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Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

well.blogs.nytimes.com

41–50 of 133 posts

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#41

Anecdotal confirmation: Bill Gates, who is widely believed to have a very healthy brain, in more youthful years used to perform silly jumping feats, like jumping out of garbage cans.

This is slightly inappropriate for HN, but here is a video of Bill doing that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TCxE0bWQeQ

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#42

Anecdotal confirmation: Bill Gates, who is widely believed to have a very healthy brain, in more youthful years used to perform silly jumping feats, like jumping out of garbage cans.

Anecdotal counter-example: my dog likes jumping into garbage cans but isn't very smart.

Might apply to humans only... no canine trials have been studied yet. /s

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#43
post #33

Strong legs are also associated with people who run a lot, which has been already shown to be associated with healthy brains. It's possible this study is a proxy for the common health advice of 'just do more cardio'

Or weightlifting, squatting and deadlifting heavy on a regular basis will give you substantially stronger legs than any runner.

I'm not entirely convinced 'strong legs' are the causative factor in healthier brains. It is possible the researchers measured an artifact of people that do running cardio.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#44
post #33

Strong legs are also associated with people who run a lot, which has been already shown to be associated with healthy brains. It's possible this study is a proxy for the common health advice of 'just do more cardio'

Or weightlifting, squatting and deadlifting heavy on a regular basis will give you substantially stronger legs than any runner.

That depends completely on how you define "strong". I think legs that can carry a 50 pound pack to the top of a mountain are "stronger" than a guy who can lift twice as much as me, but can't even run a 5K.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#45

What I'd like to know is how this boils down wrt work. If an increase in mental ability represent a greater work-done-per hour; But the cost is time spent exercising -> less time working (maybe somewhat compensated for other positive non-work benefits), Then what would be the perfect amount of exercise to boost productivity? i.e. would an hour spent exercising pay for itself in productivity boost?

You can get in a decent intense squat session in only 15 minutes. The really big time sinks associated with lifting include: - commute to/from gym - changing clothes - another shower If you don't live in cramped quarters such as SF/NYC, I recommend a small home/garage gym to address these.

Also, finding new pants that fit. That's been a big time sink for me.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or weightlifting, squatting and deadlifting heavy on a regular basis will give you substantially stronger legs than any runner.

That depends completely on how you define "strong". I think legs that can carry a 50 pound pack to the top of a mountain are "stronger" than a guy who can lift twice as much as me, but can't even run a 5K.

That's endurance, which is objectively different from strength.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#47
I go to therapy to manage my depression. I don't have a severe case, but it's bad enough that it affects my productivity at times. Once a year or so I'll have a bout where I am almost completely unable to function.

The tools I use to manage depression are (wait for it) diet, exercise and prayer (or meditation, if you want to keep it secular).

Exercise is particularly useful. Depression affects the mind, so it's difficult to be self-aware about it. But I've found that when I start to have those thoughts of hopelessness, going out and running 1-3 miles at a pace that pushes my physical limits (I use a Nike Sportwatch for measurements) eradicates my depression.

On a semi-daily basis, 30 minutes of prayer, 30 minutes exercise and at least one meal with ~90g of raw spinach seems to do the trick for me.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#48
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so? Surely, if the correlation is explicitly with leg power rather than endurance or general fitness, then anaerobic exercise (squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg-presses, as well as running/bike sprints etc) would be the a better driver for building that power rather than aerobic exercise?

That's why I wish they were more explicit when defining the kind of exercise the subjects were engaged in. My comment was primarily from personal experience. When I did my anaerobic exercise when I used to train, it was heavily anaerobic, where I would do a lot of short bursts of heavy lifting. Later I transitioned to primarily focus on aerobic, where I did a lot of distance swimming. So I think I had a good amount o…

I agree with you. This is a very good question to ask. If this is from extremely intense workouts, then I would say very few would benefit.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#49
post #13
post #6

Just started to read the book "Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School". It basically starts with this "For starters, we are not used to sitting at a desk for eight hours a day. From an evolutionary perspective, our brains developed while working out, walking as many as 12 miles a day. The brain still craves that experience, especially in sedentary populations like our own. Tha…

> Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in long-term memory, reasoning, attention, and problem-solving tasks I'm pretty sure the cause/effect is reversed here. It's more likely that people who are smart and have better focus/are less impulsive are more likely to take care of their health and exercise.

Both A->B and B->A can be true without AB with complex relationships.

Dr John Ratey, M.D. covers the topic of exercise and those mental attributes in his seminal 2008 book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. I can't recommend this book strongly enough particularly if there are mental health issues in your life -- and who doesn't!

Dr Ratey references and describes a number of experiments and studies done in elementary schools where mental acuity improved across the population when exercise was added. One fascinating detail was the immediacy of the effect. I'd be very surprised if the most recent data is not consistent with the results described in Spark.

Re: Strong Legs Associated with Healthy Brains in Twin Study

#50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get in a decent intense squat session in only 15 minutes. The really big time sinks associated with lifting include: - commute to/from gym - changing clothes - another shower If you don't live in cramped quarters such as SF/NYC, I recommend a small home/garage gym to address these.

Also, finding new pants that fit. That's been a big time sink for me.

preach!
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