Skip to main content

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

 WATCH HERE>>>

              Exercise, Stress, and the Brain

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your Massage !

Popular posts from this blog

The importance of health and fitness

You know, so many people kick off the new year wanting to get healthy, wanting to get in shape. Let's talk about the value of that.  A lot of people think they really understand, but physical fitness, that health, it is so important for longevity of life. Talk about that. Absolutely. So obviously, everybody wants to be in shape. And, uh, the new year is a great way to kind of kick-off that health and wellness for yourself. Uh, really, at the end of the day, it's about just consistent movement, uh, trying to be consistent, find the things that you enjoy doing, and do those often. Um, this is a great opportunity to kind of join, uh, some five K's that are coming up.  Uh, get into a good routine fitness program. Um, consistency is the key to all of it, in my opinion. And then proper progression. A lot of people want those results right away. Uh, and so they go too hard, too fast, and then come February, March, time frame, they've already fizzled out. So my advice to most i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Best Exercises for Overall Health & Longevity

How long do you and will we spend from now until you're 90 talking about this?  Well, there's a risk of that. So let's start with a couple of the things that you've already highlighted. So smoking, how much does smoking increase your risk of all-cause mortality? And the reason we like to talk about what's called ACM or all-cause mortality is it's really agnostic to how you die. And that doesn't always make sense. I mean, if you're talking about a very specific intervention, like an, uh, anticancer therapeutic, you really care about cancer-specific mortality or heart-specific mortality. But when we talk about these sorts of broad things, we like to talk about ACM. So using smoking, smoking is approximately a 40% increase in the risk of ACM.  What does that translate to?  And, um, that means I'm shortening my life by 40%? No, it means at any point in time, there's a 40% greater risk that you're going to die relative to a nonsmoker and an ever-s...
1 comment
Read more

How to improve your heart and lung functioning with these simple exercises ?

We are Noble Heart Hospital and today we are going to tell you what are the important cardiovascular exercises for the proper functioning of the heart and lungs, which everybody should do every day. The heart and lungs work together to make sure the body has the oxygen rich blood it needs to function properly.  That's why it becomes very important for us to take care of these vital organs. If you are a beginner, the most basic exercise will be walking. Walking should be an important part of your life because it not only increases your stamina, but also helps you in losing fat. If you are already good at walking or jogging, then you must elevate your potential by running on the stairs, doing rope.  Skipping every day for five minutes will also improve your heart and lung functioning. And now is the final exercise. We will suggest you to do burpees every day. This exercise includes a small jump which is followed by a pushup.  And it is one of the best exercises to improve y...
1 comment
Read more