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When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

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Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#71

Post by busterarm »

neom wrote: post #64
blastonico wrote: post #39

Ok, I'm almost convinced to start lifting weights... if they release a study showing hair growing I'll be 100% in.

Can relate to the hair growth thing, I've started to enter my "balding" era and I've been having a nervous breakdown. I never really cared about my looks before but the balding thing is really getting to me. Finasteride makes me depressed and minoxidil is so annoying, makes me feel less alone when I read a comment like yours, ha.

I lost all of my hair at 19 years old inside of about 3 high-stress months. From long hair to Stage 7 MPB. Too poor to medicate so I just had to deal with the new me. I don't even remember the experience of getting a haircut and what that's like.

I encourage you to embrace it. Go skin bald. There's a lot of hidden benefits and really it's no big deal. All of the treatment options have huge downsides or look like shit.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#72

Post by chasebank »

Aaronstotle wrote: post #61
almost_usual wrote: post #22

Two things that will improve mental clarity and sleep. Not drinking alcohol and strength training.

I enjoy strength training and drinking alcohol. I think if I had issues with either mental clarity or sleep I'd cut back more, I do practice dry January and have been surprised and how I don't really feel all that different. Maybe 30 days isn't long enough

I too enjoy drinking alcohol and a few years back went dry for 90 days. I was disappointed. If anything, I felt worse. A clean diet and exercise has much more of an impact on how I feel/sleep than abstaining from alcohol.

Eat less, move more, drink in moderation.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#73

Post by kanbankaren »

bedobi wrote: post #30
almost_usual wrote: post #22

Two things that will improve mental clarity and sleep. Not drinking alcohol and strength training.

Took me three times to parse what you wrote, I thought you were saying Not strength training improves mental clarity and sleep lol

Just one missing comma before `and`

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#74

Post by evnp »

voxic11 wrote: post #44
evnp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just going to leave this here as a counterpoint, since sibling comments feel one-sided on the question: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6957093/#:~:text=In...

That doesn't really say anything about alcohol's effect on (non-dementia related) mental clarity and sleep. Also if you continue to read that meta-analysis beyond the sentence you linked to it seems that much larger studies did not find a correlation between reduced dementia risk and moderate alcohol consumption. In fact they found that high alcohol consumption was associated with significantly higher risk of dementi…

Dementia seems highly related, if not inversely synonymous, with mental clarity? I think your comment is a bit misleading - while it does seem clearer that _high_ alcohol consumption and alcohol "use-disorders" are correlated with elevated risk of dementia, results pertaining to light-to-moderate consumption are "heterogeneous" - I read 4 studies or meta-studies with results showing _decreased_ risk of dementia (Rotterdam, Whitehall-II, Anstey, Xhu), 2 showing no correlation (California, HUNT), and zero showing increased risk when it comes to light-to-moderate consumption. Anyone interested should of course read the linked text in full and draw their own conclusions.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#75

Post by kanbankaren »

chasebank wrote: post #72
Aaronstotle wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy strength training and drinking alcohol. I think if I had issues with either mental clarity or sleep I'd cut back more, I do practice dry January and have been surprised and how I don't really feel all that different. Maybe 30 days isn't long enough

I too enjoy drinking alcohol and a few years back went dry for 90 days. I was disappointed. If anything, I felt worse. A clean diet and exercise has much more of an impact on how I feel/sleep than abstaining from alcohol. Eat less, move more, drink in moderation.

Several studies have shown that exercising improves cognition better than brain training games and activities. Alcohol does impact cognition if it is binge drinking, or you exceed 2+ drinks/day. Though it does take years of drinking for it to be visible.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#76

Post by kombine »

cdrini wrote: post #37
kombine wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a lot of fights about this with my girlfriend. We both work in academia and regularly go to the gym, but she insists to have a drink every now and then, which she says helps her take an edge off work stress. She also scolds me some times when I want to go to bed before 10pm, saying this is too restrictive and less fun. We ended up breaking up last week - not exclusively because of this, but these incompatibi…

Sorry to hear about your break up, hope you're doing ok.

Thanks, we are both doing fine! I've had really good sleep since then actually.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#77

Post by mp05 »

evilduck wrote: post #42
mp05 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful, you'll get scorn from those who think you should be spending that time doing leetcode. How could you be any good at your job when you're flexing and sweating all the time?

Grit is grit. If you can do one you can probably do the other.

I'm doing wavelet transforms while riding the bike trainer, what did you do with your morning??!

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#78

Post by zackmorris »

ssl-3 wrote: post #60
maxilevi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no negative effect to doing so, why would you not?

There's all kinds of potential negative effects. 1. It generally comes at non-zero financial expense. 2. I might not know what I'm doing. 3. I might get hurt. 4. I might cause someone else to get hurt. Or, perhaps most-tortuously: 5. They're all going to laugh at me.

I know that feeling, I was nervous about the risks you listed when I was broke and started lifting around 2000/2001 anyway. Trust me, the expense of losing one's health due to inactivity is higher than any financial cost. I trained intuitively, which mostly means going it alone at the school of hard knocks by trying everything and keeping what sticks. I got hurt countless times from ego lifting too much weight in my 20s, not going through the full range of motion, etc, but nobody else got hurt on my watch. But athletes pretty much always recover anyway. That's the important part - learning that proper exercise, nutrition and supplementation makes the body fungible, so there's really no limit to what it's capable of. Now I'm one of the biggest guys at the gym as a lifelong natty and nobody's laughed at me since I got the eye of the tiger about 3 months in.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#79

Post by smm11 »

mtalantikite wrote: post #63
pelagicAustral wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had a drink, or smoked for two months and my sleeping has improved so much it is crazy, absolutely crazy... I do need to get back to the gym, it is just so hard to muscle the strength to go when I'm not feeling particularly good about myself, which is dumb, since that is the reason I want to get back into it...

Maybe get yourself a couple kettlebells and do some kb swings at home? You can build a lot of baseline strength with a kb or two. Even just doing 100 single arm swings per day is enough at the beginning, and it takes no more than 15 minutes or so. Set yourself a goal of doing it consistently for a while and I'm sure you'll feel pretty confident walking into a gym again after 45 or 100 days. Rogue is actually doing a…

Kettlebells are half that price at Walmart. They work just as well.

Re: When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows

#80

Post by kayge »

ssl-3 wrote: post #60
maxilevi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no negative effect to doing so, why would you not?

There's all kinds of potential negative effects. 1. It generally comes at non-zero financial expense. 2. I might not know what I'm doing. 3. I might get hurt. 4. I might cause someone else to get hurt. Or, perhaps most-tortuously: 5. They're all going to laugh at me.

You can avoid all 5 almost* entirely and make amazing progress by doing bodyweight exercises at home, 2-3 times a week :) There are plenty of free guides out there where you can start at almost any level. E.g. can't do a pushup? put your knees down. Still can't? Do it at a head-up incline. Still can't? Push against a wall. Keep track and make progress until you can move to the next harder exercise. And always remember it's a marathon, not a sprint, so be patient with yourself.

* Can't make any promises. You might get hurt. You might need to pay for some kind of pull up system. But generally speaking: the sooner you stop looking for the perfect time/situation and just start, the easier it all becomes.

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