Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

J-P. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T dot-C-O-J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific Americans' 60-second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

If you're like me, you know that multitasking does not always save time. You slow down or make mistakes that require fixing.

But maybe I'm just doing the wrong things, because a new study shows that people on a stationary bike peddled faster when they simultaneously tackled some sort of mental test.

Even the researchers were surprised by that result.

They'd originally set out to demonstrate what other studies have shown,

that when people try to do two things at once, they do both more poorly.

Their counterintuitive finding is in the journal PLOS 1.

In the experiment, subjects were asked to complete various cognitive jobs that ranged in difficulty,

everything from saying go when they saw a blue star on a projection screen,

to remembering a long list of numbers and then repeating them back in reverse order.

They tackled these tasks once while sitting in a quiet room

and again while on the bike. Turns out, cyclists rode 25% faster when they were distracted by some

mental gymnastics, but only when the tasks were relatively easy. When confronted with tough brain

teasers, their cycling speeds were about the same as when they had nothing in particular to think about.

And in case you're wondering, the participant cycling neither helped nor hindered their brain function.

The findings could point toward new programs in which we get better workouts simply by using our heads.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific Americans' 60-second science, I'm Karen Hopkin.

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