By Paul Burghardt, PhD

Here’s one for the notebook. People who exercise regularly obtain greater elevation in mood following a single exercise session compared to people who don’t exercise regularly. This was revealed in a recent study by Hoffman & Hoffman (2008) in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

What?! Who?!?! How?!?!?…. It just doesn’t seem fair. Isn’t exercise supposed to elevate mood for everyone!?!?

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, “There’s no point in starting an exercise program, you only get improvements in mood if you exercise regularly.” Easy there Debbie Downer, there are still plenty of reasons to increase your physical activity or start exercising.

Digression Alert!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Debbie Downer is a character from a Saturday Night Live skit. She could transform anything that anyone said into a completely depressing anecdote. Debbie was not just a ‘glass half empty’ type of person, she was a ‘dirty glass is a three-quarters empty and it dropped and broke on the floor’ type of person. Your can follow this link to check her out. If for no other reason than it is one of the rare occasions on SNL when the cast has a difficult time ‘keeping it together.’

Back to the Science!

To recap, we were talking about how it was unfair that people who exercise regularly experience a greater elevation in mood after a single session of exercise than people who don’t exercise.

There was a couple of interesting things about this study. First, this study looked at people who were, on average, in their early 40’s. It isn’t uncommon for these types of studies to look at college-age kids or people that are in the autumn of their lives. So this snap shot of the middle portion in life is pretty interesting.

Second, this study required people from each group to exercise at the same level of perceived exertion. Everyone performed a warm-up that felt very light, and then ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes at a pace that felt somewhat difficult. An important issue to note is that those who exercised regularly were likely working at a higher absolute intensity compared to people who were sedentary. For example, regular exercisers might warm up at a pace of 4 miles per hour, whereas the sedentary people may have warmed up at 2 miles per hour…but it felt the same to both groups.

This is the main idea behind perceived exertion. There are several tools, questionnaires really, available to measure how difficult exercise feels to an individual. A commonly used scale for exercise is the Borg-scale which measures 6-20. A perceived exertion of 6 would feel like the person was resting comfortably. A perceived exertion of 20 would be a scenario where the person would feel like they are working as hard as they possibly could; for example sprinting uphill. What is really cool about this scale is that you can often match the person’s subjective verbal rating of exertion to an objective measure of heart rate.

What do I mean? Basically you take their reported exertion score on the Borg-scale, let’s say 12, and multiply it by 10 to get the person’s heart rate; in this case 120 beats-per-minute. When researchers do that, they’re typically not that far off from the heart rate actually measured.

Now you might be thinking, “hey, Debbie has a point, if I don’t exercise regularly, then why start? I won’t get anything from it.” Well that’s not true. This study showed that people who exercise regularly obtained a greater enhancement of mood following a single bout of exercise compared to those who don’t exercise regularly. But, those who didn’t exercise regularly still experienced an improvement in mood following a single exercise session.

So you can be an ultra-marathoner, a regular exerciser, or a couch potato and still experience some elevation of your mood after a single session of exercise. The thing you need to realize is that you’ll feel even better if you can make exercise a normal part of your routine. However, is that improvement in mood enough motivation for sedentary people?

The authors of this article raise this very interesting point. Namely, that the elevation in mood experienced by sedentary individuals after a single exercise session may not be substantial enough to surpass that experienced by less healthy activities. To translate, you might get more of a temporary elevation in mood from sitting on the couch eating potato chips and watching TV than if you go out for a walk. That is to say, if you are just starting to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.

This is where it helps to have some foresight and look to the future. You will continually build on your past efforts, your previous investments so to speak. As you develop your physical reserve it pays out larger dividends. It’s very similar to compound interest. The more you save, the more you have available to earn interest on partially due to what you put in, and partially due to what is paid back into your account by your own investment.

An interesting parallel to the benefits of building up a ‘physical’ bank account is the ability to withdraw from what you have accrued. If we’ve built up sufficient savings in our account, for a rainy-day, we’ll be better able to handle the unexpected challenges that life inevitably will through our way. Just remember, it takes some time to build a big enough bank account that you can take vacation for a month.

