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Comment by madeuptempacct | Hacker News Reader

More interested in preventing this:

http://social-quotient.info/sq.4mg.com/brainpower.gif

Much less clear on how accomplish that.

Edit: To elaborate, I know exactly what I need to do to stay physically fit into old age and how to monitor my physical fitness - I know immediately when I get winded more from my regular run, my lift numbers drop, or I can't reach my toes.

The scary part is if I stop working out for more than 2 weeks, I see dramatic and rapid declines.

So how do I monitor my mental health? Is it possible to keep improving it? Do I do dual-n-back (studies inconclusive), do I learn a languge/to play piano, do I memorize 5 words a day?

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AFAIK nobody has a clear idea of which cognitive abilities degenerate due to normal ageing AND respond to exercise (other than N-Back helping short term memory, perhaps).

I'd start by looking at the standard components of cognition. Start with the sub-metrics in the Wechsler IQ test. See what specific mental skills you might want to maintain or improve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Sc...

Then design your own tests to assess each skill and your own mental exercises to see if you can strengthen your mental muscles. Positive feedback is your best guide, IMHO.

If you are interested, google "gwern dual n-back", there is a lot of info there. In the end, it seems a lot of people disagree with Jaeggi that n-back training carries over to iq, which is unfortunate. Still, cool post.

There is a lot of evidence that cognitive decline is greater in people with insulin resistance. Eating a relatively low sugar/carb diet that doesn't cause blood sugar to spike is probably a good idea.

Could you provide some references? I'd love to read more about it.

A better idea is to not develop insulin resistance in the first place and improve sensitivity.I eat 85% carb diet. My blood glucose barely moves up after eating a bunch of straight sugar, then goes back to fasting level after an hour and a half.

How do you improve sensitivity?

My only theory is that you need to

1) find foreign things to do to stimulate your brain in non known ways

2) possibly pleasurable/happy things (shared games/challenges with people you like or care about)

3) do them slowly~ enough to be aware of when you're reaching your limits and then keep at that level to not overload your system.

After I partially lost control of my left hand fingers, I could clearly sense when a movement was triggering jitter or finger locks. If I tried playing around that movement again, I could feel my brain clogging just a little, it's was almost a mind tickle. I have zero proof that it made things better, beside a belief in that challenging your brain/muscle system is how we learned skills when we were born. I think newborn have the structure to get a lot of reward out of sensing their body or the world. So I just try to re-apply that strategy.

it's on the fringe right now, but many nootropics are being found to have neuroprotective properties. If there were a drug I could take as a regular supplement that was better understood and prevented cognitive decline in old age, I'd take it.

Selegiline

Low carb and periodic water fasting (autophagy), and you should be set old age.

Add "occasional heavy lifting" to that list.

Baby boomers are deadset on this idea that cardio is the only kind of exercise that one should be doing.

I wonder who was running the PR for cardio and weightlifting in the 70-90's. For some reason weight lifting, and barbell training in particular, has a weird anti-intellectual connotation. Getting up to run for two hours at 4 am is the habit of a successful business executive, but spend a couple of hours a day in the gym and carry an excess of muscle mass and you're clearly dumb. It's very strange.

The Jim Fixx book "The Complete Book of Running" was a national best seller starting in 1977, then aerobics (studio exercise, a la Jane Fonda) hit, followed by Arthur Jones' Nautilus in 1986.

Free weights were considered "dangerous" for a long time. Frankly, most people who lifted back then were suspected of being homosexual.

If you take boomers as being born between 1946 and 1964, then the leading edge of the boomers were turning 30 about the time both Fixx's book and "Pumping Iron" hit the popular conscious. There is a lot more money in selling shoes to people than gym memberships, so saturation advertising is part of the 'why' as well.

> Baby boomers are deadset on this idea that cardio is the only kind of exercise that one should be doing.

Possibly, but we are, after-all, of a different era, when running (Jim Fixx) and aerobics were 'sold' as the right stuff.

(I'm a trailing edge boomer, and I lift.)

I keep seeing this on HackerNews - everyone seems to convinced that keto, intermittent fasting, and fasting are the new holy grail, I am unconvinced. I am convinced in the good old "enough sleep and cardio" theory though, since both have known working mechanisms (incread blood flow and debris clean up during sleep).

I don't know if you are purely talking about mental health. But I would add in some resistance training, for bone health amongst other things.

"enough sleep, cardio and some resistance exercise"

why are you unconvinced about fasting? have you tried researching and reading the scientific articles about fasting and the other topics.

If you're thinking in terms of "holy grail," you may be subjecting yourself to an "all or nothing" fallacy.

Generally, we're discovering how to lead our bodies through the healthy operating conditions which kept our ancestors alive as we navigate a modern world of high-tech capabilities, treatments and availability crossed with widespread lack of discipline and healthy habits.

Are there any studies on positive effects of fasting which control for caloric restriction / weight loss?

Sleep, and a mix of cardio and strength training would most closely replicate how our bodies evolved. Pre-civilization, humans would have needed both strength and endurance to make shelters and hunt. Both running, and lifting/moving heavy things would have been common.

Go read some of Dr. Jason Fung's articles on his blog. Not saying fasting is a panacea, but doing it regularly unlocks lots of different health benefits. https://idmprogram.com/blog/

I wonder where is the part about low-carb coming from?

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