Everyone knows that it is important to exercise. Exercise has been known to prevent many diseases, such as obesity, heart disease, depression, and diabetes.
The American Diabetes Association recommends that diabetics get 150 minutes of exercise per week, which becomes about 30 minutes of exercise, five days a week. This is a good rule of thumb, even for nondiabetics.
But, did you know that exercise could affect not only the health of the body but the health of the brain as well?
Your brain needs you to exercise for just as much as the body needs you to exercise.
Why?
We’ll get into that in this report and you will see just how much the brain benefits from exercise.
The Importance of Keeping the Brain Healthy
As we age, the brain needs a little more tender loving care. As time goes on, the brain doesn’t function as sharply when compared to those who are younger. While we become wiser as we age, our memory processes aren’t as sharp as that of young people so we need to do things that can maintain the health of the brain.
There are many ways to keep the brain healthy. There are brain-healthy foods that are high in antioxidants and other substances that keep the brain healthy as we age. As it turns out, exercise is another way to keep the brain healthy. In this report, you’ll see the many ways that exercise is beneficial to the brain.
20 Ways Exercise Benefits the Brain
So how exactly does exercise benefit the brain? Here are 20 ways that exercise is beneficial to the brain:
1 – Promotes Healthy Eating Habits
When we exercise, we stimulate areas of the brain associated with getting nutrition for the brain. You can choose to eat junk food to provide calories for exercising the brain or you can choose healthy foods. You’ll find, however, that eating healthy foods makes exercised easier and builds muscle mass better than eating junk foods. Eating healthy and exercise together go toward keeping the brain healthy through giving the brain adequate nutrients and exercising for better brain health.
There is nothing that says that we automatically choose to eat healthy when we exercise. It’s ultimately up to the person exercising to recognize that the best way to feed an exercising body is to eat healthy foods. This provides adequate nutrition for the brain to help us function on a day-to-day basis.
2 – Increases Productivity
Exercise allows us to stimulate brain cells involved in productivity. While it might seem that exercise takes us away from what we’re doing so that it actually decreases productivity, exactly the opposite is true. You can use your thirty minutes of exercise a day to recharge your brain batteries so you become more productive after you have finished exercising.
The brain is essentially a muscle that needs exercising like any other muscle of the body. Instead of producing physical strength, exercise enhances mental strength so that we are better able to cognitively function throughout the day. So, while 30 minutes of exercise does indeed temporarily decrease productivity, we are more productive after exercising so that it more than makes up for the short time we spend exercising.
3 – Prevents Sitting Disease
Sitting disease is essentially the same thing as living a sedentary lifestyle. Millions of Americans suffer from “sitting disease” because they don’t exercise at all and spend much of their days sitting at a desk, playing on the computer, doing paperwork, reading, or watching television. This leads to all sorts of other health problems.
“Sitting disease” essentially causes a number of secondary health problems. They include obesity, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and peripheral vascular disease. The more we are sedentary, the less our metabolic rate is and the more chances we have to develop the diseases listed above.
Exercise prevents the complications of sitting all the time. All it takes is the ability to get off the couch or chair and getting out there, exercising our body and exercising our brain. Both brain and body thrive on the benefits that only exercise can bring.
4 – Boosts Creativity
Exercise gives us a chance to think about things without the interference of our day-to-day activities. While we are exercising, we have a chance to let down our mental guard a bit so that our creative juices can be brought forth. Many people have their best ideas while exercising.
Exercise also enhances the blood flow to the brain, which, in turn, boosts creativity. When all of the brain’s structures receive a great deal of circulation, the brain is turned on to new ideas and new ways of doing things that just don’t come up when the brain is allowed to stagnate.
The only way we can get extra oxygen to the brain is to increase the circulation. The only way we can increase the circulation to the brain is to exercise. When we exercise, we use the brain as a whole, which increases creativity and helps us think better.
5 – Boosts Concentration and Focus
Most people don’t exercise without increasing focus, at least during the time of exercising. We use our brain to concentrate on our exercising and to focus on putting one foot in front of the other (in walking or running) or put one hand over the other (in swimming). These things at least temporarily enhance concentration and focus.
There is evidence that exercise improves concentration and focus even after we have finished our exercise program. For hours after exercising, the brain has an increased blood flow to its tissues and this enhances our ability to think, concentrate, and focus. Just thirty minutes per day exercising can provide us with an entire day’s worth of enhanced concentration and focus.
6 – Increases Cognitive Flexibility
What is cognitive flexibility? Cognitive flexibility is the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different things at the same time, and to think about many different concepts simultaneously. Exercise can help improve this essential brain function.
