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Friday, August 31, 2012

What Happens to Our Brains During Exercise (and Why it Makes Us Happier)

All the credit for todays post goes out to lifehacker and Leo Widrich at Buffer (Thanks you guys, love your work!).  This is some Good stuff, sorry its so wordy!  There's a picture in there too to help with the words....


Most of us are aware of what happens to the body when we exercise. We build more muscle or more stamina. We feel how daily activities like climbing stairs becomes easier if we exercise regularly. When it comes to our brain and mood though, the connection isn't so clear. Leo Widrich, co-founder of social media sharing app Buffer, set out to uncover the connection between feeling happy and exercising regularly.

What triggers happiness in our brain when we exercise?


"Yes, yes, I know all about it, that's the thing with the endorphins, that makes you feel good and why we should exercise and stuff, right?" is what I can hear myself say to someone bringing this up. I would pick up things here and there, yet really digging into the connection of exercise and how it effects us has never been something I've done. The line around our "endorphins are released" is more something I throw around to sound smart, without really knowing what it means.

Here is what actually happens:

If you start exercising, your brain recognizes this as a moment of stress. As your heart pressure increases, the brain thinks you are either fighting the enemy or fleeing from it. To protect yourself and your brain from stress, you release a protein called BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). This BDNF has a protective and also reparative element to your memory neurons and acts as a reset switch. That's why we often feel so at ease and like things are clear after exercising.

At the same time, endorphins, another chemical to fight stress, are released in your brain. Your endorphins main purpose are this, writes researcher MK McGovern:

What Happens to Our Brains During Exercise (and Why it Makes Us Happier)"These endorphins tend to minimize the discomfort of exercise, block the feeling of pain, and are even associated with a feeling of euphoria."

There is a lot going on inside our brain and it is oftentimes a lot more active than when we are just sitting down or actually concentrating mentally:




So, BDNF and endorphins are the reasons exercise makes us feel so good. The somewhat scary part is that they have a very similar and addictive behavior like morphine, heroin, or nicotine. The only difference? Well, it's actually good for us.

Don't do more, but focus on when


Now here is where it all gets interesting. We know the basic foundations of why exercising makes us happy and what happens inside our brain cells. The most important part to uncover now is, of how we can trigger this in an optimal and longer lasting way?

A recent study from Penn State shed some light on the matter and the results are more than surprising. They found that to be more productive and happier on a given work day, it doesn't matter so much, if you work-out regularly, that you haven't worked out on that particular day:

"Those who had exercised during the preceding month but not on the day of testing generally did better on the memory test than those who had been sedentary, but did not perform nearly as well as those who had worked out that morning."

New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Reynolds wrote a whole book about the subject matter called The First 20 Minutes. To get the highest level of happiness and benefits for health, the key is not to become a professional athlete. On the contrary, a much smaller amount is needed to reach the level where happiness and productivity in every day life peaks:

"The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits. You get prolonged life, reduced disease risk - all of those things come in in the first 20 minutes of being active."

So really, you can relax and don't have to be on the lookout for the next killer work out. All you have to do is get a focused 20 minutes in to get the full happiness boost every day:

"On exercise days, people's mood significantly improved after exercising. Mood stayed about the same on days they didn't, with the exception of people's sense of calm which deteriorated."(University of Bristol)

Make it a habit


Starting to exercise regularly or even daily is still easier said than done. At end of the day, there is quite a lot of focus required to get into the habit of exercising daily. The most important part to note is that exercise is a keystone habit. This means that daily exercise can pave the way not only for happiness, but also growth in all other areas of your life.

In a recent post from my colleague Joel, he wrote about the power of daily exercise for his every day life. Coincidentally, he follows the above rules very accurately and exercises daily before doing anything else. He writes:

"By 9:30am, I've done an hour of coding on the most important task I have right now on Buffer, I've been to the gym and had a great session, and I've done 30 minutes of emails. It's only 9:30am and I've already succeeded, and I feel fantastic."

I've spoken lots to Joel about his habit of exercising and here are some of the most important things to do in order to set yourself up for success and make your daily exercise fun:

  • Put your gym clothes right over your alarm clock or phone when you go to bed: This technique sounds rather simple, but has been one of the most powerful ones. If you put everything the way you want it for the gym before you go to sleep and put your alarm under your gym clothes, you will have a much easier time to convince yourself to put your gym clothes on.
  • Track your exercises and log them at the same time after every exercise: When you try to exercise regularly, the key is to make it a habit. One way to achieve this is to create a so called "reward", that will remind you of the good feelings you get from exercising. In our big list of top web apps, we have a full section on fitness apps that might be handy. Try out Fitocracy or RunKeeper to log your work outs. Try to have a very clear logging process in place. Log your work out just before you go into the shower or exactly when you walk out of the gym.
  • Think about starting small and then start even smaller: Here is a little secret. When I first started exercising, I did it with 5 minutes per day, 3 times a week. Can you imagine that? 5 minutes of timed exercise, 3 times a week? That's nothing you might be thinking. And you are right, because the task is so easy and anyone can succeed with it, you can really start to make a habit out of it. Try no more than 5 or 10 minutes if you are getting started.

