Daily Activity Levels & The Measurable Difference They Make To Brain Health

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Most studies into the difference that exercise makes to cognitive decline are retrospective, i.e. they look backwards in time, asking participants what their exercise habits were like in the past [so many] years, and tallying that against their cognitive health in the present.

Some studies are interventional, and those are most often 3, 6, or 12 months, depending on funding. In those cases, they make a hypothesis (e.g. this intervention will boost this measure of brain health) and then test it.

However, humans aren’t generally great at making short term decisions for long term gains. In other words: if it’s rainy out, or you’re a little pushed for time, you’re likely to take the car over walking regardless of what data point this adjusts in an overarching pattern that will affect your brain’s amyloid-β clean-up rates in 5–20 years time.

Nine days

The study we’re going to look at today was a 9-day observational study, using smartphone-based tracking with check-ins every 3½ hours, with participants reporting their physical activity as light, moderate, or intense (these terms were defined and exemplified, so that everyone involved was singing from the same songsheet in terms of what activities constitute what intensity).

The sample size was reasonable (n=204) and was generally heterogenous sample (i.e. varied in terms of sex, racial background, and fitness level) of New Yorkers aged 40–65.

So, the input variable was activity level, and the output variable was cognitive fitness.

As to how they measured the output, two brain games assessed:

  1. cognitive processing speed, and
  2. working memory (a proxy for executive function).

What they found:

  1. participants active within the last 3½ hours had faster processing speed, equivalent to being four years younger
  2. response times in the working memory (for: executive function) task reflected similar processing speed improvements, for participants active in the last 3½ hours

And, which is important to note,

❝This benefit was observed regardless of whether the activities they reported were higher intensity (e.g., running/jogging) or lower intensity (e.g., walking, chores).❞

~ Dr. Lizbeth Benson et al.

Source: Cognitive Health Benefits of Everyday Physical Activity in a Diverse Sample of Middle-Aged Adults

Practical take-away:

Move more often! At least every couple of hours (when not sleeping)!

The benefits will benefit you in the now, as well as down the line.

See also:

The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

and, for that matter:

Do You Love To Go To The Gym? No? Enjoy These “No-Exercise Exercises”!

Take care!

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  • All In Your Head (Which Is Where It’s Supposed To Be)

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    Today’s news is all about things above the neck, and mostly in the brain. From beating depression to beating cognitive decline, from mindfulness against pain to dentistry nightmares to avoid:

    Transcranial ultrasound stimulation

    Transcranial magnetic stimulation is one of those treatments that sounds like it’s out of a 1950s sci-fi novel, and yet, it actually works (it’s very well-evidenced against treatment-resistant depression, amongst other things). However, a weakness of it is that it’s difficult to target precisely, making modulation of most neurological disorders impossible. Using ultrasound instead of a magnetic field allows for much more finesse, with very promising initial results across a range of neurological disorders

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    This may cause more pain and damage, but at least it’s more expensive too…

    While socialized healthcare systems sometimes run into the problem of not wanting to spend money where it actually is needed, private healthcare systems have the opposite problem: there’s a profit incentive to upsell to more expensive treatments. Here’s how that’s played out in dentistry:

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    Mindfulness vs placebo, for pain

    It can be difficult with some “alternative therapies” to test against placebo, for example “and control group B will merely believe that they are being pierced with needles”, etc. However, in this case, mindfulness meditation was tested as an analgesic vs sham meditation (just deep breathing) and also vs placebo analgesic cream, vs distraction (listening to an audiobook). Mindfulness meditation beat all of the other things:

    Read in full: Mindfulness meditation outperforms placebo in reducing pain

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    Getting personal with AI doctors

    One of the common reasons that people reject AI doctors is the “lack of a human touch”. However, human and AI doctors may be meeting in the middle nowadays, as humans are pressed to see more patients in less time, and AI is trained to be more personal—not just a friendlier affect, but also, such things as remembering the patient’s previous encounters (again, something with which overworked human doctors sometimes struggle). This makes a big difference to patient satisfaction:

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    Combination brain therapy against cognitive decline

    This study found that out of various combinations trialled, the best intervention against cognitive decline was a combination of 1) cognitive remediation (therapeutic interventions designed to improve cognitive functioning, like puzzles and logic problems), and 2) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a form of non-invasive direct brain stimulation, similar to the magnetic or ultrasound methods we mentioned earlier today. Here’s how it worked:

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    Take care!

