Your body's "Master Control" center — your nervous system — is made up of your brain, your spinal cord, and your peripheral nervous system (PNS) or nerves.
The nervous system controls every action in your daily life, from breathing and blinking to helping you memorize facts or navigate heavy traffic. Without these functions, you'd be a vegetable, a zombie.
Your sensory nerves collect environmental information and send it to your spinal cord, which relays the message to your brain. Your brain interprets the message and fires off an appropriate response. Your motor neurons deliver those instructions to the rest of your body via your spine's 'superhighway'.
But here's the problem:
Hardly anyone thinks about what they need to do to keep their brain at its peak.
They're more likely to look in the mirror and think about belly fat (sometimes a legitimate concern). Since you don't see your brain, it's easy to underrate its importance-- until its degeneration becomes obvious.
So, jog your brain a bit…
Experts now say your brain is no different than your muscles. You either use it or lose it. It's now well established that exercise bolsters both the structure and function of your brain.
Not only is exercise a smart thing to do for your heart and weight — it can literally make you smarter.
It increases your heart rate, oxygenating your brain. Scientists think this oxygen flow helps reduce your brain's free radicals. One of the exciting findings of recent decades is that these inflows are almost always accompanied by an uptick in mental sharpness.1
Exercising also fuels plasticity to encourage growth of new connections between cells in your brain's cortical areas.
Recent research from UCLA shows that exercise increases growth factors in your brain — inducing the growth of new neuron connections.2
Best growth stimulant for your brain
Stephen C. Putnam, MEd, embraced canoeing in a serious way to combat adult ADHD. He followed it up by writing a book called
Nature's Ritalin for the Marathon Mind, in which he writes about the benefits of exercise on hyperactivity and the inability to focus on tasks.
3
Putnam cites studies of children who ran around for fifteen to 45 minutes before class and thereby cut their squirminess in half
during class. Their running benefits lasted for two to four hours after exercising.
Putnam also cites preliminary animal research suggesting that exercise may cause new stem cells to grow — enabling your brain to refresh itself. Putnam calls it "Miracle-Gro" for the brain. And it appears there's plenty of science to confirm his observations.
Is exercise the easiest way on earth
to reduce stress?
Have you ever heard of "runner's high"?
It's like an all-natural antidepressant. And it's also linked to a drop in stress hormones.
A study out of Stockholm4 showed that "runner's high" also stimulates new cell growth in the hippocampus — the part of your brain responsible for learning and memory.
Scientists know that exercise releases a rush of hormones, which discharge pleasure chemicals like serotonin and dopamine that make you feel calm, happy, or euphoric…
So if you don't want to wait around for good feelings to happen on their own, you can nearly always bring them on by exercising.
"First aid" for your brain
Researchers are finding that those who exercise later in life help protect their brain from age-related degeneration more than those who don't exercise. But it gets even better. Exercise may also act like a soothing balm for aging or damaged brain cells.
In a large brain-imaging study done at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, researchers found a strong and direct correlation over a 3-year period showing that as physical activity increased, brain shrinkage decreased.5
This study tapped into a highly respected longitudinal aging study, the Lothian Birth Cohort Study. It looked at 638 adults between 70 and 73 years old.
They found that those who walked several times a week had less brain shrinkage, and fewer signs of brain aging in general, than did the less active folks.
On the other hand, this study found no benefit on brain size for participating in socially or mentally stimulating activities. So if you want to maximize the mind-enriching benefits of playing chess or piano, walk or run across town to do it.
This study indicates that exercise is an important "medicine" to keep your brain's size healthy and reduce brain damage as you age.
The brain scans showed that those who were more active had less damage to their white matter (the wiring that sends messages around your brain) and had more grey matter (the part containing nerve cell bodies).
Study participants provided details of their daily activities, ranging from basic chores to engaging in heavy exercise or competitive sports — as well as non-physical leisure activities.
Those most devoted to exercise showed better brain circuitry connections and less brain shrinkage — regardless of initial IQ or social class.
Dementia plummets by almost three-fourths
A group of American researchers6 looked at the part of the brain called the hippocampus, your brain's memory center.
They followed adults over 65 years old… an aerobic walking group versus a control group.
The results were dramatic — and are huge for anyone wanting to sidestep dementia and other forms of brain decline.
