12 Minutes of Exercise Improves Health

This summer we got a puppy. And the interesting thing about puppies is that they don’t really have a concept of time.

I could come in at the end of the day and the puppy is excited to see me, wagging her tail and weaving in between my legs for contact and comfort. The same reaction could happen if I’m working in another room for a bit and rejoin the puppy and family wherever they are. The puppy doesn’t distinguish between an 8 hour or a 20 minute absence.

Our kids are a little smarter than the dog, although sometimes I wonder? And they have a slightly better concept of time. But they will still ask to go outside and play with their friends minutes before we’re due to head out the door for a family function. Or after pajamas and brushing their teeth they’ll ask if we can start a movie.

But puppies and kids can be excused if they don’t know time or how long things should take. Adults however know what an hour is, how long things take and how to manage their day.

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When it comes to exercise a common challenge is making the time to be active. We might assume that for a health goal to be realized requires a certain amount of daily fitness to achieve it. Intuitively I would guess most people think they need to exercise an hour a day.

Now there’s nothing wrong with training an hour daily. And if you’re already in the habit than definitely keep going. But for those that aren’t that active and haven’t gotten started yet because they haven’t carved out those 60 minutes per day, a new study should give them hope.

The study was part of the Framingham Health Study and included over 400 participants. Most of the test subjects were in their 50s and mostly female. This is a well known study based out of Massachusets and started in the late 1940s. Since then the children, spouses and grandchildren have been included in the study.

What the researchers wanted to know was the effect of exercise on certain metabolites. A metabolite is a entity involved in or a by-product of metabolism.

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Participants of the study did brief bursts of exercise to the effect on certain markers of health. The exercise was 12 minutes on a stationary bike and the health markers included insulin resistance, oxidative stress, vascular reactivity, inflammation and longevity. When you consider how relevant diabetes, heart disease and ageing are to most adults we can appreciate the value of knowing how exercise impacts these markers.

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So what did they find?

Well they found that metabolites associated with poor health and disease went down after cycling for 12 minutes. For example, glutamate, a marker of insulin resistance dropped by 29%. And DMGV, or dimethylguanidino valeric acid , went down 18%. On the other hand a marker of lipoylsis, or fat burning, 1-methylnicotinamide , increased by 33%.

The researchers noted that variations in results were due to sex, BMI and the amount of exercise performed. After a 3 minute warm-up study participants continued cycling with gradual increments in load of 15 or 25 watts. Those cycling at higher power outputs saw more favourable results.

Life is busy. There are times when school, work, family and other committments make training hard to fit in. Hopefully research such as this will encourage us to do something, even if it’s only 12 minutes per day.

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Nayor, M., Shah, R. V., Miller, P. E., Blodgett, J. B., Tanguay, M., Pico, A. R., … & Pierce, K. A. (2020). Metabolic Architecture of Acute Exercise Response in Middle-Aged Adults in the Community. Circulation142(20), 1905-1924.

Ditch the Tunes During Training

I’m a big fan of productivity and efficiency. And that should appeal to all of us. If we can get a similar result with less effort or a better result with the same effort, than we should do this.

In the business world we’ve learned, in some cases the hard way, that multi-tasking doesn’t work. We can’t carry on a conversation with someone while replying to emails. We may miss part of what is being said to us or we make a typo or grammatical error in our reply.

When someone matters we should eliminate distractions and focus on what we’re doing.

For example, I can remember back in school and studying for exams. Some people would listen to music. This approach never worked for me as part of the brain is paying attention to the lyrics and melody. And I didn’t want to give up this fraction of my attention to anything other than preparing for the exam.

When what we’re doing doesn’t really matter we may be able to get away with doing two or more things at once. This might be something like folding laundry and watching a show. You can probably do both at the same time without too much difficulty.

So what about training?

Where do we draw the line in terms of multitasking or including a distraction in the training process?

With moderate intensity exercise listening to music has been known to lessen perceived exertion (1). The music serves as a distraction and helps the exercise feel less hard than it would normally.

Usually the type of exercise done in these studies is steady state aerobic exercise like riding a stationary bike. There’s not much to think about and you can even your close your eyes and go for it.

The same wouldn’t apply to high performance training. Imagine a highly technical sport performed at high speed. Pole vaulting comes to mind. When you think of how precise you need to be able to clear the bar successfully all of your focus needs to be on the task at hand.

Recently Liz Gleadle posted something similar on her IG. Liz is a two-time Olympian from Vancouver who competes in javelin. We connected at a winter camp in Santa Barbara a number of years ago.

Liz’s post was about how listening to music while training can become a distraction. See below for what she has to do say regarding music, focus and multi-tasking.

I’ve noticed something similar with my own training recently. I’m not suggesting my training is high performance but more that listening to music wasn’t helping as much on the hard training sets.

During of our sessions together I asked Canadian Marathon record holder Malindi Elmore if she listens to music when she trains. She didn’t have to think about the answer. She didn’t have to qualify it with ‘it depends’. The answer was a simple and straightforward ‘no’.

Going forward with your own training consider why it is you train? Is it for health? Is it to rehab an injury? Or is it to compete in a sport?

