I am reading a book about the latest surprising science reveals about exercising "The first 20 minutes" by Gretchen Reynolds.
Here you have some very interesting ideas about how working out make different positive changes in our mind.
- In one study, elderly sedentary people who began a walking program showed significant growth in several areas of the brain after six months. The walkers' brains were bigger, faster, and younger, and consequently performed better on test of memory and decision making than people who had remained sedentary.
- A little may be enough. In mice, a fairly short period of exercise and a short distance seems to produce results in terms of improved cognition. "Walking around the block, cooking, gardening, cleaning, and that sort of thing" significantly improved cognitive function in a group of older people, says Dr. Middleton.
- "Epidemiological studies show that long-term runners have a lower risk of neurological disease" including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's days Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of medicine at McMaster Hospital.
- Get kids out. Studies from the University of Illinois have found that "just twenty minutes of walking" before a test raises kids' scores, even if the children are otherwise unfit or overweight, says Dr. Hillman, who has done the study. Other work from his lab has shown that aerobically fit children score higher on test of complex memory than less fit youngsters.
- Japanese researchers did an experiment with loaded rats running wheels. After eight weeks, these rats had gained muscle while the rats jogging on unloaded wheels had not. The muscled rats also displayed increased levels of gene activity in the brain associated with improved brain functioning- more, in fact, than the animals that hadn't added muscle. The stronger the animals became, the better their brains worked.
- Exercise speeds the brain's production of serotonin. Abnormally low levels of serotonin have been associated with anxiety and depression. In some studies, exercise has been as or even more effective than antidepressant medications at making people feel better.
- Be patient. The stress-reducing changes in the brain induced by exercise don't happen overnight. In experiments at the University of Colorado, rats that ran for only three weeks did not show much reduction in stress-induced anxiety, but those that ran for at least six weeks did. You may not feel a magical reduction of stress after your first jog or swim. But the molecular biochemical changes will begin, Dr. Greenwood says. ANd eventually, he says, they become profound.
- Find a training partner. In another experiment with rats, scientists found that exercise did not benefit animals which were housed alone as much as animals sharing cages. Socially housed rats produced copious amounts of new brain cells when they exercised; the lonely animals did not.
- Sex can spur neurogenesis. When male rats at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute were given to "sexually receptive" females, they responded as nature intended and vigorously engaged with the girl rats. The resultant activity led to an increase in neurogenesis in their brains. Sex improve their ability to think.
