TRAINING: BENEFICIAL OR HARMFUL FOR STUDIES?

TRAINING: BENEFICIAL OR HARMFUL FOR STUDIES?

<a href='https://www.freepik.es/foto-gratis/cerebro-humano_922835.htm'>Photo de tecnología creado por kjpargeter</a>

In this blog post I am going to talk about several beneficial effects that training can have on the neurological and how it can be translated into an improvement of our grades, our memory and, ultimately, an increase in our performance cognitive.

Let's start talking about memory, memory, like muscle, requires stimuli that encourage it to develop and carry out a series of changes that make it evolve. These stimuli, when studying, enter through the eyes to the visual cortex in a manner parallel to that a bicep curl activates our musculature. For progress to occur, both in memory and in muscle, we need the stimulus to be sufficient to induce changes. An insufficient stimulus, say, remains in the short-term memory and is discarded at approximately 30 seconds as it would happen in the muscle before a stimulus of low intensity and frequency.

A neurotrophin is the "brain anabolic", the "growth hormone" at the neuronal level. They are the mediators that, like testosterone or GH in the muscle, allow our brain to "progress". And the best of all! These hormones are activated through exercise so we already have an answer to our question.

In the review conducted by Dr. Gómez Pinilla, reference in the study of BDNF, it is noted that exercise increases BDNF levels and that combined with a diet high in omega-3 is able to improve neuronal plasticity and cognitive ability .


Effects of aerobic exercise:

More intense stimuli in training could lead to a greater increase in BDNF.

Effects of anaerobic exercise:

Regarding anaerobic training, there is not as much published evidence as with aerobic training. Even so, you can find some publications that indicate that in anaerobic training there would be benefits similar to those found in aerobic training.

Therefore we are left with this phrase that in my opinion can be good advice for all students:

"If we want to improve our memory capacity (for example, when studying an exam), it would be optimal to do the training at the end of the day once we have finished studying".

You know! There are no excuses for not training in exam time!