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Pedal your way to happiness  YOU need only look at the physique of Bradley Wiggins to appreciate the potential effects of cycling on the body. But what about the mind? For as long as man has pushed a pedal, it’s a question that has challenged psychologists, neurologists and anyone who has wondered how, sometimes, riding a bike can induce what feels close to a state of meditation.Studies have shown that exercises, including cycling, make us smarter. Shutterstock Early
humans subsisted on plants Prof Yash
Pal THIS UNIVERSE
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Long-lived bats offer clues on diseases, aging Human link to climate change stronger than ever |
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Pedal your way to happiness YOU need only look at the physique of Bradley Wiggins to appreciate the potential effects of cycling on the body. But what about the mind? For as long as man has pushed a pedal, it’s a question that has challenged psychologists, neurologists and anyone who has wondered how, sometimes, riding a bike can induce what feels close to a state of meditation. I’m incapable of emptying my mind but there have been occasions on my bike when I realise I have no recollection of the preceding miles. Whether during solo pursuits along country lanes in spring, or noisy, dirty commutes, time can pass unnoticed in a blissful blur of rhythm and rolling. It’s not a new sensation. In 1896, at the height of the first cycling boom, a feature in the The New York Times said this about the activity: “It has the unique virtue of yielding a rate of speed as great as that of the horse, nearly as great as that attained by steam power, and yet it imposes upon the consciousness the fact that it is entirely self-propulsion.” The writer, credited only as “ANJ”, continues: “In the nature of the motion is another unique combination. With the great speed there are the subtle glide and sway of skating, something of the yacht’s rocking, a touch of the equestrian bounce, and a suggestion of flying. The effect of all this upon the mind is as wholesomely stimulating as is the exercise to the body.” Almost 120 years after these observations, and in the middle of a new cycling boom, what have we learnt about the nature and effects of this stimulation? Cycling can of course be miserable, but beyond its ability to more often make me feel emotionally as well as physically enriched, what could be happening inside my head? Several studies have shown that exercises including cycling make us smarter. Danish scientists who set out to measure the benefits of breakfast and lunch among children found diet helped but that the way pupils travelled to school was far more significant. Those who cycled or walked performed better in tests than those who had travelled by car or public transport, the scientists reported recently. Another study by the University of California in Los Angeles showed that old people who were most active had 5 per cent more grey matter than those who were least active, reducing their risk of developing Alzheimer’s. But what is about cycling that leads me to believe it has a peculiar effect? John Ratey is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. He can’t point to a specific reason but says he has seen patients whose severe depression has all but disappeared after they started to cycle. Rhythm may explain some of the effects. “Think about it evolutionarily for a minute,” he says. “When we had to perform physically, those who could find an altered state and not experience the pain or a drag on endurance would have been at an advantage. Cycling is also increasing a lot of the chemistry in your brain that make you feel peaceful and calm.” At the same time, the focus required to operate a bicycle, and for example, to negotiate a junction or jostle for space in a race, can be a powerful medicine. Dr Ratey cites a study his department is currently conducting. More than 20 pupils with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are expected to show improved symptoms after a course of cycling. The link between cycling and ADHD is well established. It’s “like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin,” Dr Ratey says. Ritalin is a stimulant commonly used to treat ADHD in children by boosting levels of neural transmitters. Exercise can achieve the same effect, but not all exercise is equal. In a German study involving 115 students at a sports academy, half the group did activities such as cycling that involved complex co-ordinated movements. The rest performed simpler exercises with the same aerobic demands. Both groups did better than they had in concentration tests, but the “complex” group did a lot better. Cycling has even been shown to change the structure of the brain. In 2003, Dr Jay Alberts, a neuroscientist at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute in Ohio, rode a tandem bicycle across the state with a friend who has Parkinson’s to raise awareness of the disease. To the surprise of both riders, the patient showed significant improvements. Dr Alberts conducted an experiment, the results of which were reported last month. He scanned the brains of 26 Parkinson’s patients during and a month after an eight-week exercise programme using stationary bikes. Half the patients were allowed to ride at their own pace, while the others were pushed incrementally harder, just as the scientist’s tandem companion had been. All patients improved and the “tandem” group showed significant increases in connectivity between areas of grey matter responsible for motor ability. Cycling, and cycling harder, was helping to heal their brains. We don’t know how, exactly, this happens, but there is more startling evidence of the link between Parkinson’s and cycling. A clip posted on YouTube by the New England Journal of Medicine features a 58-year-old Dutchman with severe Parkinson’s. In the first half of the video, we watch