It seems logical that water exercise is beneficial for your heart, but it may be surprising to hear that water exercise is also beneficial for your brain. The buoyancy of the water creates a feeling of weightlessness and most people perceive that as fun. The fun factor is why so many people enjoy working out in the water. At the end of class the feeling of weightlessness can promote a sense of relaxation. So certainly we can say the water has mental benefits.
The water also has physiological benefits for the brain. Immersion increases cardiac output throughout the entire body by relaxing the blood vessels so that they can carry more blood. With regular aquatic exercise the vessels themselves remain pliant and supple, counteracting age-related stiffening of large vessels. The working muscles are not the only beneficiaries of this improved cardiac output. The brain also benefits from increased blood flow. A recent study placed healthy subjects into a tank and measured blood flow through the major arteries that supply the brain. As the subjects were progressively immersed from zero depth to waist depth to shoulder depth, blood flow to the brain increased substantially. Blood flow increase persisted throughout the exercise period, compared to land exercise of the same intensity. This blood flow delivers more oxygen and nutrients to the brain which uses it to repair and regenerate brain and nerve cells. It is reasonable to assume that this would help slow the deterioration of age-related brain performance.
No formal studies have been published on the impact of aquatic exercise on dementia. However, there are case reports of people with Alzheimer’s disease who showed improved speech and language function, improved balance and agility, and improved cognitive and memory function not only during immersion, but even persisting afterwards. Your aquatic exercise today might just be preserving your brain function for many years into the future.
Additional research has been done on neurogenesis, or building new brain cells. Rotha Crump presented a Master Workout for the Metroplex Association of Aquatic Professionals on February 25, 2017 entitled Water Workout Wisdom. She described the brain cell building technique. First the heart rate must be elevated, although it does not need to be greatly elevated, which makes the technique perfect for the cool down portion of a water fitness class. Second the arms and legs must do something complicated – an arm movement unusual for a particular leg movement, such as cross-country ski arms with jumping jacks, or each arm performing a different movement, such as crawl stroke with the right arm and breaststroke with the left arm while jogging. Finally the participants are asked to do a mentally challenging task, such as counting or spelling backwards or making a list, out loud. It does not matter if the task is performed correctly. It is the act of doing the mental task out loud that is important. The technique has been proven to actually create new brain cells.
To learn more about this technique, check out the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Dr. John Rately and Eric Hagerman. To learn more about the research on the benefits of immersion and water exercise, go to www.playcore.com/WaterImmersionWorks.htm To see a quick summary of the benefits of water exercise, check out the Benefits link on my website at www.waterfitnesslessons.com
See you in the pool!
Chris Alexander