When we exercise, it increases the blood flow to the brain, which in turn allows the brain to be able to multitask better. We turn on more parts of the brain so that we can think about multiple things at the same time. We essential turn on more neurons so that we can allow ourselves to use the brain to the best of its abilities—being more flexible to think about and process many different brain processes.
7 – Sharpens Short Term Memory
Both long and short-term memory depends on the adequate functioning of the hippocampus. When we exercise, we improve the blood flow to the hippocampus so that we have a better short-term memory. Exercise allows us to remember numbers better and helps us retain short-term memories that can later be turned into long-term memories.
There have been studies on the effect of exercise on short-term memory. When we exercise, we can better remember lists of items and the steps of a task better than when we try to do the same things as sedentary beings. There seems to be something found in exercise that improves the functionality of the hippocampus so that short-term memory is enhanced.
It may simply be that the hippocampus is better oxygenated during exercise, which helps short-term memory. It may also be that the brain’s neurotransmitters work better while exercising. Either way, the end result is better short-term memory and the Improvement in the ability to turn short-term memory into long-term memory.
8 – Promotes Long Term Memory Health
As mentioned, both long-term memory and short-term memory seem to be enhanced by exercise. It all goes back to exercising and its effect on the hippocampus, which is the brain structure that turns short-term memory into long-term memory.
Exercise enhances the blood flow to the hippocampus and improves the flow of neurotransmitters in the hippocampus so that we are better able to take pieces of short-term memory and turn them into long-term memory. During this process, the memories are taken from temporary storage and are moved to parts of the brain that store long-term memory. Exercise enhances this process so that our long-term memory health is improved.
9 – Makes You Think Faster
Exercise increases the oxygenation to the brain by increasing the blood flow to the brain. When the brain has a lot of blood flow and oxygen, you can think faster. Things that you stumble on or forget are better brought to the forefront so that your thinking processes work better.
Have you heard the phrase “think fast on your feet”? This isn’t just a phrase but is based on the fact that you truly do think faster on your feet. Exercise is one way of being able to process facts in the brain faster through an enhancement of the cognitive processes in the brain. The brain needs the added circulation brought on by exercise in order to think its fastest and process material with efficiency.
10 – Improves Your Executive Functions
The executive functions of the brain are a collection of cognitive (thinking) processes – including inhibitory control, attentional control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory, as well as problem solving, reasoning, and planning. These things are essential for the cognitive control of our behavior. They involve the selection and adequate monitoring behaviors that aid in the attainment of specific goals.
Your executive functions are enhanced when you exercise. No one knows exactly how the executive functions of the brain are enhanced by exercise. It may have something to do with improving blood flow and oxygenation to the brain. It may also have something to do with improving the transport of neurotransmitters between synapses so that we think faster and use our executive functions to the best of our ability.
11 – Promotes Willpower
Let’s face it. It takes willpower to get through a strenuous exercise program. Most people don’t just lazily go through exercise, stopping when it seems too difficult to continue. Exercise causes us to use our willpower to get past the ‘wall” in exercise that tries to interfere with the attainment of an exercise goal.
This enhancement of willpower carries forth in the rest of our daily lives. We can use our enhanced willpower to get through other difficult tasks of the day that aren’t directly related to exercise. Exercise teaches us that we have willpower and we use that willpower in other parts of our lives to get non-exercise-related tasks done more quickly and with better efficiency.
12 – Improves Your Mood
There have been many studies showing an increase in mood during exercise. Some of this is just the nature of exercise. If we like what we are doing, we have a better mood and a better sense of well-being. It also may be due to the way exercise affects the neurotransmitters of the brain.
Neurotransmitters directly related to mood, such as norepinephrine and serotonin are naturally increased when we exercise. Endorphins are released during exercise as well. Endorphins are the “feel good” neurotransmitters that allow us to feel better and to experience pain to a lesser degree. It appears that many neurotransmitters associated with an improved mood are enhanced during exercise.
13 – Boosts Self-Esteem
Exercise allows us to do things that we don’t think we can do. Whenever we reach a milestone in our exercise program that we thought we couldn’t overcome, we feel a better sense of self-esteem. In a very real way, our accomplishments in exercise help us feel better about ourselves and we see that this can carry through in other aspects of our lives.
Exercise also causes a release of endorphins, which automatically increase our self-esteem and sense of well-being. Endorphins are neurochemicals released in various parts of the brain and affect those receptors in the brain that are associated with euphoria and better self-esteem. When we achieve our exercise goals, we are better able to see ourselves as competent and worthy.
14 – Boosts Happiness
People who regularly exercise score better on objective and subjective measures of happiness. It probably has to do with increased endorphins that help us feel better about ourselves. When we exercise, the increased endorphins help improve our mood and lend a helping hand to those parts of the brain that cause sadness. This turns sad feelings into much happier ones.
