A no-brainer for sure... Exercise is good for the brain.
Of course!... exercise is good for the body, for longevity, for agility, for the heart... and just about everything that has to do with health... and we know why. Because it builds muscles and keeps the whole body working better.
But why the brain? Wouldn't things like mental exercise be better? Doesn't the actiity from playing chess, or solving puzzles or maybe the newer on-line brain challenges, work better to ward off mental deterioration.
So, physical exercise is innately a positive for brain health... but why?
This article discusses the actual physical action, and a protein that protects and supports cells.
Aerobic exercise seems to be the key... a very unpleasant thought for those of us who are becoming arm chair athletes, still, something more than the gererality that "exercise keeps you young".
The best brain exercise may be physical - Chicago Tribune
"Is Richard Simmons still on TV?"
Of course!... exercise is good for the body, for longevity, for agility, for the heart... and just about everything that has to do with health... and we know why. Because it builds muscles and keeps the whole body working better.
But why the brain? Wouldn't things like mental exercise be better? Doesn't the actiity from playing chess, or solving puzzles or maybe the newer on-line brain challenges, work better to ward off mental deterioration.
So, physical exercise is innately a positive for brain health... but why?
This article discusses the actual physical action, and a protein that protects and supports cells.
Aerobic exercise seems to be the key... a very unpleasant thought for those of us who are becoming arm chair athletes, still, something more than the gererality that "exercise keeps you young".
The best brain exercise may be physical - Chicago Tribune
more...In the mid-1990's, Carl Cotman's team at the University of California-Irvine first showed that exercise triggers the production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which helps support the growth of existing brain cells and the development of new ones.
With age, BDNF levels fall; this decline is one reason brain function deteriorates in the elderly, according to Cotman. Certain types of exercise, namely aerobic, are thought to counteract these age-related drops in BDNF and can restore young levels of BDNF in the age brain.
"In a sense, BDNF is like a brain fertilizer," said Cotman, a professor of neurology and neurobiology and behavior and founding director of the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI Mind). "BDNF protects neurons from injury and facilitates learning and synaptic plasticity."
Over the last two decades, researchers have learned that exercise acts on multiple levels in the brain. The brain's wiring depends on the integrity of the brain cells or neurons, as well as the connections between the neurons, or the synapses.
As we age, the synapses are lost or break down. Cotman's work has shown that in older rodents, exercise increases the number of synapses and also stimulates the brain to develop more neurons in the hippocampus, which he called "a critical region in learning and memory formation and a target of massive decline in Alzheimer's disease."
Still, for those newly created brain cells, or neurons, to work — to help us learn and remember new things — they need to be plugged into the existing neural network, said Romain Meeusen, chair of the department of human physiology at the University of Brussels.
Exercise helps integrate the new neurons into the brain's circuitry to help improve learning, Meeusen said.
"Is Richard Simmons still on TV?"
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