While exercise can improve mental health, not everyone affects the brain equally. According to a study carried out by the University of Dartmouth, the different intensities with which exercises are performed are associated with different aspects of memory and mental health.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reportsfrom Nature, and gives important clues on how to extract the best effects from exercise.
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“Mental health and memory are fundamental to almost everything we do in our everyday lives,” says Jeremy Manning, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at the university. “Our study is trying to build a foundation for understanding how different intensities of physical exercise affect different aspects of mental and cognitive health.”
To take the survey, 113 Fitbit users were called up and asked to take a series of memory tests and then answer a few questions about their mental health and fitness data.
At first, the research expected the memory of more active individuals to perform better.
However, the results were more complex.
According to the study, those who exercised at low intensity performed better on some memory tasks, while those who exercised at high intensity did better on other memory tasks.
On the other hand, more intensely active participants also showed higher levels of stress, while people who exercised at lower intensities had lower rates of anxiety and depression.
Study method and differences
While other research has focused on the effect of exercise on memory, it has generally focused on relatively short periods of time, such as days or weeks.
Instead, the Dartmouth researchers chose to examine the effects over a longer period of time.
For this, data were collected such as steps taken daily, average heart rate, time exercising in different heart rate zones, among others, during a year.
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