Exercise can keep you from losing your mind

kimmieey

Beef Up Your Brain: Exercise use can keep you from losing your mind
By: Ellen Warren (Chicago Tribune)

Its not news that we should exercise. We know it, but we don't do it. Its so hard to get started and harder still to keep at it. Its so easy to come up with excuses.

But Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Ratey thinks he has the nudge you need to get moving. Its not six-pack abs or thinner thighs.

Its far more important and fundamental: "Exercise keeps your brain from eroding," he says.

"Exercise is the one thing we've proven again and again that prevents the ravaging of aging on our brain," and that's " one thing people are still afraid of."

Ratey is trying to spread the word through lectures, books ("Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain") and a website call (sparklife.org).

Other hazard of a sedentary life--obesity and Type 2 diabetes--have lost the fear factor.

"People aren't afraid of diabetes. People aren't afraid of obesity." They think "we'll get pills," he said, "But they are (still) afraid of losing their minds."

Ratey points out that a recent Mayo Clinic review of more than 2,000 scientific papers concluded that exercise is "the one thing you can do to prevent the inset of cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease."

And for those who really detest the idea of exercise, Ratey said, "This might be the clincher. ... You get the most band for your buck if you haven't been exercising. The biggest changes are seen there."

By changes he means, "improved intellectual capacity along with what we call emotional regulation--if you're sour, you get a little happy; if your anxious, you get a little less stressed and anxiety-driven."

And this is true of kids too, who learn better and get higher teat scores if they exercise regularly.
The more intensity and time spent, the bigger the payoff.

"If you exercise 3-6 months on a regular basis, your brain actually grows," Ratey said.

December 2011 Macon Telegraph