A new study shows that people who do vigorous physical activities, like jogging or playing competitive sports, in areas with higher air pollution may show less benefit from that exercise when it comes to certain markers of brain disease.
A new study shows that people who do vigorous physical activities, like jogging or playing competitive sports, in areas with higher air pollution may show less benefit from that exercise when it comes to certain markers of brain disease. The markers examined in the study included white matter hyperintensities, which indicate injury to the brain’s white matter, and gray matter volume. Larger gray matter volumes and smaller white matter hyperintensity volumes are markers of overall better brain health. The research is published in the December 8, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“Vigorous exercise may increase exposure to air pollution and prior studies have shown adverse effects of air pollution on the brain,” said study author Melissa Furlong, PhD, of the University of Arizona Health Sciences in Tucson. “We did show that physical activity is associated with improved markers of brain health in areas with lower air pollution. However, some beneficial effects essentially disappeared for vigorous physical activity in areas with the highest levels of air pollution. That’s not to say people should avoid exercise. Overall, the effect of air pollution on brain health was modest—roughly equivalent to half the effect of one year of aging, while the effects of vigorous activity on brain health were much larger—approximately equivalent to being three years younger.”
The study looked at 8,600 people with an average age of 56 from the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database. People’s exposure to pollution, including nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, which are particles of liquids or solids suspended in the air, was estimated with land use regression. A land use regression study models air pollution levels based on air monitors and land use characteristics like traffic, agriculture and industrial sources of air pollution.
Participants’ air pollution exposures were categorized into four equal groups, from lowest air pollution to highest.
Read more at American Academy of Neurology
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