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Conclusion:

> Cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with GM volume, total brain volume, and specific GM and white matter clusters in brain areas not primarily involved in movement processing. These results, from a representative population sample, suggest that CRF might contribute to improved brain health and might, therefore, decelerate pathology-specific GM decrease.

Given that the brain uses roughly 20% of the body's energy, it doesn't seem terribly surprising that cardiovascular/respiratory fitness would positively correlate with brain "fitness". What seems surprising is how big the difference is. ~5cm³ of grey matter. That's a couple of grapes!




That ~5cm is for 1 standard deviation increase in VO2peak. The charts show it increasing linearly with VO2peak. Too bad VO2max decreases with age (due to a linear fall off in max heart rate with age). I highly recommend Bay Area cycling.


Except for the fact that the Bay Area has some of the worst air pollution in the country [1], and air pollution exposure is positively associated with loss of white matter [2].

So I would say maybe it's a wash?

1 - https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/city-r...

2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6132565/


What about for those of us that don’t live in the Bay Area? Are our brains condemned?


It depends on how safely one can cycle elsewhere. I wouldn't know, so I won't recommend it (but if it is possible, definitely!). But there are other options, such as rowing, running, Nordic skiing, swimming, etc.


My area seems to average about a 30 AQI, which I guess is good (it's 28 today). But I stopped biking a long time ago do to safety after many incidents, there's just no safe place to ride a bike in most of the US. To be fair, riding a motorcycle is far more dangerous, and people still do that. So I guess it is up to your risk tolerance.




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