HEALTHIEST SPRING YET
Get up early and go for a walk or get in the garden: it’s scientifically proven to boost your mind and body, finds Peta Bee.
pring provides a natural turning point towards positivity. Winter may have left you weatherworn and weary, but the longer, brighter days now provide us with impetus for a health and fitness overhaul. It is the perfect time to make amends for months of overeating and underexercising. Follow these scientifically proven steps to spring-clean the body and mind.
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Sleep is known to have a restorative function on the brain and this is partly due to the process of deep cleaning that occurs during the non-rapid eye movement or slow-wave “deep sleep” phase. Research at Boston University, published in the journal Science, discovered that large levels of a liquid called cerebrospinal fluid wash through the brain in rhythmic waves, flushing out toxic, memory-impairing waste products during deep sleep.
Last year a team from Pennsylvania State University revealed how the excretion of toxic proteins during sleep is weaker in people at a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline. “Sleep is essential for our brains because it allows downtime to do housekeeping such as flushing out neurotoxins,” says Dr Neil Stanley, the independent sleep scientist and author of How to Sleep Well.
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The more exposure to natural daylight you can get in a day the better, as it triggers a cascade of hormonal responses that can enhance positivity. And there’s no better time than spring to make the most of morning light flooding in through your bedroom windows. But how much earlier do you need to get up to reap the benefits?
It is known that about 340 genes influence our body clocks and, using data from 840,000 UK Biobank participants as well as from a DNA testing company, researchers at Harvard and the University of Colorado Boulder set out to discover how big, or small, a change in sleep shift patterns is required to improve mental health. Their results, published last year in JAMA Psychiatry, showed that on average the “sleep midpoint” for participants was 3am, which meant they mostly went to bed about 11pm and got up at 6am. But by shifting their sleep midpoint so that they went to bed an hour earlier and got up an hour earlier than usual while still getting their seven-hour total, they dropped their risk of depression by 23%. Shift it by two hours and the effect was even stronger, reducing risk of depression by up to 40%.
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Beetroot has a reputation for providing a rich supply of nitrates, compounds found in the vegetable that are converted by the body to nitrite, which influences how the mitochondria, the energy-producing powerhouses of our cells, use oxygen more efficiently. While beetroot shots are a concentrated source of nitrates, leaves such as rocket and baby beet leaves, as well as basil, spring greens and Swiss chard, are excellent suppliers too.
Plenty of studies show that a diet packed with nitrates helps to boost blood flow and cardiovascular health and also enhances exercise performance, increasing stamina by up to 16%. Emerging research at the University of Exeter suggests even greater benefits. Anni Vanhatalo, professor of human physiology, has shown that nitrates have a positive impact on the oral microbiome, the hundreds of species of bacteria and other organisms that colonise our mouths, reducing risk of disease and inflammation. She is investigating how diets high in nitrates might “stimulate the oral microbiome in ways that could prevent or delay cognitive decline in older age”.
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Sitting for too long every day does little to boost brain health, whereas exercise can bring considerable benefits to the brain’s white matter, the intricate wiring system that connects our brain cells and enables us to remember things clearly. The best physical activity as far as renovating this wiring is brisk walking, according to the authors of a study published last year.
Agnieszka Burzynska, a neuroscientist and assistant professor in human development and family studies at Colorado State University, and her colleagues conducted MRI scans on the brains of 250 healthy but sedentary people in their 60s and older before dividing them into activity groups for three sessions a week. One group started line-dancing lessons; another began a stretching programme; and a third group did supervised brisk walking – a pace that means you are unable to chat easily – for 40 minutes. After six months all were much fitter and displayed evidence of renewed white matter in their brains, with damaging tissue lesions shrinking and important nerve fibres appearing bigger and healthier than those of a control group that hadn’t exercised. However, the biggest improvements were seen in the walkers, who also had the best scores in a series of cognitive tests.
Burzynska says it proves that the brain’s white matter remains plastic and open to improvement as we age, and the study provides “a strong case” that walking may be an intervention that can slow down white matter deterioration associated with age-related cognitive decline.
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Digging vigorously in the garden once a week was hailed as a remedy for warding off chronic muscle, joint and back pain among the over-50s by researchers at Portsmouth University reporting in the journal PLOS One.
Dr Nils Niederstrasser, senior lecturer in psychology and lead author, says that any activity helps to reduce the chances of suffering pain, but over time only high levels of physical activity, including digging, at least once a week appear to lower the risk of developing musculoskeletal pain. “Activity needs to not only be vigorous, it needs to be done at least once a week,” he says.
Niederstrasser’s findings coincided with the publication of a study from Japan that showed that half an hour of heavy gardening each week could help to reduce the risk of dying from any cause by as much as a fifth. It’s not just your body that benefits from being in the garden. Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University discovered that gardening improves body image, with gardeners having higher levels of body appreciation compared with a group of 81 non-gardeners.