The highest level of happiness happens at the beginning


As a quick last fact, exercise, the increase of the BDNF proteins in your brain acts as a mood enhancer. The effects are similar to drug addiction one study found. So when you start exercising, the feeling of euphoria is the highest:

"The release of endorphins has an addictive effect, and more exercise is needed to achieve the same level of euphoria over time." (McGovern)

So, if you have never exercised before (or not for a long time), your happiness gains will be the highest if you start now.

Leo Widrich is the co-founder of Buffer, a smarter way to share on Twitter and Facebook. Leo writes more posts on efficiency and customer happiness over on the Buffer blog. Hit him up on Twitter @LeoWid anytime; he is a super nice guy.

Image remixed from Julien Tromeur (Shutterstock).

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

How to Flatten Your Wallet (no not by giving me all your money)

In this age of membership cards, reward cards, and anything else that needs a barcode, if your like me you hate having to keep up with all those damn cards.  We men hate when our wallet looks like Costanza's, and we all know what happens then...  So along comes a not so new iPhone/Android app (trumpets sound), Key Ring.  It rediculously simple, you take all those cards, scan them in, most even have a lot of the company data preloaded, but whats even cooler, it doesn't even have to be a reward based card, your library card have a bar code, load it in manually.  Free you wallet of all that extra plastic.
Now I'm not getting any money from this, but this is one of those cool pieces of tech that I think everyone should know about.  The other cool thing is that the app will let you know if a company has an offer, like just know I checked and I can get a free cheese dip at On The Border, hey who doesn't like free cheese...especially in dip form.  So I hope you check it out, you can find it via tha app store just search for Key Ring or click on this link or here if your on android.  And you can follow the @keyringapp on twitter.

On a side note, week three of the new diet lifestyle, I'm down 8.5 pounds, and my blood sugar has been consistently in the 120's, down from the 200's.  :)

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life...

So, I'm working again, which is reeking havoc on the toddlers schedule, she hates getting to daycare too early b/c the kiddos have to all play in the gym till 8 and the big kids are scary.  So from past posts, sporadic as they were, I mentioned that I have type 2 diabetes.  Well, just got more good news with my latest lab work, I have low testosterone, a vitamin D deficiency, my uric acid is too high, and my cholestorol was bad.  Yippee, more meds!  So, in addition to all this, I met with a diabetes educator and got put on a 2000 calorie/day diet as well as limiting my self to 17 carb units a day (a unit is 15 grams), the weight loss program has me on an appetite suppressant (another pill) plus weekly b12 shots.  So in addition to tracking everything on paper, I'm going to try to keep up with some stuff here, I know its not tech, but I hope you'll all support me through this.  So day 1, starting weight 263 pounds, BMI 42, average blood sugar 190.

Speaking of blood sugar, I got a free new meter, which is nice, it logs it all and then you can upload it to your pc or you Mac, thats right they support Mac, awesomesauce!  So we'll see how it goes, the lancet that came with it is far less painful than the one that came with my accucheck, but I dont like loading a needle everytime.

Wish me luck, I have two beautiful ladies to take care of and I need to stick around.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

How secure is your password

This past week, this article flew by in a whir and was almost missed.  I'm a loyal macrumors reader, but sometimes I just breeze past the More MacRumors stories sidebar.  But this should have been bigger news.  Blizzard, producer of the worlds largest MMO, World of Warcraft, and owner of the Diablo and Starcraft franchise, so when they report that they've been hacked, its big news, well it is to me.  I try to be secure, so secure in fact that some of my passwords are 50 alpha-numeric characters long.  In addion to that, I use a program that I find invaluable, 1Password, it works for Windows and Mac and saves all your passwords and all you have to remember is 1 password (see what they did there).  It also has a password generator, and the really cool thing you can save your password list to your dropbox account and have access to it everywhere.  They also have and iOS app, which comes in handy if your passwords are too long to remember.  I think what scares me the most about the whole Blizzard thing, is that they offer a free app on Android and iOS, the Mobile Authenticator, which is very similar to the RSA security fobs most businesses use.  It generates a random number every 30 seconds or so, and if you have one tied to your account you cant login unless you know the code.  What's worse is WoW players (like me) get a lot of spam, and it all looks legit, they are trying hard to get your authenticator codes, to hack your account sell your stuff and use you as a gold farmer.  I know everyone hears this all the time, if you get an email from someone, whether you know them or not, DO NOT just start clicking on links all willy nilly.  I'm sure the surprised cat is cute, but do you really want to chance it?  And no, you did not do something unbeleiveable in a video on facebook or twitter, again DO NOT click on these links.  I will not fix your computer because you were stupid.  Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, even in real life as well as virtual, a free tablet is never a free tablet...

Lastly, want to know how quick your password can be cracked, check out this little doozey of a website, kinda cool.