2023-05-13 18:29:50
- “Green” exercise can magnify the benefits of your training. Photo: iStock
This is a translation made by The newspaper of the note Why an outdoor workout is better for you than indoors, original of The Washington Post.
If you want to clear your mind and improve your attention, walk in a park for 15 minutes.
Research suggests that exercising outdoors can be a simple way to magnify its benefits, not just for thinking, but also for health, happiness, fitness, and motivation; a timely message as spring temperatures rise, leaves bloom, days lengthen and nature invites us outside.
In particular, a new and small study on the neurological effects of “green exercise”—that is, physical activity carried out in nature—found that a short walk surrounded by greenery improves working memory and concentration substantially more than completing the same short walk indoors.
Meetings walking through the woods
“This all started with our walking meetings,” said Katherine Boere, a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of Victoria, who led the neurological study of exercise green. She and her neuroscientist colleagues walked and talked frequently, aware of how energizing movement can be.
Boere suspected that forest walks were more productive than staying in enclosed areas, but he wanted confirmation. She reviewed the research, which showed that walking (indoors or outdoors) generally increases cerebral blood flow and clears the mind.
But walks in many past studies lasted 30 minutes or more, while Boere’s peripatetic meetings lasted half that time.
Outdoor exercise vs indoor exercise
For the new study, Boere and his colleagues rounded up 30 college students, tested them for working memory and attention span, and on alternate days had them walk for about 15 minutes inside a building or outside on grass-covered paths. sheets, before repeating the cognitive tests.
By most measures, the outdoor walk easily outperformed the indoor version. The students focused better and responded faster, results that are consistent with scientific ideas about how nature affects our minds, Boere said. According to a widely accepted theory, he continued, the natural world encourages even the most nervous among us to relax, stemming the flood of inward musings about every pressing concern and allowing our agitated brains to settle down.
In this version, nature provides what scientists call “soft fascination,” Boere explained: it holds our attention without demanding constant intellectual processing. Our overloaded attention can be reset, and we can subsequently focus and reason more easily.
This process occurs in addition to the expected physiological effects that going for a walk has on thought, Boere noted, such as increased blood flow and oxygen to the brain. “That’s why,” she added, she and her co-authors titled their new study “Exercising is good for the brain, but exercising outdoors is potentially better.”
Nature can make difficult exercise seem easier
The effects can extend beyond brief improvements in concentration, according to other research, to increase motivation and make exercise seem less intimidating. In a study published last year from China; Young, inactive people with obesity who began walking in a park or gym every other day reported feeling significantly less stress and enjoying exercise more when they walked outdoors.
The same thing happened in a previous study of older men and women who told researchers where they used to exercise, mostly by walking, and then wore activity trackers for a week. Those who walked outdoors voluntarily exercised for about 30 minutes more during the week than people who walked indoors.
Even when exercise is strenuous, you can feel inexplicably easier and more enjoyable when your surroundings are comforting. In a 2017 study in Innsbruck, a group of healthy volunteers agreed to hike the alpine mountains above the city, pacing up and down for three hours.
On a separate day, they repeated the effort on gym treadmills set to emulate the incline of walking. The heart rate monitors showed that walking outside had objectively required more effort than hiking on the treadmill. The hikers’ heart rates had increased and stayed higher on the mountain, but they told the researchers that walking down the slope had seemed less tiring and left them with a greater feeling of happiness than hiking in the gym.
Avoid the concrete jungle
However, it is necessary to mix nature and exercise to create the best effect. Being outdoors alone may not be enough if the outdoors is surrounded by buildings and concrete.
In a revision In earlier studies published last year, the researchers found that exercising in outdoor built-up settings—which they defined as business districts—city centers, and other built-up areas with few trees or other natural features—tended to be less beneficial for health. mental health of people who do similar exercise in greener, unexplored environments, such as parks and forests.
The duration and intensity of exercise in nature also count. In the same review, people reported feeling significantly calmer after walking or light jogging for about 15 minutes in parks or similar settings, but less so when the exercise lasted 40 minutes or more, or was strenuous. One study cited in the review noted that a 4-mile run in the park helped calm women, but more than double that distance, around 8 miles, wasn’t nearly as comforting.
Overall, 15 minutes of outdoor exercise “appeared to be the most beneficial” for people’s mental health, said Claire Wicks, a senior research assistant at the University of Essex in England, who led the new review. Even less time could calm our nerves, she added. According to more recent research not included in the review, “as little as five minutes of outdoor exercise can be beneficial,” she said.
Even so, if the weather, schedules, lack of desire or other obstacles keep you indoors, don’t worry. Or rather, yes, worry, at least as far as possible. Whether indoors or outdoors, in green or gray spaces, lit by sunlight or fluorescent lamps, exercise is still good for us. “You may experience greater mental health benefits if you can be active outdoors in a natural setting,” Wicks noted. “But because physical activity is extremely important to our physical and mental health, no matter what you do or where you do it, just keep being active.”
Translated by José Silva
Related news
1684057837
#exercise #outdoors #indoors