Following a report that just one drink can make you dumb, Geezer now directs readers’ attention to claim that they would like to believe: intense cardio can make you smarter. Men’s Health is behind this one, and the magazine cites several studies to back it up. Here are two:
“One of the first studies to find that exercise
improves brain performance was a 1986 investigation of 30 women at
Purdue University. During the study, the women boosted their fitness
levels by 17 percent and simultaneously netted a 12 to 68 percent
improvement in their ability to process information and make sound
decisions.”
“In his lab at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Charles Hillman, Ph.D., tested the
hypothesis that cardio improves a person’s ability to process
information immediately after exercise. He recruited 20 college-age men
and women to work out at a moderate intensity on a treadmill for 30
minutes, on two separate occasions. He outfitted them with an
electroencephalo-graph–which looks like a 1920s leather football
helmet decorated with two dozen electrodes–allowing him to monitor
which brain functions exercise affected most. At one session,
the participants were asked to take a mental test before they
exercised; at the other, they took the test afterward. When they worked
out before the test, they showed increased activity in areas of the
brain that control attention and memory.”