It emerges that mild to moderate jogging is best for cognitive improvement, weight-lifting for biceps, and intensive workouts for cardiac arrest.
As I have often written, exercise changes the structure and function of the brain. Studies in animals and people have shown that physical activity generally increases brain volume and can reduce the number and size of age-related holes in the brain’s white and gray matter. Good.
These past studies of exercise and neurogenesis understandably have focused on distance running. This is what lab rats do best. Anything to get out of the lab. But whether other forms of exercise (weight training and high-intensity workouts) likewise prompt increases in neurogenesis has been unknown and is an issue of increasing interest, to humans if not to rats
So for the new study, which was published this myth in the Journal of Physiology, researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland (noted for its cooperative rodents) and other institutions gathered a large group of adult male Rats in plenary session.
Would they care to embark on an array of workouts: moderate jogging every day for several miles, high-intensity interval training and so on?
But what's in it for the rats? Surely no healthy volunteer would want to take part, much less sign an Informed Consent Form?
More seriously, why on earth would the researchers want to subject the poor rats to such a clinical trial in the first place, when it could much more easily and much more conclusively be carried out on human beings? There would be no shortage of volunteers for this kind of study, and even if there were, lawyers could always be found as they are willing to do anything for a fee.
Finally, Gretchen could usefully have specified an upper age limit for the high-intensity workouts. Might there not come a point where any benefits are offset by, for example, a heart attack?
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