Science has now proven the direct link between physical health and mental alertness. New research from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois has definitively proven the link between the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower.
The new study, outlined in an article in the New York Times Magazine, used sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons — and the makeup of brain matter itself — scientists in just the past few months have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility.
Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does.
Why would exercise build brainpower in ways that thinking might not? The brain, like all muscles and organs, is a tissue, and its function declines with underuse and age. Beginning in our late 20s, most of us will lose about 1 percent annually of the volume of the hippocampus, a key portion of the brain related to memory and certain types of learning.
Exercise though seems to slow or reverse the brain’s physical decay, much as it does with muscles.
Read the entire article here—your mental health might depend on it!