Hopefully, this information will give you some extra motivation to make it through the initial weeks when first starting an exercise program. I know it’s can be difficult to maintain in the beginning. However, it appears that if you can maintain it you will be rewarded. So take heart, it will get easier and ultimately make you feel better.

Written by Simon Evans, PhD

You probably played the Kevin Bacon game at some point in your life. Someone names an actor and you have to connect that actor back to Kevin Bacon through other actors who have worked together. The theory goes that we are all connected by six degrees of separation or less. I know someone who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows you.

Scientists are now looking at social networks in the world of health behavior. An old Russian proverb says “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are“. Also, personal development gurus claim that we are they average of the five people we hang out with the most. Now, reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, suggest this may be true. Two new studies show social networks have have significant influences on your risk of smoking and becoming obese.

Both studies followed a cohort of 12,067 people for 32 years as part of a huge effort called the Framingham Heart Study. In the obesity report, researchers found that a person has a 57% increased chance of becoming obese if one of their friends plumped up, a 40% chance if a sibling became obese, and a 37% increased chance if their spouse packed on the pounds.

In the smoking report, researchers found similar things. If your spouse kicked the habit, your odds of also kicking it increase to 67%. If your brother or sister quit, your odds of quitting rise to 45% and if a friend or co-worker quit you increase your chances to about 35%. Both of these studies controlled for factors like genetics and geographical area and found that the social networks still had a big effect.

As and aside, it’s interesting that your spouse has the biggest effect on your smoking behavior but the smallest influence on your waistline. Maybe it’s easier to sneak Ho-Ho’s from the snack drawer than to slip outside for coffin nail.

These associations may not be too surprising. The people we hang out with influence us all. But maybe you should take this a little more seriously if you are really wanting to change your health. If you really need to lose weight, quit smoking, increase your level of physical activity, or just spend less time watching Days of Our Lives, maybe you should find some people to hang with that have already had success in that area. Your chances of success are significantly restricted or improved by the folks you choose to spend the most time with. It may be difficult to distance yourself from some people. But then again, for others it may be just the excuse you’re looking for. As Jim Rohn says, “Some people, you can spend an hour with, but not a day. Some, you can spend a day with, but not a week. Some, you can spend a week with, but not a year.”

Take stock of your associations. Who is holding you back or propelling you forward?

References:

N Engl J Med (2008) 358:2249-58
N Engl J Med (2007) 357:370-9

By Simon J. Evans, PhD

If you talked to a person from the 1950s about all the modern marvels we have today they’d likely drool at the mouth. What? You don’t have to get up to change the TV channel? You can reheat leftovers in 1 minute? You can access any information at any time without leaving your house? No way!

Be Careful What You Ask For

But are our lives really getting any easier? Do all these time saving devices allow us to work less? Well, sort of. It certainly takes less work to do any specific task. When I was in graduate school writing my thesis, I thought of the poor slobs who had to do that without the aid of a computer or the internet. It must have taken people an entire day to go to the library to find references that I can now get in 10 minutes (God bless Google). The trade-off is that we are expected to do a lot more tasks as part of our normal day.

I was reading an interesting paper by Kelly Lambert recently that put some of this into perspective as it may relate to rates of depression in our modern society. Even with all our modern conveniences, high-end medical care and plethora of designer drugs, we have a huge mental health crisis. In fact, today mental health accounts for about 15% of disease burden worldwide. So why are we so unhappy?

The Thrill is in the Chase

Dr. Lambert argues that one factor in our overall societal unhappiness is the fact that we have it too easy, especially when it comes to feeding ourselves. Years gone by, dinner was more than a phone-call away. We actually had to track our food across the tundra and risk death by saber-toothed tigers or violent weather, in order to feed ourselves. Even if we were successful, we had to do it again the next day. As time drew on, we learned it was much easier to plant food in the ground. But this still required intensive labor and patience to bring our sowing efforts to the fruition of harvest.

All of this effort made the reward that much more enjoyable. The magnitude of the reward may actually depend on the magnitude of the effort required to achieve it. Meaning the harder we have to work for something, the more we enjoy it when we are successful. Since successfully finding food is a major factor in our survival, and we used to work very hard to stay fed, we had ample opportunity for regular high intensity rewards.

