Researchers find cycling better for boosting cognitive function than electrical muscle stimulation

Presumably because it's:

a) harder to patent, brand, package - and thus create large potential gravy gradients (which in turn attract interest and more moolah).

b) Most people apparently have an aversion to most exercise.  So that would be "change!" for anyone interested in promoting it. That's why despite lots of advertising campaigns and even money put in people appear to be doing less. *

Luckily some places have found that there is a way to get more of this - provide for active travel and (gently) discourage driving.  This increases the amount of "incidental exercise" - perhaps not by very much but it does.  Cycling is particularly good as it's "easier than walking" BUT the intensity of exercise is easy to vary - indeed continuously variable - just go faster.  And people who have problems walking can join in also!

* Of course there are lots of reasons.  We live in a "driveogenic environment" and "work" is increasingly a sedentary activity.  As indeed "socialising" and "shopping" can be via our devices.

mdavidford wrote:

Quote:

If we figure out exactly what it is that causes cardiovascular exercise to improve cognitive performance then we can potentially replicate this and remove the need to do moderate-intensity exercise.

Because, of course, cognitive benefits aside, doing exercise is a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs.

Perhaps if you'd been doing moderate excercise while reading the article you'd have not have missed this phrase that precedes your quote:
"Not everyone is able to reap the benefits of physical activity — like faster reaction times — because of injury or disability. "

Not entirely convinced that was there when I read it.

But in any case

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The new study asked 24 young, healthy male participants to complete cognitive tasks

mdavidford wrote:

Not entirely convinced that was there when I read it.

But in any case

Quote:

The new study asked 24 young, healthy male participants to complete cognitive tasks

That's standard research methodology for virtually all early phase, small scale medical trials. They want to limit potential variables as much as possible, so don't want any pre-existing medical conditions, and for trials where there's a risk of an adverse reaction, they want them to start off as healthy as possible so they will (hopefully) have more resilience to anything that goes wrong. They prefer men because their hormone levels are typically more steady.

The former makes sense for early trials, but the latter is a source of contention that virtually all medical treatments have been honed based on data collected from studies on men. 

If you had only people capable of cycling to moderate intensity in the cycling group, and only people who are not capable of cycling to moderate intensity in the non-cycling group - how do you know if the difference in observed results are due to the different actions during the trial, and not the inevitable differences in lifestyle the rest of the time?

FionaJJ wrote:

That's standard research methodology for virtually all early phase, small scale medical trials.

Right, but it means that it's a bit of a leap for them, at this point, to then claim / speculate that they'll be able to apply this to people who are not young, fit and healthy (or indeed, male). Whatever's going on with this group may not work the same way in others.

But then, sadly, I guess your press release doesn't get so much attention when you just say "we found this thing - it's interesting, but we don't really know what it means yet - we need to do some more work on it".

mdavidford wrote:

FionaJJ wrote:

That's standard research methodology for virtually all early phase, small scale medical trials.

Right, but it means that it's a bit of a leap for them, at this point, to then claim / speculate that they'll be able to apply this to people who are not young, fit and healthy (or indeed, male). Whatever's going on with this group may not work the same way in others.

But then, sadly, I guess your press release doesn't get so much attention when you just say "we found this thing - it's interesting, but we don't really know what it means yet - we need to do some more work on it".

Seems like a reasonable assumption to me as most things apply similarly to both men and women and where there are differences, it's usually in the size of the response. Obviously there are some medicines/behaviours which only benefit men or women, but they're in the minority - I don't see why the response to exercise would be much different between men and women.

I think it's safe to say that if moderate exercise improves cognitive function for men then it will improve it for women. How drugs are absorbed, extreted, and interact with everything else going on in the body is more complicated. But so long as the regulator doesn't require it, then drug companies won't bother.

I'm not saying it is super-rigorous work and can be extrapolated to eveyrone. I'm saying that you can't claim they are advocating everyone can avoid the chore of exercise because they used fit young people as a control group against a technology they say they hope will benefit people not able to do exercise.

They say themselves they don't have enough data to leap to conclusions, but in this case chosing fit young men will be about limiting variability within the two groups. Regardless of exercise or gadgets, take a group of men in their twenties and their basic cognitive function will be more closely grouped than the same sized group of men if they were all in their sixties, or a group that ranged from twenties to sixties. They need to limit that intra group variability so any differences between the groups carry more weight.

I don't know why people are quite so quick to assume the worst of those doing the study. The findings, while admittedly limited, don't advocate for replacing cycling with a gadget. That might be bad news for people who are unable to cycle, but it is good news for those advocating the benefits of cycling.