exercise

Group workouts are better for your mental wellbeing. (pic credit: Adrian Hillman)

Exercise is known to boost your mood and make you feel better: it’s hard to feel low or anxious when you’re working up a sweat in the gym or fitness studio. Exercise builds resilience and helps you release negative stuff you’ve been holding onto. Yet recent research has aimed to quantify this feeling by examining how you exercise and the way it links with your emotional wellbeing and quality of life.

The study – published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Foundation – found exercising on your own means you try harder but won’t necessarily feel any fitter or any less stressed. Work out in a group, however, and this can bring your stress levels down and improve your quality of life. The research was carried out among 69 medical students, a group known to suffer higher stress levels – though the results of the study can be applied to a general population.

Participants chose either a group or individual exercise programme over 12 weeks. Every four weeks they filled out a survey regarding their levels of perceived stress and quality of life in three aspects: mental, physical and emotional.

At the end of the 12 weeks, those participating in structured weekly group exercise showed a 26% reduction in their stress levels. They also reported an improvement in all three quality of life measures: mental (13%), physical (25%) and emotional (26%). They also reported a 26.2 percent reduction in perceived stress levels. In contrast, those who chose their own fitness regime and worked out whenever they wanted – by themselves – saw no significant changes in any measure, except in mental quality of life (11% increase).

Drawing a conclusion from the findings, Dr Dayna Yorks from the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and lead researcher on this study, said: “These findings should not be interpreted as a condemnation of individual exercise. We believe much benefit can be derived from physical exercise of any kind, but the addition of group fitness classes may have additional benefits. The communal benefits of coming together with friends and colleagues, and doing something difficult, while encouraging one another, pays dividends beyond exercising alone.”

Neuroscientists recommend a socially and physically active lifestyle to delay the onset of dementia. (pic: istockphoto.com/jupiter55)

Be socially active, be curious about life and other people, and keep your body fit if you want to delay the onset of dementia. That’s the advice from neuro-scientists who’ve studied what keeps the mind and memory functioning and alive.

A study shows that exposure to new activities, and seeking out rich and stimulating environments, can delay the formation of a particular protein in the brain that stops the cells communicating with each other, and can erode the person’s ability to learn, remember and pay attention. Scientists from the Center for Neurologic Diseases in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Neurology say that “prolonged exposure to a richer, more novel environment, even in middle age” can protect the hippocampus, the part of the brain susceptible to the effects of that protein – thus helping to preserve short- and long-term memory.

This piece of research says social and stimulating activity is more effective than aerobic exercise. However, a separate study from King’s College London says there is link between lifelong exercise and cognitive wellbeing.

The researchers interviewed 9,000 people over the years as they grew from age 11 to age 50. The study found that people who exercised every week performed better when tested on memory, learning, attention and reasoning at the age of 50 than people who exercised a couple of times a month or less. Fit men lost a third less of their brainpower, while fit women lost 25% less of their brainpower.

Report author Dr Alex Dregan says that while 150 minutes’ exercise per week is recommended, some activity rather than no exercise at all could benefit cognitive wellbeing, adding: “It’s widely acknowledged that a healthy body equals a healthy mind.”

While individuals can do their bit to stay healthy, experts are calling for more funding for research into causes and cures for dementia. The statistics about dementia are stark. One in three people over the age of 65 is likely to get Alzheimer’s, which is now the 10th leading cause of death in the UK, according to the Alzheimer’s Society.