Appreciate What You Have

Today, however, we take for granted this major facet of our lives. Finding food does not require much effort at all, at least for most of the lucky people living in our society. Because we don’t need to put out effort, we don’t activate reward centers in our brains that our ancestors activated on a regular basis. We are essentially robbing ourselves of a major ‘happiness factor’, and this, argues Dr. Lambert, may be a problem. It may be that today’s lack of regular reward, due to lack of necessary effort, may be a factor in high rates of depression.

Whether or not she is right, I don’t know. She provides many examples and scientific studies to back up her argument and I thought it was a very interesting point worthy of a post. In fact, I have two cats that seem to agree with her. They are not content just eating their chow out of a dish. Instead, they enjoy scooping out one nugget at a time, batting it across the kitchen floor and then pouncing on their prey before eating it.

There’s not really much we can do about this unless you want to pull a Grizzly Adams and drop out of society, move to the hills and live off the land. Alternatively, you could do all your grocery shopping in full camouflage, crawling around on your belly through the frozen food aisle, stalking fish sticks. Or, maybe we can be more appreciative of what we have and not take all our modern conveniences for granted.

Reference: Lambert, K.G. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30 (2006) 497–510

By Paul R. Burghardt, PhD

A couple of recent articles in the journal Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, reported exercise as an effective adjunctive treatment for individuals suffering from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).

An Italian research group [Pilu et al, 2007] reported that individuals receiving antidepressant drugs along with cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise for eight months had decreased severity of depression compared to individuals receiving drugs but not exercise. A follow up analyses of the study determined that these individuals’ perception of their quality of life was also improved [Carta et al, 2008].

One of the interesting things about this study is that the researchers specifically chose women who were not responding to drug treatment. But when drug treatment was coupled with exercise they felt better! Pretty cool.

Lack of response to antidepressant drug treatment is a pretty sizeable problem. Many times individuals will be placed on different drugs, sometimes combinations of drugs, or varying doses of drug, until something seems to work. This can be unpleasant due to the side effects of antidepressant drugs, and relative amount of time it may take to find the appropriate drug and dose.

So the potential for exercise to increase the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs is an important finding that will hopefully be incorporated at the clinical level.

There are a couple of limitations to the study that the authors acknowledge. First, only a small number of participants were included. Generally, results from studies with larger numbers of participants have more statistical power. That means that researchers can more confidently attribute the results to the treatment, and not just random chance.

Second, the study only included women within in a specific age range (40-60 years old). The problem here is that the findings might not apply to a different demographic, say 18-25 year old males. On the positive side, it does suggest a benefit in that age group of women which is of interest since the rates of depression our about twice as high in women compared to men.

Third, they didn’t have the full set of control groups. Since the exercise sessions were conducted as a group, it may be that the social interaction among the participants during the exercise period is what caused the improvements in depressive symptoms. However, several prior studies also suggest anti-depressive effects of exercise. Still, the authors can’t say for sure that these effects were due to exercise, and not the social aspects of coming together to exercise in a group.

But if we step back and look at the big picture, it doesn’t really matter if it is “just” the exercise that reduces depressive symptoms. These women felt less depressed and that they had a better life! So if we feel the need to be scientifically cautious about these findings….. for now, get together with some other people to exercise.

Again, this was a small study that didn’t have the full array of scientific comparison groups, but this is another option for people suffering from depression who are not responsive to their medications. You may be wondering, did these women even need the drugs? Great question! We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

By Simon J. Evans, PhD

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted new studies directed at figuring out how long-time married couples can keep their romance alive. The answer was very simple. Do something different.

In one ten-week study, researchers worked with 53 couples. They instructed one third of them to spend 90 minutes per week doing familiar but enjoyable activities, like going to dinner or a movie. Researchers instructed another third to spend 90 minutes doing something exciting that they both enjoyed. This group spent time doing new things or things they didn’t do very often. The final group received no specific instructions.

After the study was over, researchers interviewed the couples to rate the quality of their relationships. The couples that spent time doing new things scored higher than the other two groups.

This may all be common sense. The more exciting stuff you do together, the stronger your relationship can get. But it’s interesting to look at the underlying brain science, because it has implications for your overall brain fitness as well.

