How is exercise good for the brain?

Exercise is not only important for your heart, lungs, and muscles, but also for your brain. Research shows that exercise can help keep your mind sharp, promotes feelings of alertness and well-being, and wards off depression and anxiety. Start with 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise 5 days a week, such as walking, swimming, cycling, yoga, tai chi or Pilates. In addition, strength-training exercises can give your brain a boost. For an even greater mental boost try incorporating exercises in multiple directions using intricate movement patterns.

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that certain types of dance, particularly with routines to learn and remember, may help prevent age-onset memory loss and diseases like Alzheimer’s. “…. cognitive activity may stave off dementia by increasing a person's "cognitive reserve."

And a study conducted at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, says activities that combined mental and social as well as physical stimulation offered the greatest protection against dementia.
                                               
Activity is the active word. Be physically active, mentally active and socially active, preferably all at once. Taking a cardio dance class or getting together with friends to do a cardio dance DVD is a good place to start. And to this day, when I start my cardio dance class I say, “It’s time to workout our hearts and minds!”

Physical exercise is like a natural wonder drug for your brain and body. It gets your heart to pump life-giving blood into your brain, supplying more oxygen, glucose and nutrients that your brain needs to function at its best. The benefits of exercise are tremendous:

• it encourages the growth of new brain cells
• it enhances cognitive ability
• it improves your mood, calms anxiety, and helps alleviate depression
• it fends off cognitive decline while it helps prevent, delay, and lessen the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
• it enhances the ability of insulin to prevent high blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of diabetes
• it burns fat
• it helps ward off osteoporosis, breast cancer, and colon cancer
• it improves muscle tone and endurance, which lowers the risk of fall accidents
• it reduces the symptoms of ADD
• it improves sleep
• it can help women better cope with hormonal issues
• it reduces the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease.

That’s a lot of benefit just for putting aside an hour four or more times a week to get your body moving. Plus, once you get over any initial resistance, it feels great. And those positive feelings seem to spill over into other areas of your life, where you start making healthier choices. People who are more physically active are also more likely to eat brain-healthy foods, get more and better quality sleep, seek out health-minded social support systems and just take better care of themselves in general.

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It's no surprise that exercise is good for your heart, but it's also an elixir for your mind. It seems that more intense exercise preserves neurocognitive function by decreasing the expression of the Apo-E4 gene to help clear the beta-amyloid plaque that gunks up your power lines. Exercise has also been correlated with increased telomere length.

My suggestion for a brain-boosting workout: Once or twice a week, choose an exercise that requires not only your body to work but also your mind, such as Bikram yoga or a game of singles tennis. The sports or exercises that engage you in the moment can really help clear your mind at the same time.