While you may be tempted to throw water on your face or down a few cups of coffee, a little exercise can really work wonders.
A good night’s sleep is essential for a healthy lifestyle. Adults are generally recommended to sleep between seven and nine hours per night. Nevertheless, recent research shows that as many as 40 percent of the world’s population does not get enough sleep. A long-term deficiency can lead to serious health problems such as cardiovascular disease, obesity and depression. But it also has an influence in the short term. It can make you less able to pay attention, judge and control your emotions. But, you can do something. Because research now shows that your thinking skills improve when you cycle for 20 minutes.
First experiment
The study included two experiments, each with 12 participants (24 people in total). The first analyzed how partial sleep deprivation affects thinking performance. The participants were allowed to sleep only five hours per night for three days. Every morning they were given seven tasks that they had to perform both at rest and while cycling. In addition, they had to rate how sleepy they were and how they felt before doing the tasks. The results show that too little sleep had a different effect on everyone, perhaps because some people are more resistant to fatigue than others. Despite that, moderate exercise improved results on all tasks, regardless of how much sleep a person had.
Second experiment
In the second experiment, participants stayed awake all night and were then placed in an environment with little oxygen. But remarkably, exercise still improved thinking performance.
20 minutes cycling
All in all, the researchers concluded that all participants in both experiments showed better thinking performance after 20 minutes of cycling. And that is quite surprising. “Although we have known for some time that exercise is important for both our physical and mental health, we did not yet know whether short sessions of moderate exercise improve our thinking skills after a bad night’s sleep,” says researcher Joe Costello in conversation with Scientias.nl. “This study is a pioneer in this field and gives rise to further research that could not only be fascinating but also of great importance.”
Boost
It seems that 20 minutes of cycling actually gives your brain a boost after a bad night’s sleep. The findings therefore provide more insight into how exercise is related to certain stress factors. One reason why exercise can improve thinking performance even when a person doesn’t get enough sleep or is low on oxygen is because in this case there is more blood flow to the brain. Changes in the amount of brain hormones and other physical reactions may also play a role. “This reinforces the idea that exercise is not only good for the body but also for the brain, acting as a kind of medicine,” Costello said.
Prefrontale cortex
The findings also suggest that cognitive performance is not exclusively dependent on the prefrontal cortex (a specific part of the brain), even though this area is crucial for performing tasks. “The prefrontal cortex is very sensitive to stress,” explains co-author Juan Ignacio Badariotti. “It is responsible for regulating our thoughts, actions and emotions, and is known as the most important part of the brain for executive functions. But what we have discovered suggests that the processes underlying thinking ability may not be limited to just this area. Instead, it appears to be a result of several processes working together across various parts of the brain.”
Moderate effort
In short, if you wake up tired in the morning, it can help to go for a bike ride. But it is important not to waste too much energy. “We deliberately chose a moderate intensity exercise (not too heavy) and a duration of 20 minutes,” Costello explains. “If the exercise had been longer or more intense, it could have had the opposite effect and even caused stress. Then we might not have seen the same results as we do now.”
Despite that, the study sheds light on the benefits of exercise for our brain. “If you don’t sleep at all one night, this is detrimental to how well you can perform things. But interestingly, those same functions improve once you exercise moderately intensively,” Costello concludes. According to the researchers, more research is needed to understand which biological mechanisms are exactly responsible for thinking ability. If they discover this, it could help people who struggle with interrupted sleep or low oxygen levels, such as mountain climbers and skiers, as well as parents of young children and people who work shifts.
2023-12-15 07:30:04
#sleep #quick #20minute #fix #feel #rested