The brain enjoys new things. New experiences crank up the brain’s reward system, driven largely by the ‘pleasure’ signal, dopamine. This same circuit is very active early in the intensely romantic part of a relationship. So, the theory goes that doing new, exciting stuff together, may literally help rekindle the brain circuits that drive romance.

We have been promoting interjecting variety into your daily routines, as good for your brain fitness, for some time now. Beyond variety improving your relationships, it also helps you make new brain connections that are good for all kinds of brain functions.

Your brain is a web of about 100 trillion connections between 100 billion neurons. When we do new things and learn new stuff, the level of connectivity increases, and not just in your pleasure circuits but in other parts of your brain as well.

Increasing the connectivity between neurons in parts of the brain responsible for memory, decision making and creative thinking, is very beneficial to your long-term brain fitness. The more connectivity you create, the more defenses you have against cognitive decline as you age.

Think of an old tree with many branches. This is sort of what neurons look like. The more you learn by experiencing new things, the bushier the neuron gets and the more connections it can make. In fact, neuroscientists use the term ‘arborization’, meaning a tree-like appearance, to define the amount of branches a neuron has.

The degree of arborization is an indicator of a neurons health, especially in brain regions associated with learning and memory. Although we can’t directly measure arborization in people, studies in rodents show that those exposed to new environments on a regular basis have more arborization in neurons involved in memory.

What we can do in people is use new brain scanning technology to determine the level of activity in brain regions, which has some correlation with the level of connectivity and neuronal arborization in animal studies.

These brain-scanning technologies show that people in long-term, high quality relationships have greater brain activity in their pleasure centers when shown a picture of their spouse. Researchers believe that interjecting new experiences into marriage is one thing that helps maintain these connections.

So this Valentine’s Day, instead of visiting your favorite restaurant, try a new one. Or get out and do something you both enjoy but don’t get the opportunity to do very often. It will be good for parts of your brain that will help keep your mind and your relationship young.

Written by Simon J. Evans, PhD

This is a short post on the incredible efforts of a local elementary school principal in my hometown. Nancy Tetens is the principal at my 5^th grader’s school (Symon’s Elementary) who is putting herself on the national stage in order to be a good example for her students.

Ms. Tetens, admittedly struggles with her weight, and felt like she wanted to show her students that adults can step up and take responsibility to improve their health. For the past couple of years Ms. Tetens has been doing just that. She is actively involved in promoting healthy behavior in her school and, more importantly, practicing what she preaches.

Recently, Ms. Tetens joined a national contest called, Clean Start Challenge, sponsored by Lifetime (the TV channel). And guess what…she was chosen as a finalist. Now she is ‘competing’ as one of only ten contestants over the next three months, to transform her life. You can check out Ms. Tetens story and cast your vote for her by clicking here.

More important than winning the prize is the chance to show hundreds of students how to turn their health around. It’s no surprise that kids today are not as healthy as they were decades ago. In fact, child obesity rates have risen dramatically over the past 30 years. In the 1970s the percentage of overweight kids was only a couple of percent. Today, nearly 1 in 5 fit into that category. On top of that, the center for disease control expects about one third of today’s kids to become diabetic.

There are all kinds of reasons for this, mostly boiling down to poor nutrition and less (way less) physical activity. One issue that has received serious national attention is the disappearance of daily P.E. in our schools.

Forced by current political policy and budget crunches, schools have reduced physical education programs in favor of more classroom instruction in order to meet the imposed national standards (some call it ‘no child left without a big behind’). Ironically, the more we learn about how the brain works the more we realize these kids would do better in school if they received more PE, not less.

Study after study has shown that kids boost their math, science and language performance with regular physical activity. But it goes way beyond grades. Physically active kids also have greater self-esteem and lower incidence of mood problems. Given that about 2 million American kids are on anti-depressants or anti-psychotics, this alone should be a strong reason to reintroduce more PE.

This is why Ms. Tetens’ story is such an inspiration. She is swimming against the tide to promote good health in kids. And the kids are taking notice. They are getting behind her and cheering her on all the way. This effort has the real potential to change lives. I strongly encourage you to take 30 seconds right now to cast your vote for Nancy to help promote this movement.