory.
Swimming - hated it back in school, started to love it five years ago during a very stressful time in my life.
Peace and meditation is what it mostly does for me.
If you are interested do yourself a favor and check out the book "Total Immersion" by Terry Laughlin.
I wish had started to read it earlier - a total game changer for me, none of the "no-pain-no-gain" bullshit. I swear I've been
having almost instant results, passing by most "better trained" swimmers with blissful ease, it really is unfair ;) Essentially it's about hacking swimming by seriously getting into the physics of the sport.
These studies! They measure some micro thing in an extremely complex system and then we extrapolate to get an overall result. But we don't do that with complex systems that we engineer. Why do we do it with people?
I've worked with plenty of smokers. Some who didn't take much exercise. But some of them were extremely effective programmers. As Bob Dylan said: You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
I too have met some extremely intelligent smokers. But, I think you may be missing the point. This study doesn’t provide evidence that pollution by itself hinders your cognition. Rather that pollution (or some other urban-related phenomenon) may blunt some of the positive effects that aerobic exercise would have had otherwise.
The negative effects of pollution have been well documented, so its not like this study is coming out of nowhere. But, I do agree that one study should not be given too much weight. And how pollution affects exercise needs more research before conclusions can be definitively reached.
Could always run in a 3M respirator. The reduced airflow would make it extra intense, if not untenable. On the other hand, frequent breaks due to being stopped by police would probably balance that out.
I've used respirators for years at various jobs. The older ones were definitely more restrictive, but you can get P100 filters nowadays for cheap that don't have any noticeable resistance at all, even when breathing hard. Just about any dual-filter mask qualifies.
Heh. GMTA. Those are the exact filters I use. Welding, woodworking, smoke... doesn't matter, you can't tell, not even a hint of anything other than clean air coming through. And as long as you use the prefilters, they last a long time.
I used a Respro while mountain biking in AZ; when breathing & inhaling very heavily there is some resistance. But otherwise I liked it.
There is also this inhaler containing ectoine, but this wouldn't protect against particles entering the brain via olfactory nerve:
"An inhaler that protects the lungs against air pollution has been developed by scientists and could help the many millions of people affected by toxic air to avoid its worst effects."
Some of the more dangerous pollutants are ultra-fine particles (less than 100nm in size). I wonder how effective these masks are for trapping these particles. I can only find information on how well they trap particles larger than 100nm.
Many people don't realize how dangerous small particles can be over many years. Something that doesn't seem dangerous can cause scars on lung tissue with constant exposure to it over many years.
My dad has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or IPF it's probably from breathing in small particles over the years which causes scarring of lung tissue. Although the idiopathic part means how it occurs is not known for sure. He worked a blue collar job and often breathed in dust from various things.
Lungs are only for air don't mess with your lungs!
> After about 30 to 40 minutes of a vigorous aerobic workout – enough to make you sweat – studies have recorded increased blood flow to this region, which, incidentally, is associated with many of the attributes we associate with “clear thinking”: planning ahead, focus and concentration, goal-setting, time management.
I wonder how HIIT stacks up against running in this regard. When done properly, it's impossible to do it for the said 30 minutes, yet it makes one sweat no less than that 40 minute run. For example, the routine I follow daily takes about 15 minutes and consists of series of calisthenics a minute/half a minute long with 20 seconds of rest between them. By 15 minutes mark it leaves me breathless and drives every muscle to exhaustion. If it's all about blood movement, then I assume HIIT should compare well since the routine quickly drives my heart rate up and keeps it relatively high for hours afterwards.
I could find being forced to randomly run on a treadmill and then slow down to be extremely stressful, which is bad for neurogenesis, so I don't know how representative this experiment is.
Agree, the stress might have negated possible positive outcomes. In my case, though, I'm sticking with it purely for the joy of it--15 min. of HIIT at the end of the work while you are hungry and tired followed by a cold shower/bath for another 15 min. is like being knocked out and woken up after a long sleep--makes you relaxed and focused for the rest of the evening.
If you want to look in the scientific literature, then you'll want to use : "Tabata", taken from the first author's name that originally discovered and researched this method of exercise.
The Tabata protocol is much more specific than HIIT and rarely followed even by those claiming to do it.
It's more complicated than doing 20 seconds of >100% effort followed by 10 seconds of rest 8 times over, which is itself more specific than the range of ways in which you can do HIIT.
>vigorous aerobic exercise, said Karen Postal, president of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the only trigger that we know about.”
Considering we are the most long-distance and endurance optimized land animal evolution has come up with, why do we continue to be surprised that running is good for us?
I think that when we as individuals each discover this, we are struck by it. It's one thing to read that exercise is good for you, another thing to actually feel the goodness.
