There are a lot of great reasons why you should be physically active and exercise regularly. The big ones include lessening the odds of developing diseases such as heart disease, stroke as well as diabetes.
Perhaps you would like to lose weight, reduce your blood pressure, avoid depression, or just look better. Here’s an extra one, which particularly applies to those of us experiencing decreased memory capacity with comes with age: exercise alters the brain in which that protect memory as well as thinking skills.
How Exercise Benefits Your Brain
There are a lot of different ways in which exercise can improve brain and cognitive health.
Aerobic exercise (which is also known as cardiovascular exercise) increases your heart rate as well as blood flow to your brain. This increased heart rate will be accompanied by harder and faster breathing depending on the intensity of your workout.
As your increased breathing pumps more oxygen into your bloodstream, more oxygen is delivered to your brain. This leads to neurogenesis – or the production of neurons – in certain parts of your brain that control memory and thinking. Neurogenesis increases brain volume and this cognitive reserve is believed to help buffer against the effects of dementia.
In addition, exercise helps memory as well as thinking through both direct in addition to indirect means. The advantages of exercise come straight from its ability to decrease insulin resistance as well as reduce inflammation. Exercise also helps with stimulating the release of growth factors. These are chemicals in the brain which have an influence on the health of brain cells, the increase in the number of new blood vessels in the brain, and even the richness and survival of new brain cells.
Indirectly, exercise enhances mood and sleep in addition to lessening stress and anxiety. Problems in these areas often cause – or contribute to – cognitive impairment.
Exercise Lessens Brain Signs Of Ageing
Many significant studies suggest staying active as well as fit throughout life lowers the risk of memory problems as you age.
For instance, a recent project tracked more than 1 000 Swedish women over a period of four decades. It was found that for those judged to have “high” levels of cardiovascular fitness upon entering the study—as evaluated by the maximum workload they could handle on a stationary cycle machine prior to exhaustion—the onset of dementia was delayed, on average, by 9.5 years as compared to those with “medium” levels of fitness.
Moreover, exercise gives hope to individuals with a rare genetic mutation that programs them for early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Even though exercise cannot entirely counteract their genetic susceptibility, people who exercised for at least two hours per week had better cognitive outcomes compared to those who did not.
It’s very important to concentrate on the type of exercise that you do if your goal is to maximise your cognitive health. A multi-component routine – which is focused on balance, flexibility as well as aerobic fitness – is better than focusing on merely one type of exercise. For instance, tai chi has been touted as an example of an all-encompassing exercise routine which significantly enhances cognition.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
Learning about exercise and how it affects your health is a lifelong journey that everyone needs to be on. Start your journey now by becoming a personal trainer with us and our Personal Training Diploma. For more information, please follow this link.
