Exercising: Does It Improve Brain Power?
Reasons to workout?
Nowadays, working out is recommend just to any type of medical condition.
Apparently, the best way to be healthy is to keep your own body healthy and fit. Who would have thought, right?
A solid body will not only help prevent many diseases, such as, heart conditions, strokes, diabetes, arteries problems, high blood pressures, etc, but will also boost your memory and thinking capabilities. When we're aging the brain starts to get cloudy when we try to reminisce or remember something, however, keeping your body fit protects the brain against that. Yes, a healthy body leads to a healthy brain!
If all of that isn't enough, having confidence in your body and more self-esteem is also part of a steady workout!
A Summer body starts in Autumn.
So true that it hurts! However, if you're able to workout daily, that doesn't matter!
What workout helps my brain?
A recent study done at University of British Columbia, was found that workouts that makes our heart pump and turns our body into a swamp of sweat have the biggest effect on our brain. Specifically, it increases the size of ours hippocampus, which is the area responsible for verbal memory and learning. While aerobics were proved to be effective in this study, other worksouts weren't, such as stamina training, muscles and balance exercises.
Exercising Benefits
Daily exercising helps the brain in many ways, directly or indirectly. Physical exercising releases many chemicals in the brain, which are beneficial to us. Such as:
- Reducing of insulin resistance.
- Reducing of inflammation
- Stimulation of growth.
As for growth factors, there are a ton of them:
- Healthy brain cells
- New blood vessels in our brain
- Survival and birth of new brain cells.
These are more active developments of your brain due to daily exercising. However, on the indirect side of things, exercising will help on bad moods, sleep disorders, anxiety issues and less stress. All of these factors certainly don't help our cognitive skills.
On top of that, many studies point out that people that daily exercise show a bigger volume in their brain's area, which controls thinking and memory.
Workout Periods
When i was younger i used to swim competitively. After i stopped, i spent six years living a sedentary life (college hum...). When i went back to exercising, i started out with a friend and dumb me decided to follow his daily workout after so many years without doing any proper exercise.
Well, needless to say it went horrid! Especially, the following days! My muscles were so sore that i thought they were going to pop, seriously! After that i needed full five days to rest them. Not effective at all.
So, if you're starting to devote yourself to build a healthy body, start slowly! Exercise having your stamina in mind. Start out 15 to 20 minutes a day. Slowly increase your pace and in a few months you can build a workout table for one hour a day.
After that, you're set! You'll feel better, have more energy and increase your brain's attention and power!
This always gets me pumping!
Stock up on brain food!
If you're working out to boost your brain specially, then you should consider stocking up on some types of food that are more specific to boost the brain power.
- Omega-3s. These fatty acids are super beneficial to the brain. You can find a ton of them in fish!
- Cut the saturated fat. Studies show that saturated fats cause many impairments in the brain, in the memory/learning department.
- Fruits and vegetables! These babies protect you from damage to the brain due to its antioxidants.
- Time to go British, green tea! No wonder the Queen is still kicking! Green tea protects the brain from damage with its antioxidants but it also helps preventing aging!
- Cut the alcohol. Well, this is so well-known these days... Alcohol kills brain cells! Drink in moderation!
Try it out yourself!
If you have doubts about it, why don't you check it out for yourself? What's the worst that can happen? A healthier lifestyle and a fit body? Oh my, the horror!
It's still unknown as to, what's the best type of exercise to boost brain power. However, workouts that keep your heart pumping and your body extra sweat seems to fit the bill.
