Fitness

The CrossFit cure: Fitness regimen reduces need for prescription drugs, surgery

Published

1 year ago

December 3, 2024

Press Room

The CrossFit cure: Fitness regimen reduces need for prescription drugs, surgery

Group doing box step-up exercise in CrossFit-style workout class. (Photo by BearFotos on Shutterstock)

Though CrossFit is often seen as a sport for the super fit, that shouldn’t put you off from trying it. CrossFit is designed to be accessible to everyone, with scalable workouts suited for all ages and abilities, embodying its principle that the needs of elite athletes and beginners differ only by intensity, not kind. By combining strength and aerobic exercise, CrossFit can be an effective way of improving functional fitness, muscle strength and cardiovascular health.

But if that’s not enough to convince you, our latest study suggests CrossFit’s benefits for physical health may even potentially reduce the need to use prescription drugs in people living with long-term conditions. This may offer an alternative to traditional medication-based treatment for a range of health conditions, as well as potentially easing the demand on healthcare services.

To conduct our study, we recruited 1,211 people from the UK who did CrossFit. Participants ranged in age from 19-67 – though the majority of participants were in either the 30-39 (38%) or 40-49 (26%) groups. Participants were asked about their health, what prescription drugs they took and any changes in their prescriptions since starting CrossFit.

Of the 1,211 participants, 280 said they took at least one prescription drug to manage a health condition prior to starting CrossFit. Some of the most common health conditions in question included anxiety and depression, asthma, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes and chronic pain.

We found that 54% of participants who’d been taking a prescription drug before starting CrossFit said they decreased their dosage after starting. Among this group of 151 people, 69 reported stopping their medication entirely, while the remaining 82 said they had cut their prescription dosage by more than half. These improvements happened primarily within the first six months of training.

Younger participants, specifically those aged 20 to 29, were more likely to reduce their medication. In this group, 43% reported cutting their prescription dosage by more than half, and 27% stopped needing to use a prescription drug altogether (compared to 29% and 25% respectively across all age groups).

We also found that 40% of all participants said they required fewer visits to the doctor after starting CrossFit.

For people with long-term health issues such as chronic pain, CrossFit helped many manage their symptoms. Our study found that of those participants who reported taking painkillers prior to starting CrossFit, particularly to manage arthritis or back pain, over half reduced their medication.

Some even postponed or canceled surgeries for joint or muscular issues due to the strength and fitness they had gained after starting CrossFit. Of the 71 people who reported canceling or postponing surgeries, 55% said it was because their symptoms improved, while 31% actually reported they no longer needed surgery at all.

Benefits of CrossFit

While our study can’t directly prove that CrossFit caused these changes, the effects that CrossFit has on so many aspects of health may help explain why regular exercisers saw a decrease in their prescription drug use.

First, CrossFit is of course beneficial for physical fitness. Improvements in areas such as cardiovascular fitness and metabolic health may help in managing chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

Second, because CrossFit is often done as a group in a gym setting, it fosters a sense of community, team spirit and support. This sense of community may enhance mental health and wellbeing. Exercise also releases endorphins – chemicals in the brain that boost happiness and decrease pain. These two factors may help explain why a number of the study’s participants reported using fewer antidepressants after starting CrossFit.

Third, the fact that CrossFit’s combination of strength, aerobic and functional exercises helps enhance muscle strength and endurance can alleviate pressure on joints and reducing pain. The high-intensity nature of CrossFit also promotes the release of endorphins which can alleviate discomfort and enhance physical resilience, leaving participants feeling more empowered and uplifted.

As well, CrossFit emphasises movement patterns and mobility, which can help improve flexibility and reduce stiffness. All of these factors might help explain why some of the participants who’d suffered with chronic pain prior to starting CrossFit relied less on painkillers after six months of training

Nonetheless, this study has some limitations to note. The data relies on self-reported information, which can lead to biased results as participants may not accurately remember their prescription use or be influenced by their feelings about CrossFit.

Additionally, the study didn’t track other lifestyle changes participants might have made, such as diet modifications or other forms of exercise. So more research is needed to understand the full picture. Nonetheless, our findings provide promising evidence about the benefits of CrossFit that could contribute to reducing the strain on healthcare services.

