Effects of Exercise & Healthy Brain

Thinking of a New Year's resolution to start in 2020? Why not start the year off with Exercise! If you're only exercising to tone your muscles, "Think!" again. This Mayo Clinic study found that exercise also slows down the aging process that's happening in your brain!

Brain function

It's been known that when brain tissue begins to shrink, brain function also declines. This unfortunate reality can vary between individuals, although experts in the field of Neuroscience suggest that the brain shrinks when we’re in our 30s or 40s, with the rate of shrinkage increasing around age 60. This loss of volume in the brain reduces the number of neurons and connections or synapse, responsible for sending messages to other neurons. Therefore, when messages don't reach neurons specific brain functions are affected.

The goals of slowing down brain aging are to lessen the intensity, duration, and presence of "shrinking" brain tissue or gray matter. Gray matter is the energy storage where most of the neurons are stored and are responsible for decision making, learning, memory, and self-control. Simply, if you want to maintain a healthy brain you don't want to lose too much gray matter.

But what can you do to keep as much gray matter inside your brain? In a recent Mayo Clinic study, researchers found evidence that exercise not only improves physical functioning but also slow aging in the brain. Thus, conditioning our bodies through physical exercise appears to benefit our brain tissues by maintaining an ideal amount of gray matter.

If you plan to wait a while or perhaps you feel that's it's "too late", maybe you should re-Think that. The holidays have not been forgiving on our waist sizes and losing weight this time of year is next to impossible. But what better time to get back in shape than the New Year! Remember that when you exercise to stay in shape, you're doing it to stay healthy in both body AND mind.