If your goal is sports performance than you should consider setting the music aside for the more intense and technical aspect of training. If you want to warm up with your music, as part of your cool down or on an active recovery day that’s probably alright. But when it comes times to perform, which you practice during training, than you should look to replicate the conditions and have no distractions.

Reference

  1. Potteiger, J. A., Schroeder, J. M., & Goff, K. L. (2000). Influence of music on ratings of perceived exertion during 20 minutes of moderate intensity exercise. Perceptual and motor skills91(3), 848-854.

Exercise and a Shake – Good for the Body and the Brain

It’s no surprise that exercise is good for the body. And more recently we’ve learned of the benefits of exercise on the brain.

New research indicates the effects are further improved when there is a nutritional shake included with the training.

A study out of the University of Illinois looked at the effects of exercise and nutrition on the body and the brain. The study ran 12 weeks and included 148 active Air Force servicemen.

The study participants were divided into two groups. Half of the 148 did the exercise program as well as a twice a day nutritional supplement. The nutritional supplement was a mixture of omega-3 (DHA), lutein, phospholipds, vitamins B and D and HMB. The control group took a caloric controlled placebo beverage lacking the nutrients listed above.

In terms of the exercise this included strength and high intensity intervals made up of aerobic challenges.

So what did they find?

Exercise is good for the body apparently. Serviceman got stronger, fitter, more powerful and more mobile. What was interesting is that mobility and stability improved the most, i.e. 22%, of all physical qualities measured.

The group that took the nutritional supplement saw enhanced improvements in their cognitive function. Compared to the placebo group there was increase in working memory (+ 9.0%), fluid intelligence reaction time (− 7.7%), and processing efficiency (+ 1.8%). The supplement group also lowered their resting rate more (− 2.4%) and and added more muscle i.e. lean muscle mass (+ 1.5%). 

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It would have been interesting to see what the improvements would have been had there been a group that only took the supplements and did not do the exercise. We know exercise improves circulation which facilitates digestion, assimilation, transport and uptake of nutrients. But to what degree?

As well, the nutritional shake had quite a few ingredients. Which ones conferred the most benefit? We’re well aware of the benefits of omega-3 on brain function. But what about taking vitamin B and D? And HMB is an interesting supplement that was more popular about 20 years ago. It seemed to work for some and not others.

Lastly, the shake was taken twice per day. What would the results be with one dose and the same daily amount of ingredients? Or three shakes?

Although there a number of questions yet to be answered it is interesting that the physical and the mental can improve so much more when exercise is accompanied by a nutritional intervention.

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So the take home message going forward to have a plan for both exercise and nutritional. Your body and your brain will thank you.

Zwilling, C. E., Strang, A., Anderson, E., Jurcsisn, J., Johnson, E., Das, T., … & Barbey, A. K. (2020). Enhanced physical and cognitive performance in active duty Airmen: evidence from a randomized multimodal physical fitness and nutritional intervention. Scientific reports10(1), 1-13.

Positive Effects of Exercise on Cancer

We all know someone that has had cancer. In our family my dad and sister are cancer survivors.

And although this disease is very close to all of us we often don’t know what to do when it comes to exercise and cancer. Should you exercise or not? Does it help or harm?

I’m not an oncologist and so don’t take these ramblings as medical advice. But I still keep an eye on the research and stay informed as more information on this topic becomes available.

A paper out of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden gives some promise for exercise with cancer.

The authors looked at over 100 studies, involving over one million adults and 13 different types of cancer.

What they found was that exercisers had better outcomes, related to their cancer, than those who didn’t exercise. It appeared that exercise helped prevent the onset of cancer. And it helped the body fight back more effectively against the cancer.

So how does this happen?

Well it appears there are particular immune cells, cytotoxic T cells, that are positively influenced by the effects of exercise. These immune cells, aka killer T cells, have enhanced function with individuals that exercise.

Representation of the role of T cells
Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/t-cells-meaning-373354

Researchers have transferred the T cells of mice that exercise, to non-exercising mice, and seen tumour reductions.

More specifically it appears that certain metabolites are produced during exercise that play a role. Lactate, in particular, seems to bolster T cell activity. When mice where given sodium L-lactate there was an increase in T cell activity and greater decrease in tumour growth.

While this all sounds promising there are a few things to keep in mind:

  • The papers reviewed and cited included adults with cancer. We might expect similar results with children but the research didn’t include younger people.
  • The results were based on 13 different types of cancer. This is about 10% of all known types of cancer. It is possible that different types of cancer would respond differently to exercise as an intervention.
  • The studies where T cells or lactate were transferred or injected to non-exercisers involved mice. Again, we must take a conservative stance that not every animal will respond in the same way to disease and treatment.
  • When we hear lactate we may assume high intensity exercise when this is produced. Make sure you ease into exercise and build a solid aerobic base before incorporating intense bouts or intervals.

The take home message here is that exercise is beneficial for those with cancer. If you have never exercised before make sure to talk to your doctor first before getting started. Start slowly and build a base. And if you have any questions or need some help make sure to reach out.

Reference

Rundqvist, H., Veliça, P., Barbieri, L., Gameiro, P. A., Bargiela, D., Gojkovic, M., … & Ule, J. (2020). Cytotoxic T-cells mediate exercise-induced reductions in tumor growth. eLife9, e59996.