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Fitness

Exercise Boosts Brain ‘Ripples’ Tied to Learning and Memory

Published

1 hour ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Exercise Boosts Brain ‘Ripples’ Tied to Learning and Memory

Each time you go for a jog, ride your bike, or get active in other ways, you’re giving your brain a boost. A small new study has for the first time directly documented this phenomenon, which the researchers call “ripples” — brief bursts of electrical activity in a part of the brain called the hippocampus.

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

To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 14 participants between ages 17 and 50 with drug-resistant epilepsy. The subjects had already been fitted with intracranial electrodes as part of their preparation for surgical epilepsy treatment.

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

“We know that exercise is the number-one thing we can do to enhance our memory and learning,” says Catherine Franssen, PhD, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “Exercise will enhance both our ability to learn new things and our ability to remember previously learned things.”

Movement helps pump oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood to the brain, says Dr. Franssen, who was not involved with the new study: “We’re able to activate those brain cells more effectively and energize them.”

The increased blood flow stimulates the growth of new neurons and enhances the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a molecule that strengthens connections between brain cells and supports learning, says the neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, who was not involved with the latest study.

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.”

Fitness

Higher Fitness Levels Amplify Brain Benefits After Exercise, Study Finds

Published

13 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Higher Fitness Levels Amplify Brain Benefits After Exercise, Study Finds

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.:
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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

Fitness

Exercise Bikes With Zero Monthly Subscriptions: Home Fitness Range Announced

Published

1 day ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Exercise Bikes With Zero Monthly Subscriptions: Home Fitness Range Announced

SOLE Fitness announces new additions to its home exercise bike range, with models including built-in screens, resistance systems, and notably, zero monthly subscription fees.

Salt Lake City, United States, March 9, 2026 — SOLE Fitness has announced a new range of home exercise bikes aligning with its policy against mandatory monthly subscription fees – addressing a growing concern among cost-conscious fitness enthusiasts.

For more information, visit: https://www.soletreadmills.com/collections/bikes

The announcement comes as subscription fatigue intensifies across the home fitness market – where hidden costs of ongoing memberships have become a significant pain point for buyers. Many consumers now actively seek alternatives that deliver premium features without the financial burden of perpetual fees – and SOLE Fitness offers its range in direct response.

Technical capabilities across the range support the no-subscription experience through innovative design and robust hardware. For instance, SOLE Fitness cites the SB1200 exercise bike as a suitable option for its 10-inch touchscreen – including preloaded entertainment applications.

SOLE’s team notes that this particular model also incorporates 100 levels of adjustable magnetic resistance, offering a broad spectrum of intensity for diverse workout preferences. A 35-pound flywheel contributes to smooth, consistent pedaling motion, while the durable steel frame supports users up to 300 pounds.

Elsewhere in the range, SOLE Fitness offers options across recumbent, upright, and indoor cycling styles to accommodate different fitness goals and space constraints.

The LCR Recumbent Bike is an example of a comfortable seated design with back support, ideal for low-impact cardio sessions, coming with 40 levels of magnetic resistance. The B94 Upright Bike, meanwhile, delivers a traditional bike posture with 20 levels of resistance, suited for users seeking straightforward training without advanced touchscreen features.

Central to the value proposition is the SOLE+ App, which provides zero-cost online fitness classes to customers who own SOLE equipment. The app offers hundreds of home gym video tutorials ranging from basic to advanced routines – standing in contrast to platforms that charge separately for similar content.

As explained by SOLE Fitness, its overall range is engineered for smooth, silent rides through magnetic resistance systems, sturdy steel frames, and precision components that deliver a premium indoor cycling experience. Magnetic resistance eliminates the wear and noise associated with friction pads, while the structural integrity of the frames ensures stability during high-intensity intervals.

“Each treadmill is crafted to provide an unparalleled exercise experience, featuring robust motors, intuitive controls, and cushioned running surfaces for maximum impact absorption,” says a company representative.

Moreover, since the company’s product portfolio is designed to offer entry points at various price levels, customers have readily available access to select models that align with their own budget and training preferences.

Interested parties can browse the full selection at: https://www.soletreadmills.com/

Contact Info:
Name: Inquiries
Email: Send Email
Organization: SOLE Fitness
Address: 56 Exchange Pl., Salt Lake City, UT 84111, United States
Website: https://www.soletreadmills.com/

Release ID: 89185487

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