Researchers in France have found that excessive exercise may not just hurt your body, but also your brain.
How too much exercise affects your brain
Among endurance athletes, there’s something called “overtraining syndrome” that’s caused by too much intensive training. But a new study has found that exercise can fatigue your neural circuitry, specifically cognitive control. Also known as executive control, cognitive control is your ability to change your thought processes and behaviors to reach your goals.
For the study, researchers recruited 37 men who were all competitive endurance athletes. They were split into two groups. Group 1 continued with their standard exercise and Group 2 was told to increase their training by 40% per session for 3 weeks.
All the men filled out questionnaires about their experience with fatigue and underwent MRI scans and behavioral tests.
At the end of the study, the scientists found that Group 2 was more likely to act impulsively. They were more likely, as a whole, to choose immediate rewards over more significant rewards that they’ve have to wait longer to reach. Why did this happen? Because, as was seen in the MRIs, the exhausted athletes had impaired activation in the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, behavioral inhibition, planning, and motivational operations—the latter of which decides how the brain processes rewards.
Caveats
While the study may offer some insight into why endurance athletes are more involved in doping than other athletes, there are some things to take into consideration before assuming these results apply to everyone.
First of all, it was a very small study. More experiments were larger cohorts would be required to ensure this is a genuine effect.
Secondly, only male endurance athletes participated. There’s no telling if women, people who aren’t physically fit or non-endurance athletes would show the same results.