Adults this age usually lose one to two percent of their hippocampal volume per year.
In this study those in the aerobic walking group GAINED an average of 2% in hippocampal volume per year — versus an average 1.4% LOSS for those in the control group!
See what I mean about teaching an "old dog" new tricks?
And, the aerobic walking group showed marked improvements in memory, too. This is remarkable because the researchers found measurable proof in both the physical organ — the hippocampus — and the mental performance.
This study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, expands on a previous extensive Italian study published in 2008.
The Italian study followed a group of age 65+ adults for four years. They used cognitive assessment tests to determine participants' mental health and then looked for relationships between those and the participants' exercise patterns.
Not only did this study find a staggering 73% decrease in dementia for the regular exercisers compared to those who didn't exercise… it also showed that the intensity of exercise had hardly any bearing on the results. Walking, climbing stairs, and gardening were just as effective in preventing dementia as more strenuous activities.
It even helped those who
already had Alzheimer's
Another study found that those diagnosed with early Alzheimer's who were less fit had four times more brain shrinkage compared to more physically fit older adults… suggesting that physical fitness can slow down progression of the disease.7
At least two large studies have found a significantly lowered dementia risk in those who had higher physical fitness levels8 or who exercise three or more times per week.9
It's never too late to start. . .
but watch out if you quit!
So, you made a New Year's Resolution to exercise more in 2013… And you've already dropped the ball and stashed the gym stuff in the depths of your closet like millions of others.
Did that short-term commitment help you or hurt you?
While there's plenty of evidence to show that you gain benefits from taking up exercise late in life even if you've always been a couch potato… there's also emerging evidence to show you might be wasting your energy if you don't stick with it.
A study presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans10 showed some troubling results. But the study also pointed to an obvious work-around.
Researchers from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil took a group of healthy adult rats and let them run as much as they wanted on wheels, which they enjoy doing. The rats were also injected with a substance that measures newly created neurons in the hippocampus, because exercise is known to spark the creation of two to three times as many new hippocampal neurons.
On the other hand, the control group had no running wheels. Both groups were monitored for new brain cell growth.
At the end of the first week, the runners' wheels were locked so they also became inactive.
At the end of week 2, the researchers memory-tested both the exercised and control rats by requiring them to find and remember the location of a platform placed along the wall of a small swimming pool. Rats are not fond of water, so they're motivated to find this escape route. Those with better memories paddled to the platform more easily.
After one week of inactivity, the rats that had been allowed to run during the first week were much faster on the water test than the controls that had never exercised. The exercisers also had two or more times the number of new neurons.
The remaining animals took the same memory test after three weeks or six weeks of inactivity.
The animals that were inactive for three or six weeks performed FAR worse on the water maze test than the ones who were only inactive for one week.
In fact, their memories were about equal to the control animals, the ones that had never exercised. The results suggest how transient your exercise-induced benefits may be.
Brain benefits of exercise are lost quickly
A second study presented at the same conference looked at mood and stress in sedentary animals following several months of running.
They found that after 10 weeks of running, followed by three weeks of inactivity, the running rats' brains were nearly indistinguishable from those of animals that never exercised. It was as if they'd never run.
Though these are animal studies, indirect evidence suggests that people are just as vulnerable to losing brain function once regular exercise is stopped.
So it might be wise to stick to that New Year's exercise resolution after all.
Exercise for your brain, not just your body
Remember how "mission critical" your brain is to all of your life? Give it a workout today.
The easiest way to keep your brain sharp is to find some kind of physical activity you love doing, mix it up with an alternative type exercise… then mark it on your calendar as an important appointment.
Because it could prove to be the most important one of your day!
Exercising in the morning before work not only spikes brain activity and prepares it for the day's challenges… it also increases retention of new information and aids problem solving on complex issues.
Many experts also advocate that it promotes regular workouts, as fewer activities clamor for your attention early.
Looking to change up your workout? Try an activity that requires coordination along with cardio exertion, like a dance class.
If you like crunching time at the gym alone, try circuit workouts, which spike your heart rate while constantly redirecting your attention.
Any way you do it, always remember this doctor's admonition… "Exercise is really for the brain, not the body."
So what have you done today for YOUR brain?
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