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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

#91
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time, and it may be desirable to avoid things you find uncomfortable.

The time commitment is vastly over stated. It takes an hour at most and you can go twice a week, working different muscle groups. Your muscles need 3-4 days of rest especially as you increase intensity. So you can only do bicep workouts once a week for example. Even then, any exercise is better than none. You can even just start at home with adjustable dumbbells and go to the gym when you hit those limits..

If I did everything people said isn't a big time commitment, I'd have no time left!

Edit: A more direct response - I agree with you that it's not a big deal, especially if you have dumbbells etc at home. (I think it's worth it, and lift weights.) It's still a time commitment, and therefore opportunity cost. That is a downside, irt the parent comment. I think you'll find many weight lifters spend more than the amount of time you cited. (Especially if they don't have a home gym), and I suspect any benefits are proportional (not linearly) to time spent doing it.

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

#92
post #83
post #59

Clarification since a number of the comments are reading this as "strength training makes your brain stronger". This study looked at _motor_ neurons, not neurons in your brain. Motor neurons are the neurons between your spinal cord and muscle cells, responsible for transferring the signal from your brain to contract/relax your muscles. I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (t…

I have a unique related problem. My left leg calf muscle is almost an inch smaller than my right calf muscle. I just noticed it this year. Felt so weird. Why would there be imbalance in calf muscle growth to such an extreme degree. Then I tried to do a single leg calf raise on the left leg and couldn't do it. I still can't do it after 6-7 months. I must admit I am not training the left calf muscle at all, just the us…

I have the same thing, the PT is right. Activating your big toe kicks off a chain of biomechanics up to your hip muscles (glutes) and will correct your gait and muscles that are not firing if you work on it consciously. I still deal with it when I forget the problem went away and sit in my computer chair all day leaning on one side not using my other calf.

Awareness is key and conscious work will activate it over time.

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

#93
post #83
post #59

Clarification since a number of the comments are reading this as "strength training makes your brain stronger". This study looked at _motor_ neurons, not neurons in your brain. Motor neurons are the neurons between your spinal cord and muscle cells, responsible for transferring the signal from your brain to contract/relax your muscles. I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (t…

I have a unique related problem. My left leg calf muscle is almost an inch smaller than my right calf muscle. I just noticed it this year. Felt so weird. Why would there be imbalance in calf muscle growth to such an extreme degree. Then I tried to do a single leg calf raise on the left leg and couldn't do it. I still can't do it after 6-7 months. I must admit I am not training the left calf muscle at all, just the us…

Do you spend a lot of time driving an automatic transmission? After putting 150,000 miles on my car, I'm kind of surprised I don't have more asymmetry in my legs.

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

#94
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a unique related problem. My left leg calf muscle is almost an inch smaller than my right calf muscle. I just noticed it this year. Felt so weird. Why would there be imbalance in calf muscle growth to such an extreme degree. Then I tried to do a single leg calf raise on the left leg and couldn't do it. I still can't do it after 6-7 months. I must admit I am not training the left calf muscle at all, just the us…

Do you spend a lot of time driving an automatic transmission? After putting 150,000 miles on my car, I'm kind of surprised I don't have more asymmetry in my legs.

asymmetry is fine but not able to do a left calf raise is a problem. I do drive an automatic yes.

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

#95
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you spend a lot of time driving an automatic transmission? After putting 150,000 miles on my car, I'm kind of surprised I don't have more asymmetry in my legs.

asymmetry is fine but not able to do a left calf raise is a problem. I do drive an automatic yes.

More likely you favor one leg when exercising, which is common and needs to be adjusted for. Asymmetric atrophy creates a feedback loop which exacerbates the atrophy.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, however, the best sleep of my life was when I was doing Ashtanga yoga regular. It's very physical, but I think it also takes care of a lot of muscle tension - notably in the shoulders, hips, and hamstrings - that are an often unnoticed cause of sleep issues. Not only did I sleep better while doing Ashtanga, I felt better with less sleep. It was amazing. It's something I've struggled incorporating i…

Ashtanga means lot of things apart from Asana and Pranayama. How strict was your lifestyle?

Not strict at all.

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

#97
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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`

Also, a colon after `sleep` in place of the period

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

#98
post #59

Clarification since a number of the comments are reading this as "strength training makes your brain stronger". This study looked at _motor_ neurons, not neurons in your brain. Motor neurons are the neurons between your spinal cord and muscle cells, responsible for transferring the signal from your brain to contract/relax your muscles. I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (t…

Worth pointing out: we have some evidence that high-intensity interval training actually does make your brain stronger, through an unrelated mechanism.

HIIT exercise causes muscles to produce lactate, which crosses the blood–brain barrier and induces the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF is critical to grow and repair neurons, and we can upregulate it significantly by sprinting hard a few times a week. That's good news for those of us with only a few hours a week to work out!

Not sure if you get the same benefits from lifting? I haven't researched this in a while so my sources might be behind the cutting edge.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6246624/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6435829/

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

#99
post #59

Clarification since a number of the comments are reading this as "strength training makes your brain stronger". This study looked at _motor_ neurons, not neurons in your brain. Motor neurons are the neurons between your spinal cord and muscle cells, responsible for transferring the signal from your brain to contract/relax your muscles. I think it was already known that working out muscles increases the innervation (t…

Worth pointing out: we have some evidence that high-intensity interval training actually does make your brain stronger, through an unrelated mechanism. HIIT exercise causes muscles to produce lactate, which crosses the blood–brain barrier and induces the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF is critical to grow and repair neurons, and we can upregulate it significantly by sprinting hard a few times a…

Great points, and thank you for sharing references as well! I was later thinking that I should have also mentioned that "it likely is good for your brain, just not because of the processes in this study". Maybe if I exercised more I would've remembered! :D

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

#100

Muscles need neurons to control them, so it makes sense that some feedback loop would exist. I remember reading about similar feedback loops between muscle growth and bone density (as you get stronger, bones benefit from being resilient to higher loads). As I understand it, the kinetic chain goes nervous system -> muscles -> tendons -> bones. It would make sense for all of these to make each other stronger in some wa…

Sea squirts digest their own brain when they become stationary: https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2022/07/20/what-can-sea-squir...

Any parallels to sedentary human beings are strictly coincidental.
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