Numeracy and literacy exercises are as effective for your brain’s health as playing, running or learning on the go. To build up your muscles you can’t simply avoid flexing them. And when it comes to your brain, a different approach can be amazingly effective. To be more precise, working on your body’s muscles can enhance activities of your grey matter.
A bunch of studies discovering unpredicted links between your metal and bodily fitness is budding from the labs. Such studies show that the yogi’s serenity and the runner’s high have optimal effects on the brain. Certain exercises can notably improve its structure in an unexpected way.
Let’s have a look at how physical activities can prepare you physically for taking mental challenges like exams, creative projects and interviews effectively.
Improves your memory – You can increase memory through physical exercise. Hippocampus – a particular part of a brain responds strappingly to aerobic exercises. Studies have found that this brain part grows significantly as you get fitter. Hippocampus is the hub of brain’s memory and learning system. Along with improving your memory, exercises can have other immediate and outstanding effects on memory formation. According to the German researchers, cycling or walking during learning helps improve any new foreign language vocabulary. But you should never push too hard as it may increase your stress level and so can scupper memory circuits.
Ensures better concentration – Besides, making memory stronger, exercises help you concentrate and stay on your tasks. A survey conducted on school pupils has shown that interspersing lessons with a 20 minute aerobics exercise session can improve attention spine to a great extent. As they get fitter, their executive control has also improved. A regular aerobic session helps you become adept at multitasking, ignoring distractions, holding and manipulating data in their minds. So, physical exercise is a must for fitness for your brain.
Makes mental health better – Bouts of physical activities have potent and proven impacts on your mood. The feeling of elation that you can have with the runner’s high is real, indeed, but it’s not only because of the endorphin rush. Yoga also helps you with your stress. It teaches command over your movements and breathing, and this turns on your body’s relaxation response. Exercising – both resistance and aerobic - is a great way to combat depression. It’s much more effective than any antidepressant medication.
Slows down cognitive decline – Staying physically fit keeps the brain hale and hearty. This is even truer for the elderly people. There is a concrete link between physical fitness and cognitive preservation. Only 30 minutes of brisk walking at least thrice a week effectively fends off mental wear and tear. It delays onset of dementia. A session of weightlifting twice a week can lower neurological symptoms significantly. Dancing helps to restore and revive ageing brain and bolster cognitive well being in elders.
Though not confirmed, increased blood circulation to the brain, extension of brain’s network of blood vessels and upward surge of growth hormones are primarily responsible for better brain functionality and growth of neurons.
Angelina is professional content writer and blogger.