"Exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of mood, memory, and learning," says Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Ratey, author of the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.
"Even 10 minutes of activity changes your brain."
If you need some further inspiration & motivation to invigorate you to get your muscles moving, here are five ways that exercise can supercharge your brainpower:
1. It reverses the detrimental effects of stress.
a.) by boosting levels of "soothing" brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.
b.) and even more fascinating, though, is that exercise may actually work on a cellular level to reverse stress's toll on our aging process, according to a recent study from the University of California at San Francisco. The researchers found that stressed-out women who exercised vigorously for just 15 minutes/day had cells that showed fewer signs of aging compared to women who were stressed and not active.
c.) Working out also helps keep us from stagnating on 'bad-thoughts' & negative feeling: simply by altering blood flow to those areas in the brain involved in triggering us to relive these stressful thoughts again and again.
2. It lifts depression.
a.) Research highlights that exercise reduces symptoms of depression as effectively as antidepressants.
b.) Exercise has been found to stimulate the growth of neurons in certain brain regions damaged during depression.
C.) exercise also boosts the production of brain molecules that improve connections between nerve cells, thereby acting as a natural antidepressant.
3. It improves learning.
a.) Exercise increases the level of brain chemicals called growth factors that help make new brain cells and establish new connections between brain cells to help us learn.
b.) The more complex the exercise, eg. playing tennis or getting new 'dance-moves'
c.) also boosting attention & concentration skills
4. It builds self-esteem and improves body image.
a.) PS. You don't need to radically change your body shape to get a confidence surge from exercise.
b.) Simply improving in any small arenas will boost your self-image & esteem
5. It leaves you feeling euphoric/juiced-up.
a.) Yeah, the "exercise high" really does exist as long as you go at 'benefit intensity' (enough intensity to make the magic happen)
Get those muscles moving
Feel Juiced-Up
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