Posted on 11/30/2023 9:23:22 AM PST by ConservativeMind
New research has explored how sleep, oxygen levels, and exercise affect our ability to perform mental tasks.
Consequences of chronic sleep deprivation include cardiovascular disease, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders, and depression. In the short term, a lack of sleep can reduce cognitive performance (CP).
A study has found cognitive performance improves during a bout of moderate intensity exercise, regardless of a person's sleep status or oxygen levels.
The study involved two experiments, each with 12 participants. The first looked at the impact of partial sleep deprivation on a person's cognitive performance, and the second examined the impact of total sleep deprivation and hypoxia. In both, all participants experienced an improvement in cognitive performance after a bout of 20 minutes of cycling.
In the first experiment, individuals were only allowed five hours of sleep a night, over three days.
The results showed the effects of three nights of partial sleep on executive functions were inconsistent. However, regardless of sleep status, moderate-intensity exercise improved performance across all the tasks.
In the second experiment, participants went an entire night without sleep and were then put in a hypoxic (low levels of oxygen) environment. Despite oxygen levels being lowered, exercise continued to improve cognitive performance.
"One potential hypothesis for why exercise improves cognitive performance is related to the increase in cerebral blood flow and oxygenation, however, our findings suggest that even when exercise is performed in an environment with low levels of oxygen, participants were still able to perform cognitive tasks better than when at rest in the same conditions."
The paper says explanations for why CP improves during exercise—even when a person is sleep deprived and low on oxygen—could be changes to the amount of brain regulating hormones, as well as a number of psychophysiological factors including cerebral blood flow, arousal and motivation.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
And how big was the grant to uncover this remarkable finding? But yes, as I think we all commonly now know, exercise is critical to health, verses being fat and sedentary.
So can 20 cups of coffee.........................😜🤦♂️
Only 20?
You piker!
Ironically, the last thing I’d want to do after “a bad night’s sleep” is exercise for twenty minutes.
I think Marvin Gaye had a song about what to do if you could not sleep....
Thanks, actually makes sense.
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