(no subject)
Has anyone else seen My Father, My Brother, and Me on Frontline? I recommend it highly. It is a documentary on Parkinsons by a man who along with his father and brother has Parkinsons. I have a friend with Parkinsons so I was very interested. It covers all the issues, from genetics, to environmental poisoning to stem-cell research in a way I thought was fair. (I have an unpopular opinion of stem cell research, and I liked it.)
To me the most important issue it brought up was the connection between exercise and brain health. The brain needs to respond to exercise and movement. Our lives have grown progressively more sedentary with every generation. They provided a lot of evidence that this has affected our brain health. At one point they had two sets of primates who were both given a drug that creates a Parkinsons like state. The first set were put on treadmills, while the second watched. The treadmill set had minimal symptoms and the sedentary animals were strongly affected. (Yes I wonder about the ethics of this experiment, but I am grateful for the information it produced.) In other parts of the documentary they presented people who benefited as much from exercise as they had from drug treatments. Obesity wasn't the issue but exercise was.
This made me worry about the effect of lack of exercise and physical play on our children's developing brains. Child's play is becoming less and less active. This can not be good. Childhood depression is increasing. Could this play a role?
This motivates me to exercise more than diabetes, stroke, heart disease and how I look in a bathing suit.
I'm off to exercise.
To me the most important issue it brought up was the connection between exercise and brain health. The brain needs to respond to exercise and movement. Our lives have grown progressively more sedentary with every generation. They provided a lot of evidence that this has affected our brain health. At one point they had two sets of primates who were both given a drug that creates a Parkinsons like state. The first set were put on treadmills, while the second watched. The treadmill set had minimal symptoms and the sedentary animals were strongly affected. (Yes I wonder about the ethics of this experiment, but I am grateful for the information it produced.) In other parts of the documentary they presented people who benefited as much from exercise as they had from drug treatments. Obesity wasn't the issue but exercise was.
This made me worry about the effect of lack of exercise and physical play on our children's developing brains. Child's play is becoming less and less active. This can not be good. Childhood depression is increasing. Could this play a role?
This motivates me to exercise more than diabetes, stroke, heart disease and how I look in a bathing suit.
I'm off to exercise.