the unnamed patient trying to walk along a hospital ward. He can barely stand. Helped by a physiotherapist, he manages a slow shuffle, before almost falling. His hands shake uncontrollably. Cut to the car park, where we find the man on a bicycle being supported by staff. With a push, he’s off, cycling past cars with perfect balance and co-ordination. After a loop, he comes to a stop and hops to the ground, where he is immediately immobile again. Doctors don’t fully understand this discrepancy, or kinesia paradoxica, either, but said the bicycles rotating pedals may act as some sort of visual cue that aided the patient’s brain. The science of cycling is evidently incomplete, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about it for the everyday rider, its effects on hyperactive children notwithstanding, is that it can require no conscious focus at all. The apparent mindlessness of pedalling can not only make us happier (“Melancholy,” the writer James E Starrs has said, “is incompatible with bicycling”) but also leave room for other thoughts, from the banal to the profound. On the seat of my bike, I’ve made life decisions, “written” passages of articles, and reflected usefully on emotional troubles. Of his theory of relativity, meanwhile, Albert Einstein is supposed to have said: “I thought of it while riding my bicycle.” — The Independent
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Early humans subsisted on plants OUR very early ancestors in Central Africa subsisted on a diet of tropical grasses and sedges between three and 3.5 million years ago, says a new finding. An international team extracted information from the fossilised teeth of three Australopithecus bahrelghazali individuals — the first early hominins excavated at two sites in Chad. Julia Lee-Thorp, Professor from Oxford University with researchers from Chad, France and the US, analysed the carbon isotope ratios in the teeth and found the signature of a diet rich in foods derived from C4 plants, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports. Lee-Thorp, a specialist in isotopic analyses of fossil tooth enamel, from the Research Lab for Archaeology and the History of Art, said: “We found evidence suggesting that early hominins, in Central Africa at least, ate a diet mainly composed of tropical grasses and sedges.” “No African great apes, including chimpanzees, eat this type of food despite the fact it grows in abundance in tropical and subtropical regions,” she said. “The only notable exception is the savannah baboon which still forages for these types of plants today. We were surprised to discover that early hominins appear to have consumed more than even the baboons,” Lee-Thorp said. The finding is significant in signalling how early humans were able to survive in open landscapes with few trees, rather than sticking only to types of terrain containing many trees, according to an Oxford statement. This allowed them to move out of the earliest ancestral forests or denser woodlands, and occupy and exploit new environments much farther afield, says the study. The fossils of the three individuals, ranging between three million and 3.5 million years old, originate from two sites in the Djurab desert. Today this is a dry, hyper-arid environment near the ancient Bahr el Ghazal channel which links the southern and northern Lake Chad sub-basins. — IANS
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THIS UNIVERSE Why do men have shorter life expectancy than women? I do not really know, but then I do not know why women are women. I suppose Nature designed that the female of the species should not get excited as often as the male. A placid and self-assured temperament spawns longevity. More sincerely, I can only assert that the edge of longevity does not come from superiority of the hardware; it comes from features of the software that preeminently drive the species. Indeed, I strongly feel that there are many features of the female software from which the males could have profited enormously. Not just the males but the whole of humanity. Perhaps we can correct this unfavourable distribution post facto through cultural education? Though sun’s light appears to be yellowish, why does moonlight appear to be white? It is true that sun’s light is slightly yellowish, but it seems more so because of its passage through a dirty atmosphere. The light of the sun that falls on the moon does not go through our atmosphere. Therefore, moonlight appears fairly white. Readers can e-mail questions to Prof Yash Pal at palyash.pal@gmail.com
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Long-lived bats offer clues on diseases, aging HONG KONG: The bat, a reservoir for viruses like Ebola, SARS and Nipah, has for decades stumped scientists trying to figure out how it is immune to many deadly bugs but a recent study into its genes may finally shed some light, scientists said. Studying the DNA of two distant bat species, the scientists discovered how genes dealing with the bats’ immune system had undergone the most rapid change. This may explain why they are relatively free of disease and live exceptionally long lives compared with other mammals of similar size, such as the rat, said Prof. Lin-Fa Wang, an infectious disease expert at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore who led the multi-centre study. Human link to climate change stronger than ever LONDON: International climate scientists are more certain than ever that humans are responsible for global warming, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, according to a leaked draft report by an influential panel of experts. The early draft, which is still subject to change before a final version is released in late 2013, showed that a rise in global average temperatures since pre-industrial times was set to exceed 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, and may reach 4.8 Celsius. — Reuters
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