Brain exercisesEffecting your brain with physical exerciseEffecting your body with brain exercisesLearn how brain exercises improve your health, even increase muscle & strength with brain exercises. Learn how the benefits of exercise include improving thinking & memory.
Click to go to our page on free Brain Gym Exercises a system developed by Dr. Carla Hannaford, a neurophysiologist and educator
Click for our page on incredibly easy exercises for the brain you can do right now.
Research shows that you can improve thinking skills & memory with physical exercise. Even more surprisingly, you can improve the health & the appearance of your body by simply thinking about it.
What do brain improvement exercises have to do with health? Plenty.
In fact the relationship between exercises for the brain & physical health is very interesting.
Arnold Shwarzenegger builds muscle by thinking
I thought Arnold’s contention was interesting but scientifically impossible. Guess what. He was right. He probably got an edge on opponents by linking his mind (brain) & body. Smart guy, that Arnold.
Research has shown the connection between the brain & body to be quite intimate with the brain influencing the body & the body affecting the brain. It might go without saying that you can train the brain to effect the brain & you can force your body to effect your body. The brain (mind) effects the brain (mind)Exercise your brain & it actually develops further. Brain improvement exercises also stall cognitive decline.
This assertion is not very controversial except that it does encourage us to work against forces which rob us of memory & cognitive skills. It also warns us to continue to exercise our brain or we will feel mental decline sooner & more seriously than those who engage their brains throughout their lives. The body effects the brain (mind)Yes, the benefits of exercise include sharpening your brain. Exercise makes the brain function better.
Research shows that exercise makes you think faster & allows you to learn more difficult material.
So, for example, it may be better to throw in a few weekly walks than to add repeated study sessions or engage in umpteenth brain exercises if you are trying to hack integral calculus or are trying to come up with an inspiring address for the Theosophical Society.
Studies show that walking increases blood circulation & helps oxygenate cells. These in turn help your brain function better. Also, walking doesn’t use up valuable oxygen & glucose supplies that the brain needs to work. Click for more walking exercise.
Women who walked were found to improve memory. This is especially helpful information as we age & start to notice our memory slipping a bit. Just get into walking.
Research also shows that if you work out a little harder the effects start to impact you at the cellular level. For example, running boosts the number & efficiency of brain cells. This is like turning back time.
The benefits of exercise include protecting brain functioning as you age. Some of the illnesses associated with aging may be delayed or avoided. For example, exercise may help you prevent Alzheimer’s.
Other studies have found that muscle activity (ie exercise) helps keep active the brain receptors needed to keep memory & cognitive abilities humming at high levels. If activity stops, the receptors are lost. Regain activity and the receptors come back. That might be why many people find they think better, clearer while taking a walk.
Finally, exercise helps improve or maintain mental health. Exercise helps you ward off or manage anxiety, felt stress, insomnia & depression. This finding is another example of how physical activity affects mental functioning since our emotional functioning based in our brains. Click for more on exercise for mental health. The brain (mind) effects the body
Many studies & casual observations have led us to conclude that we can effect our health, our bodies, with the contents of our brain, our thoughts & willful brain exercises.
Many studies have pointed to the beneficial effects of meditative activities & stress relieving thoughts on our bodies.
Nothing surprising about brain improvement exercises impacting our bodies in some way.
What is surprising is how widespread the effects are of exercising your brain are on the body. Persons engaged in basic brain exercises, like meditation, have awed us with their ability to seemingly control automatic processes like heart beat & blood pressure. Yoga adepts have put on numerous demonstrations of this phenomenon.
But Schwarzenneger’s assertion has been put to the test at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Guess what happened?
Subjects who simply thought about exercising a particular muscle saw that muscle strengthened compared to the group who engaged in no imaginary exercises over many weeks.
Subjects brain scans showed greater activity & growth in the areas that were related to the muscles subjects imagined exercising. That is, the brain (thinking) effected the brain’s very structure. This finding really is a WOW! in mind-body research.
Coming in the next few days are our pages on how to apply the research on brain exercises to your own life. For now, keep exercising! If you liked our page on brain exercises & want to get our helpful info every month, subscribe to our free monthly newsletter: HEALTHY WORLD DIGEST You'll receive anywhere from 5 - 10 healthy “nuggets” of information to get you feeling & looking your best. Just fill in our brief eZine subscription form & start to take charge of your life easily, today, right now. We promise. Click 2 go from brain exercises 2 Home |
