Without the need for great physical effort, squats can be very useful for our brain’s well-being.
“From an evolutionary perspective, we’ve developed really big brains, which are especially costly to maintain. They’re too big, too inefficient and they need a lot of energy to function, even at rest,” says Damian Bailey, director of the Institute for Health and Wellness Research at the University of South Wales in the UK.
“There is no curative treatment for neurodegeneration and exercise has emerged as a very, very powerful countermeasure.”Bailey added. But the big question, according to him, is: how much exercise should be done, what kind and how often.
“A lot of what we do in the lab is look at different aspects of exercise, in terms of type, intensity and duration, trying to find the sweet spot where we can see optimal adaptation,” says Bailey.
We know that with physical activity we can increase blood flow to the brain, which is crucial because it helps the brain recognize the useful chemicals it needs to grow, says the scientist.
This blood supply is also important because our hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory, tends to shrink as we age, receiving less blood as we do so.
Thanks to recent technological advances, scientists can understand how physical activity benefits the brain. They can measure blood flow to the brain through the neck and brain.
“And what our study is showing is that you don’t need to do breathtaking exercises or push yourself to the limit in the gym to benefit certain parts of the brain.”
“You can do some big movements that hardly feel like you’re exerting yourself and that really stimulate your brain.”
what exercises
“What we identified is that, especially for people who are not very fit or who cannot do heavy exercise, the squat It is a very useful option”.
That’s right: squatting down and standing up repeatedly has been described as a way to “intelligent” of exercise because “challenge the brain” and therefore benefits him.
The best thing about doing squats, explains the scientist, is that when you stand up, you are going against gravity; when it goes down, it works with gravity.
“What happens is that the blood flow to the brain goes up and down repeatedly as you move, and it’s this change in flow that can stimulate the vascular endothelium, the inner lining of blood vessels, to supply more blood to the brain.”
Do you need to do a lot of repetitions?
At the very least, Bailey recommends doing squats during three minutes, three times a week.
The expert says that measurements of how quickly blood enters the brain in volunteers have shown that the best results occur with a regimen of squats of 4 to 5 times a day, 3 to 4 times a week.
Bailey says these results are better than those presented by other exercisessuch as running, walking, or cycling on stationary devices for 30 to 40 minutes.
Also: you can kill two birds with one stone if, while exercising, read or do crosswords because, as Bailey explains, “we know that we can further improve the flow to the brain by providing the cognitive load.”
