How exercise can make you smarter
You might have heard in multiple ways that exercise is good for you. It will keep you slim, fit and healthy.
You may have heard about endorphins that serve as natural morphine to block pain signals so we can push through physical challenges.
All of this is true but there is an even greater benefit to exercising: it will make you smarter.
It does this in three ways:
- It improves alertness, attention, and motivation. It gets the brain ready to learn.
- It enhances the mechanism for getting ‘fertilizer’ to brain cells so that they can function better.
- It encourages the growth of new brain cells.
Exercise has been touted to be a cure for nearly everything in life, from depression, to memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and more. Your brain is no different than the rest of the muscles in your body - you either use it or you lose it. The benefits of physical exercise have positive effects on brain function on multiple fronts, ranging from the molecular to the behavioural.
Most of us are aware of what happens to the body when we exercise. We build more muscle or more stamina. We feel how daily activities like climbing stairs become easier if we exercise regularly.
What is less obvious is what happens at the cellular level. There are very useful brain building blocks like brain-derived neurotrophic factor (phew, these technical terms!) that need the increased blood pumping to cross the blood brain barrier to help build brain cells. It is a bit like pumping your muscles so that they work better and look better. We can pump up our brain cells so that they are better able to receive, store and retrieve information.
All that it needs, according to John Ratey, the author of Spark, is 20 minutes of accelerated heart rate daily. This is best done first thing in the morning which prepares you for the day. In his book he tells the story of a school district that implemented daily exercise for pupils and the astonishing rise the academic achievement. There is ample proof that exercise, in many cases, can improve your life more than medicine.
The exciting latest research is how exercise can keep the diseases of old age like dementia and Alzheimer at bay. And better still, it can improve our ability to learn, improve our mood and attention, lower stress and anxiety and even help control the impact of hormone changes. At every stage and age, exercise is good for you.
So get out of bed lazy bones, and change your life with as little as 20 minutes.
*Mariane Vorster is a life and business coach. Her passion and focus is on providing strategic leadership development, concentrating on the transfer of skills and knowledge.Click here to get in touch with Mariane.