If you enjoy that article I think you will get heaps out of John J. Ratey's book Spark. It describes the connections between mental health and exercise in many dimensions. I like that it both speaks layperson and gives scientific details to spring off from, but some friends wish it was either or, not both.
If you enjoyed this article it's hard to imagine there exist other things on the subject you wouldn't enjoy much more. Read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which is mentioned in the article, for instance.
I credit this book with bringing me out if a major depressive episode about 5 years ago. I've incorporated running into my schedule ever since and I've yet to have another depression. I had a conversation about it today. I'm glad to see it mentioned. I gift it to people often.
It triggered a paradigm shift for me. Many of us need our regular doses of exercise to feel good. Cardio is the most importance medicine for me. This discovery also made injury and aging a little scary in a new way :shrug:
In your personal experience, did you find it taken some amount of practice, or to clear a certain barrier of fitness, before you started to enjoy running?
I've been training for about three months now and I spent about 6 weeks of that feeling sick the entire time, and the more recent 6 weeks just not enjoying it.
Some people just don't enjoy exercise. I'm one of them. The only way I can do it is through sheer willpower.
I've heard about the endorphin thing; I think it's happened to me exactly once, after climbing a mountain, and it was really creepy and I don't want it to happen again. The only thing I feel when finishing exercise is 'oh thank god that's over'.
What I've found is that the more I train, the fitter I get, and so the longer I can prolong the discomfort, stress and boredom. Maybe you're not one of those people --- but if you are, I'm sorry.
(In fact, the most annoying thing are that the people who do enjoy exercise simply don't believe any of this, and produce unhelpful platitudes like 'you just haven't found something you like yet' or 'but if you keep doing it you'll find you're enjoying it'...)
Yes, I can walk reasonably long distances at the drop of a hat and without difficulty, and I can exercise in the gym, but every time I've done that, I never felt the high. I don't think I ever will.
You could try doing "fun" things instead of things that rely on endorphins. Bouldering, wrestling, soccer... Something that keeps your brain occupied as well as your muscles.
I don't really follow my own advice, but I used to boulder regularly when I lived in Berlin, and I liked it.
Bouldering I've tried --- it's okay, but it's not really aerobic exercise, which is what I'm looking for.
Competitive sports --- flat no. They just don't keep my attention.
What I do is run, because I can build that into my commute, so it doesn't feel like it's a complete waste of time. Right now I'm capable of making myself run to work twice a week, 7km each time, which is okay. Hopefully when summer comes round again I'll start running back again as well.
In my experience, there are a few things at work. This is just my $0.02, other people's experience may be entirely different.
One, do it gradually -- if you're feeling sick, maybe you should be ramping up more slowly. While muscle can grow quickly, tendons and ligaments take much longer to handle the new workload.
Two, form makes all the difference -- running can either feel heavy and difficult, or lightweight and joyous. But unfortunately, it can take a lot of learning and effort to get to the latter -- good relaxed form is not easy to learn, landing the right way on your foot is incredibly important, for some people things like Vibram shoes help, you might have severe muscle tension preventing good form (see a massage therapist, get a Theracane and use it religiously, etc.), you might have horribly tight hamstrings and need specific stretches for those, the list goes on and on. Me personally, I also had to lose a bunch of weight (getting down to my ideal BMI) for running to feel light and easy rather than painful and pounding.
And third, being in the right mood for enjoying running makes a huge difference too. When I'm not in the mood for it, but I run anyways (because I'm feeling guilty about not running, etc.), I generally stay miserable. But sometimes I really am in the mood for it -- I got enough sleep the night before, I ate a couple hours ago so I have energy, but not so long ago I'm hungry, it's not too early in the day (I'm not a morning person), but not too late either that I'm tired -- finding the right time is huge, and makes all the difference.
Honestly, I love running, but it took a lot of time and effort to figure out everything above that made it work for me -- in my case, years. (And pretty much everything about the programmer lifestyle works against you.) But when you manage to make everything align, it feels great, like you're tapping some kind of primal happiness where you're back on the African savannah tracking down antelope... I'm not even joking.
It's interesting knowing that I enjoy running the most when I'm starting to feel tired.when I get out of the shower after running I feel like I'm super light, redbull like.
It took me about six months of swimming to start to notice benefits. As far as running goes, I find trail running (on sloping, moderately rocky and uneven hiking trails) much more engaging than running on a treadmill or flat ground.
Trail running is great. If you have mountain bike trails in your area, I'd recommend running on those since they're winding, filled with slopes and obstacles to jump over, and in general a lot of fun. Many mountain bike trails are designated for both bikers and runners.
I'm not particularly fit, and I never ran a lot. In fact I always hated running and remember making jokes to my friends about running being a sport for psychopaths. I really just didn't get it -- it was hard on my body (especially knees) and just plain boring.
