It’s been a while since we’ve had a research roundup post, so why not start off the week with a healthy dose of the latest science on health and fitness? Here are three snippets to check out:
- I begin with my favorite: strong thighs correlate with strong brain. You can read in this substack about a female twin study, done over 10 years, suggesting that big muscle exercise creates pattern of release of chemical messengers to promote “muscle-brain talk”. Not literally, of course; for the real details, look at the study here.
2. More research on group (vs solo) exercise is offering a new term “social energetics” to characterize increased performance of athletes working out in groups. Here’s an example from this article in Outdoor Magazine:
[The researchers] put Oxford’s rowers through a hard workout on a rowing machine, testing their pain threshold before and after. As expected, exercise boosted pain threshold, presumably thanks to the pain-blocking effect of endorphins. But when the rowers repeated exactly the same workout alongside their teammates rather than alone in the room, their pain threshold increased twice as much. There was something about the act of communal exercise that altered the brain’s perception of discomfort.
The original “rower’s high” study in 2009 assumed that these signals were mediated by endorphins, the body’s internal version of opioids. Cohen now thinks endocannabinoids, the body’s internal cannabis, are also involved. And there may well be other mechanisms. A recent stream of research, for example, suggests that the most famous social bonding hormone of all, oxytocin, is released during exercise and is responsible for at least some of exercise’s mental health benefits.
3. In this Facebook reel, some guy (Robert Lufkin, M.D; we’ve never met) posted about this recent study out in the British Medical Journal finding that more varied exercise results in even more lowered mortality risk than doing the same types of exercise habitually (although doing the same activity all the time is still fine and results in lowered mortality risk over not doing that activity). Here’s the lowdown from the article:
What is already known on this topic
- Total physical activity levels have consistently been associated with lower mortality in a non-linear dose-response relation, but evidence for individual physical activities is limited
- Previous studies have suggested that different types of physical activity may have distinct physiological effects
- Whether long term engagement in multiple physical activities has additional benefits beyond total physical activity levels is unclear
What this study adds
- Most individual physical activities were associated with lower mortality in a non-linear manner
- The variety of physical activity was associated with lower mortality, independent of total physical activity levels
How this study might affect research, practice, or policy
- The findings support the notion that promoting engagement in a diverse range of physical activity types, alongside increasing total physical activity levels, may help reduce the risk of premature death
I put in bold the bits that might be more interesting and the novel results. Not that I need an excuse to try out some new activity– I love me some novelty– but now I have medical reasons to do so. And what is next on my list?
Bungee fitness class! Doesn’t this look like fun? There aren’t classes near me, but maybe it’s worth a day trip to try one out. All in the name of science and health, of course.
Until next time, this is your research roundup reporter, signing off…
