Next time you think going for a jog will ‘clear your mind’ it may just be doing that, suggests new research from Belgium.
According to a new Vrije Universiteit Brussel report, people that exercise outdoors and live in built up urban environments score lower in cognitive ability test and suffer higher levels of brain inflammation, a condition linked to a series of brain conditions and diseases, than those that exercise in the suburbs.
Researchers divided their participants into two group who both exercised three times a week for 12 weeks for an hour, one group in a city, the other in a rural area.
They found that pollution in cities hinders the brain’s ability to absorb new information.
The urban exercisers also had higher blood levels in their inflammation markers. Inflammation in the brain is associated with mental illness.
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