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  • Dioscorea Villosa: Hormones, Arthritis, & Skin

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    On A Wild Yam Chase?

    We recently came across a supplement blend that had wild yam extract as a minor ingredient. Our plucky (and usually very knowledgable) researcher had never heard of its use before, so she set about doing her thing. This is what she found…

    What health claims are made?

    Wild yam extract (Dioscorea villosa) is traditionally sold and used for:

    • Balancing hormones
    • Combating arthritis
    • Anti-aging effects for the skin

    Does it balance hormones?

    First, as a quick catch-up, we’ll drop a previous article of ours for your convenience:

    What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?

    We couldn’t find almost any studies into wild yam extract’s hormone-balancing effects, but we did find one study, and:

    ❝Symptom scores showed a minor effect of both placebo and active treatment on diurnal flushing number and severity and total non-flushing symptom scores, and on nocturnal sweating after placebo, but no statistical difference between placebo and active creams.

    This study suggests that short-term treatment with topical wild yam extract in women suffering from menopausal symptoms is free of side-effects, but appears to have little effect on menopausal symptoms❞

    …which is a very thorough, polite, sciencey way of saying “wow, this does so many different kinds of nothing”

    Source: Effects of wild yam extract on menopausal symptoms, lipids and sex hormones in healthy menopausal women

    On the one hand, this was a small study (n=23). On the other hand, it was also literally the only study we could find.

    Does it combat arthritis?

    Maybe! We again didn’t find much research into this but we did find two in vitro studies that suggests that diosgenin (which can be derived from wild yam extract) helps:

    And we also found a rodent study that found that wild yam extract specifically helped against “acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced pain“, and put that down to anti-inflammatory properties:

    Read: Bioassay-guided evaluation of Dioscorea villosa – an acute and subchronic toxicity, antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory approach

    So, none of these studies tell us much about whether it would be helpful for humans—with or without arthritis, and hopefully without “acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced pain”.

    However, they do suggest that it would be reasonable to test in humans next.

    You might prefer:

    Does it keep skin young?

    Again, research is thin on the ground, but we did find some! A study with wild-yam-derived diosgenin found that it didn’t make anything worse, and otherwise performed a similar role to vitamin A:

    Read: Novel effects of diosgenin on skin aging

    That was on rats with breast cancer though, so its applicability to healthy humans may be tenuous (while in contrast, simply getting vitamin A instead is a known deal).

    Summary

    • Does it balance hormones? It probably does little to nothing in this regard
    • Does it combat arthritis? It probably has anti-inflammatory effects, but we know of no studies in humans. There are much more well-established anti-inflammatories out there.
    • Does it keep the skin young? We know that it performs a role similar to vitamin A for rats with breast cancer, and didn’t make anything worse for them. That’s the extent of what we know.

    Where can I get some?

    In the unlikely event that the above research review has inspired you with an urge to buy wild yam extract, here is an example product for your convenience.

    Some final words…

    If you are surprised that we’re really not making any effort to persuade you of its merits, please know that (outside of the clearly-marked sponsor section, which helps us keep the lights on, so please do visit those) we have no interest in selling you anything. We’re genuinely just here to inform 🙂

    If you are wondering why we ran this article at all if the supplement has negligible merits, it’s because science is science, knowledge is knowledge, and knowing that something has negligible merit can be good knowledge to have!

    Also, running articles like this from time to time helps you to know that when we do sing the praises of something, it’s with good reason

    Take care!

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  • Study Tips for Exam Season?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers!

    Q: Any study tips as we approach exam season? A lot of the productivity stuff is based on working life, but I can’t be the only student!

    A: We’ve got you covered:

    • Be passionate about your subject! We know of no greater study tip than that.
    • Find a willing person and lecture them on your subject. When one teaches, two learn!
    • Your mileage may vary depending on your subject, but, find a way of studying that’s fun to you!
    • If you can get past papers, get as many as you can, and use those as your “last minute” studying in the week before your exam(s). This will prime you for answering exam-style questions (and leverage state-dependent memory). As a bonus, it’ll also help ease any anxiety, because by the time of your exam it’ll be “same old, same old”!

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  • Test For Whether You Will Be Able To Achieve The Splits

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    Some people stretch for years without being able to do the splits; others do it easily after a short while. Are there people for whom it is impossible, and is there a way to know in advance whether our efforts will be fruitful? Liv (of “LivInLeggings” fame) has the answer:

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  • Deskbound – by Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza

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    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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