Shazneen Mistry
Scientists have said that aerobic exercises can help in slowing the aging of people and that’s no secret, growing research by them is suggesting that swimming might provide a unique boost to the brain and improve brain health.
They have noticed that regular swimming can help to improve memory, cognitive functioning, mood and immune responses, as well as help in repairing the damages caused due to stress and create new neural connections in the brain. But scientists are still trying to unravel how and why swimming, in particular, produces these brain-enhancing effects.
Studies in people have found a strong relationship between the concentration of brain-derived neurotrophic factors circulating in the brain and an increase in the size of the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for learning and memory. Increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor have also been shown to sharpen cognitive performance and to help reduce depression and anxiety. Aerobic exercise also promotes the release of specific chemical messengers called neurotransmitters, that helps in reducing depression and anxiety and also improves mood.
What’s special about swimming?
Researchers don’t yet know what swimming’s secret sauce might be. But they’re getting closer to understanding it. Most of the research to understand how swimming affects the brain has been done in rats. Rats are a good lab model because of their genetic and anatomic similarity to humans.
Swimming has long been recognized for its cardiovascular benefits because swimming involves all of the major muscle groups, the heart which has to work hard to increases blood flow through the body. This leads to the creation of new blood vessels. The greater blood flow can also lead to the release of endorphins, the hormones that act as a natural pain reducer throughout the body. This surge brings about the sense of euphoria that often follows exercise.
One of the more enticing questions is how, specifically, swimming enhances short- and long-term memory. To pinpoint how long the beneficial effects may last, researchers trained and made the rats swim for 60 minutes daily for five days per week. The team then tested the rats’ memory by having them swim through a radial arm water maze containing six arms, including one with a hidden platform. The researchers suggested that this boost in cognitive function could provide a basis for using swimming as a way to repair learning and memory damage caused by neuropsychiatric diseases in humans.
Although the leap from studies in rats to humans is substantial, research in people is producing similar results that suggest a clear cognitive benefit from swimming across all ages. However, this study is limited in its research design, since participants were not randomized, and thus those who were swimmers before the study may have had an unfair edge.
Kids get a boost from swimming too
The brain-enhancing benefits from swimming appear to also boost learning in children. Researchers taught children age 6-12 the names of unfamiliar objects. Then they tested their accuracy at recognizing those words after doing three activities: coloring (resting activity), swimming (aerobic activity), and a CrossFit-like exercise (anaerobic activity) for three minutes.
It was found that children’s accuracy was much higher for words learned following swimming compared with coloring and CrossFit, which resulted in the same level of recall. This shows a clear cognitive benefit from swimming versus anaerobic exercise, though the study does not compare swimming with other aerobic exercises. These findings imply that swimming for even short periods of time is highly beneficial to young, developing brains.
Through this we can understand that for centuries, people have been in search of a youth fountain and maybe, swimming just might be the closest one can get to reduce the speed of aging.
