Exercise, Stress, and the Brain

 Exercise is interesting in terms of its effects on the brain because it works in about four or five different ways. Uh, one of the most obvious ways is blood flow. And so if you, uh, get your heart working, your brain's going to be filled with oxygen-rich blood and nutrients. So that's the main way that we thought it would help. The other way that's sort of interesting, uh, is it's been thought that exercise produces, uh, new neurons. 

And so exercise induces the production of growth factors, one called BDNF, and it actually stimulates the production of new brain cells. Now, when I was in school 20 years ago, we were told, you can't get any new brain cells. So when you're born, that's your lot. You're not going to make any more. But more recently, we found that exercise, uh, is a really good way of stimulating brain cell production. And some of these are functional. 

And so, um, just this notion that something that you can do can generate new brain cells is a really great, uh, uh, thing to think about. So we were wondering why exercise helps the brain. And one theory is it just reduces stress. So maybe it's not that blood is coming to the brain. Maybe you're less stressed. And that was something that imaging allowed us to test. And so we scanned a whole lot of people with high Cortisol levels. 

So if you're stressed, if you're angry about something, or even if you're stuck in traffic, your cortisol levels can be very high. One of the things we found is that the people with high, uh, Cortisol levels lost brain tissue faster. Well, that's a serious problem. So as soon as you know that's true, you can look at ways of reducing your Cortisol. And so that's a very easy thing to do. I mean, we can get less stressed by, um, exercising, walking, taking breaks. 

So imaging established a physical connection between something in your blood, the cortisol, that's a sign of stress and actual physical changes in the brain. And that's very useful to know. Take care of your brain. And, uh, there's a lot of ways we know that you can take care of your brain. You can eat a good diet, uh, you can exercise, you can reduce stress.

 Um, you can make sure you're well-educated. And these things just build, build up a sort of mental bank account for the future. And so, even though it seems like, uh, work is hard, you're building a store of brain connections that you'll need for the rest of your life. THANK YOU FOR READING

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              Exercise, Stress, and the Brain