Many people are unable to perform their day-to-day tasks without first taking a Cup of coffee upon waking up Some, in fact, do not even manage to articulate words until they do. It is a very good way to get into action, because it is amply proven that it is a healthy drink; which, in addition to providing energy, has many other beneficial properties. However, some individuals cannot take it for specific reasons, which are from anxiety to pregnancy.
How can they start the day with force then? To answer this question, a team of scientists from the Western University, in Ontario, has faced coffee face to face with the physical exercise, for being a promising substitute candidate. And, indeed, the results suggest that it is a good choice for those who cannot or do not want to drink this wonderful drink.
Gentle exercise to start the day
It is known that both mild physical exercise and caffeine have clear benefits in the development of work memory. This refers to the ability to store and manipulate information in the meantime. For example, it is the one used when you remember the shopping list after moving to the supermarket or retaining all the names and situations of The Witcher as the season progresses.
A good use of this quality helps us to effectively carry out many of our daily tasks, both at home and at work and, of course, in studies. But what else helps to get it? Do youCoffee or exercise?
Numerous studies have analyzed the role of both together, but not separately. Therefore, the authors of this work, published in Scientific ReportsThey decided to put both situations face to face and check which one was better.
To do this, they recruited 59 volunteers, aged between 18 and 40 years old. Of these, 30 recognized being habitual consumers of caffeine, with a daily intake exceeding 150 milligrams, while the remaining 29 did not reach 30 milligrams a day.
All of them had to take a dose of caffeine equivalent to one cup of coffee and, in addition, they underwent 20 minutes of gentle exercise on a treadmill. The order of both practices was random, so some started with caffeine and others with the walk.
In a second phase, only regular consumers participated, who randomly performed only one of the two actions after 12 hours of caffeine deprivation. This experiment was carried out in order to check if they had recovered well from the abstinence.
To analyze how both tests had affected their working memory, they all had to perform a test, known as n-back, in which a series of stimuli are presented on a screen, so that the subject must answer when the one he is seeing coincides with the one that was shown n steps back. Thus, if n = 1 you are asked for the stimuli that were shown on the previous screen, if n = 2 for which two screens were seen before and so on.
Everyone saw an improvement in their abilities in this regard and, what is better, there was no clear winner, because the results seemed to be comparable. This is very positive, as it indicates that someone who cannot or wants to drink coffee will get the same cognitive improvement with a 20-minute walk. All this without taking into account the rest of the sport’s benefits.
As for the second experiment, they also found that exercise helps inhibit withdrawal in habitual caffeine users. Of course, it seems that the purpose of walk more It can also be a good substitute for going through life with energy and uttering more than grunts.
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