I have since picked up (slowly) running without shoes on and it has made a real difference. It is difficult to acclimate, but it can be done. I now feel no knee pain and I have realized that I indeed enjoy running. Not only am I discovering that it's easier to run without shoes, but it's a lot more fun too.
I've always been fascinated by this ... any time I walk around barefoot, I seem to find every rock, sharp stick, and piece of broken glass in the area. How long does it take for your feet to develop the required callouses?
Mine have not yet developed callouses and I suspect they never will.
Indeed I haven't seen most of the changes in my feet that others say they have seen in theirs. My feet are mostly the same, but with soles that are just a little less sensitive to pebbles and sticks than they used to be.
Maybe I'm lucky, but even in a big city that practically glitters with broken beer bottles and I don't find glass to be a problem. Injuries from broken glass are easy to avoid, and are much more often talked about than realized. Once a season I may get a splinter in my foot, or stub my toe on a root, but that's about the worst of it.
There are no real experts on barefoot living yet and if there are I would not be one. But since you asked, in my experience it took a month or so of being consistently barefoot for my soles to begin to feel like they were changing. They're still changing, slowly, a year later.
You get used to the feeling of the concrete on your soles, just like you get used to anything. Then, like anything you get used to, you notice it less and less.
The only real drawback to being barefoot outside is that a lot of people will look at you like you're crazy. They'll tell you you're going to get injured. That there's glass on the ground. Many of these people will be in pumps or wedges. You just learn to let it humor you on the inside.
There are always times that fitness isn't enjoyable, like running at zero or thirty degrees). If it's bad the entire time you might be stressing too much and it probably means that you need to take it slower. Take some rest (but not too much).
Also experiment with listening to music or different times of the day.
I love sports and powerlifting and have done both for decades now. Running distance I hated. I finally found it okay, once I forced myself to get over the hump. If you keep running, you'll eventually hit a point where you feel like at the current pace you can continue indefinitely.
On an iPad here. There's an unvote link. Same as on desktop. I always pinch to zoom in on HN because the interface is fiddly and it's impossible to tell if you hit up or down. Your finger normally covers them both. Much prefer the Reddit UI (which might be what you're mistakenly looking for).
nitpick: The actual title of the article is "How Neuroscientists Explain the Mind-Clearing Magic of Running" and that's like the best summary it can get. Neurogenesis (a word not even in the article) being linked to exercise is only one of the mechanisms involved (another commenter mentions endorphines as well, which strangely isn't in the article)
double nitpick: 'neurogenesis' is in the article, it is in the third sentence of the third paragraph.
But yes, it is not the focus of the article, because the article has almost no focus. There is an irony in the idea that a runner writing an article about using running to get focus and calm would be so unfocused, disjoint, frenetic and confused, but only a minor irony.
lol got me there, I thought I read it indeed but then afterwards did a page search which didn't find any matches and I was like 'meh, computer's probably right'. It was, because it was case sensitive and I copied 'Neurogenesis' from the title here :]
I suspect this is a case of a submitter finding one specific aspect of the submission interesting, not caring about the rest, and using the title to draw attention to it, rather than misrepresenting the article.
Adding a plug for Ratey's book "Spark" (https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-...) which is a pretty good lay introduction to a lot of the research on cognition and exercise as well as exercise's role in ameliorating depression, anxiety, stress response, and some neurological deficits. Recommended by my physician. Turns out the wonder drug we were looking for might have been "take a lap".
Anyone else feel uncomfortable and mild mental-claustrophobia when they run? Time seems to slow to a crawl. I'be never been able to get past that to enjoy running.
Setting objectives keep my focus on the race. Of course you first have to reach some level of fitness (otherwise it just feels like failures — You need to be able to reach 1hr every time, for example), but when you find a lap of 10-15 minutes and you attempt to beat your speed on 1hr by a few seconds, the race to run as fast as your last record becomes as interesting as hearing the radio anchor commenting your own race. Laps help you measure whether you're later or early – in both cases it's a mistake. It's surprising how the body is precise when you're at your maximum, precise to a few sconds every 3km.
Maybe try sprinting if you haven't before. I am / was a pretty high level athlete and I've never been able to stand jogging, but sprinting is exhilarating. Or just try running in the context of a sport.
I used to hate running distance, but I found after the first couple miles my mind really opened up. I could think clearly and let my mind wander to new ideas. I would end up forgetting I was running at all.
Running promotes neurogenesis, but also enriched environment, many drugs, genetics etc. Its effect in mice is also somewhat elusive at this point: we aren't sure whether it promotes learning or forgetting.
That being said, all the nice cognitive effects from exercise probably all due to endorphins (literally endogenous morphine) released in the brain afterwards.