New science shows that exercise does more than build muscles and prevents heart disease – it boosts brainpower and may offer hope in the battle against Breast Cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Third and fifth graders put through classic PE routines upped their math and reading scores on standard statewide tests. Growing scientific evidence is showing that exercise makes people smarter because exercise enables the growth of new brain cells and other interconnections that make the brain run faster and more efficiently. Armed with brain scanning tools and sophisticated understanding of biochemistry researchers are realizing that the mental effects of exercise are far greater than they ever thought.
Exercises seem to not only slower the ageing process or almost reverse it. When we talk of being youthful, it means that our biological age is less than the chronological age in terms of both the physical and mental state. Moreover, the good news is that the benefit of exercise has an immediate effect on the brain – there is no waiting time. However, to keep the effects you have to keep working out. The controversial point is how much is enough?
From economics 101, we learnt something important – diminishing returns. Therefore, depending on your age and status of health you have to pick a level of exercise that will keep you healthy but not injure you or make you laden and crippled at an older age.
If this research was available 20 years ago, I could have been a good research subject. I owe much of my academic achievements to exercise. I solved some of the most complex problems for myself on the run. Even now, I can recap the next article to write during a one-mile swim. However, I have found running and bicycling great for solving thorny issues – from nowhere a solution props up in the brain. Of course, there are very smart people who do not exercise, but the evidence points to the fact that they would have been smarter if they added exercise to their daily routine.
Stronger, Faster, Smarter is the research article which appeared in the Newsweek of March 26, 2007. Please go to the link above to read the full article. Having been athletic all my life, I can second what the researchers have found.
Note: Other writeups on Health, Sports and Retirement can be accessed under these category indexes: Health, Retirement,and Sports.
Comments