Fitness
Black Girls RUN! Seattle/Tacoma Is More Than Just A Run Club – It Is A Sisterhood
By Ashlyn Bowman, The Seattle Medium
Sisters, friends, community.
Those are the foundations of Black Girls RUN! (BGR!), a unique running club in Seattle/Tacoma that seeks to spread the joy and benefits of working out body and mind on the pavement.
The national BGR! organization was founded in 2009 to provide Black women a supportive space to embrace running and walking, to pursue a healthy lifestyle and to address health disparities affecting Black women, according to Sharon Chism, co-ambassador of BGR! Seattle/Tacoma.
According to the Black Girls RUN! website, African American women in the U.S. have some of the highest overweight and obesity rates compared to other groups. BGR!’s mission is to lower that number through a safe, supportive and empowering environment centered around fitness.
“One of the biggest things I love the most is the sisterhood,” said Jiquanda Nelson, co-ambassador of BGR! Seattle/Tacoma. The Seattle/Tacoma chapter was established in 2013. Now, the group has grown to about 1,700 members.
Each week, BGR! hosts two to three run/walk events across Seattle, with distances between 3 to 10 miles. Memberships and events are all free, with run information posted on their Facebook page.
Nelson and Chism said they strive to make the runs accessible to all women, regardless of their running abilities or skill level. “So, even if you’re not running, because running isn’t for everyone, what we really want to encourage is for people to move their bodies,” Chism said.
Nelson said BGR! ensures the events focus on movement over running, so more people feel welcomed. “We’re hyping up everybody. We’re not just hyping up the person who has the 8-minute mile pace, right, but we’re also hyping up the person with a 17-minute mile pace,” Nelson said.
Nelson joined BGR! after moving to Seattle in late 2018. She said aside from her husband and children, she had no other family or friends in the area.
“They were my first family here,” Nelson said about the BGR! women.
Today, Nelson has built a strong community and lifelong friendships with BGR! women; she even got a matching tattoo with a fellow BGR! member: The word “Believe,” with the “B” designed as a “13.” and the “i” as a “1” to represent 13.1 miles.
But Nelson was initially hesitant to start running.
“When Black women want to run or walk, the first question they ask me is, ‘What do you do with your hair?’” Nelson said. “And that’s usually a barrier for them even trying sometimes.”
Nelson and other BGR! members wear a Gymwrap headband, a Hairbrella or a BGR! Bondi Band when they run to absorb sweat, shield against rain and protect their hair.
“There is something about being able to connect with women who truly understand your experience,” Nelson said. One thing she appreciates most about BGR! is always having someone to talk to – whether it is about life milestones or issues at work or in relationships.
Me’Kyel Bailey, a BGR! member since 2021, describes Nelson as a big sister and mentor. The feeling is mutual among other BGR! members.
“I would say from many of the friends I met through the group, a lot of us do think of each other as sisters and having a sisterhood and really caring for each other,” Bailey said. Support for one another is ingrained in BGR! Seattle/Tacoma’s culture. “There is just a sense of we have each other’s back, we’re family, we’re girlfriends,” Bailey said.
Together, BGR! women will take yoga classes, explore coffee shops or attend concerts. They also go on race vacations, which they refer to as “race-cations,” where BGR! members travel together to complete a race.
In November, Bailey ran her first marathon alongside two BGR! members in Savannah, Georgia.
“Once you are a part of BGR! Seattle/Tacoma, you are always part of it,” Bailey said.
No matter the city, BGR! women offer friendship and exercise partners, welcoming women from different areas to join in on their local events through the “Find a Community” page on the BGR! website, according to Chism.
“Knowing that they are there to support you and cheer for you, is just really, really nice and really warm and really welcoming,” Chism said about BGR! women. “It’s like having that familiar anchor that you can go to if you are in a different city.”
BGR! women live by the motto “no women left behind” in a race or an event. “We’re going to wait until the last lady finishes and then we’ll leave,” Bailey said.
This sense of support and inclusivity is what makes BGR! more than a running club. It is a community, according to Bailey.
“If someone has anxiety, we want to let them know that they’re not alone and this is more than just a run group. We’re a supportive group and we are here for them,” Bailey said to those who may be nervous to join BGR! or start running. All it takes is showing up.
To become a member Black Girls RUN! Seattle/Tacoma, request to join the local Facebook page and answer a few short questions.
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While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.
Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.
We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.
For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.
We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.
www.ucl.ac.uk | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Follow UCL News on Bluesky and LinkedIn
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
Subject of Research:
Article Title:
News Publication Date:
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Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
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