When we exercise with others, this sense of happiness is even more enhanced. Exercising with an exercise buddy improves friendships and relationships. When we have solid relationships, we tend to be happier. This is why many experts recommend that we exercise with another person who can help us get over the strain of exercising and can help motivate us. As the relationships grow and develop, we feel automatically happier.
15 – Increases Resilience to Stress
Exercise is perhaps the best stress reliever we can undertake. Multiple research studies point toward aerobic exercising as a potent stress-reliever. Even anaerobic exercise (weight lifting, for example) can improve our stress levels. While lifting weights or do an aerobic exercise, we release neurochemicals that help balance the stress in our lives.
There are some types of exercise that reduce stress better than others do. Exercises like tai chi, yoga, and qi gong are ancient Asian forms of exercise that have been scientifically proven to reduce the amount of stress in our lives. This isn’t to say, however, that you can’t get adequate stress reduction from exercising in any capacity. Any exercise you can do will help decrease stress and will make you more resilient to the stresses of everyday living.
16 – Slows Brain Atrophy
The brain naturally atrophies with disuse and age so we need to do things to counteract this natural process. Exercise is one way to do that. Research has shown that people who get regular exercise have healthier brains that are less atrophic than people who do not exercise.
Exactly how exercise impacts brain atrophy isn’t completely clear. It may have to do with improving the blood supply to the brain or to increasing the number and type of synapses in the brain. Brain cells may live longer under conditions of improved oxygenation so that there is less atrophy in the brain. Brain cells may be able to age more gracefully when we exercise so, as age approaches, we have a lesser degree of age-related atrophy.
17 – Promotes the Birth of New Brain Cells
Some people believe that we are born with all of the brain cells we are ever going to have yet this isn’t true. Exercise has been shown to increase the number of brain cells and the number of synapses connected between cells of the brain. By increasing brain cell number, our “brain power” increases and it simply makes us smarter.
Think of exercising building new brain cells as similar to increasing muscle mass during exercise. Our bodies know when to create new cells during exercise. Just as muscle cells are created in the exercise process, so are brain cells. The added brain cells make synapses with other brain cells inside the brain so that we think faster and have better memories.
18 – Lowers Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
Study after study have shown us that people who exercise have a decreased chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia related to getting older. Exactly how exercise does this isn’t yet clear. It may have something to do with increasing brain cells or to increasing the circulation in the brain so that fewer brain cells die.
For whatever reason, the relationship between exercise and dementia prevention is well established. If you want to avoid any age-related dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease, you need to get out there and exercise. Do it while you’re young and you’ll have a better benefit but if that time of your life has passed, it is perfectly okay to start an exercise program as an older person in order to keep your brain as sharp as it can be.
19 – Improves Cognitive Performance
Cognitive performance is a fancy way of defining your thinking processes. Thinking involves memory, thoughts, and related brain activities that work together to make us smarter. Exercise can enhance these skills so that you perform better on tests that measure cognition.
This advantage seems to last past the point in time when the exercise is over. This means that you don’t just have enhanced cognitive performance when you are exercising. Even after exercise, the brain’s circulation is enhanced and the neurotransmitters are increased so that you can think better and perform better on tests of cognitive performance.
The next time you have a test to take or a task to do that requires a lot of thinking, instead of trying to cram information into your head, take the time instead to exercise for a half hour. You’ll find that all of your cognitive processes are enhanced and that you have better thinking skills that weren’t there before you exercised. You’ll do better on your test simply by exercising.
20 – Fights and Prevents Depression
Exercise increases the level of neurotransmitters in the brain that actively fight off depression and improve mood. This includes endorphins, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Low levels of these neurotransmitters are what is behind the development of depression in the first place.
If you are already depressed, exercise can help fight that depression. Research has shown that depressed people who exercise have an improvement in their depression even if they don’t undergo psychotherapy or take antidepressants. Exercise alone can affect the neurotransmitters of the brain so that depression can be lifted just by using your muscles.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are many benefits to the brain that occur just by exercising. Exercise has a positive effect on brain functioning in many ways. It increases the endorphins in the brain and body so that we naturally have a better mood and a greater self-esteem.
It improves circulation to the brain so that we can have better cognitive processes and improved memory. It also increases the levels of neurotransmitters responsible for the resolution and prevention of depression and anxiety.
Therefore, the next time you want to improve your brain power, get out there and exercise. Just a half hour a day for 5-7 days a week will effectively improve many aspects of brain function and you will have the added advantage of being fitter so you can live longer and healthier overall.
