The Brain Changing Benefits of Exercise

52 IDEAS WORTH SHARING # 13

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Special NOTE: If you have Alzheimer's or Dementia in your family, you need to read, watch and share this. Familial Alzheimer’s Disease accounts for only 2-3% of Alzheimer's cases world wide. The other 97% is lifestyle related which is also inherited. Happy to share research findings in the comments below.

Main Idea: What if you could do something right now that would protect your brain from Alzheimer's and Dementia? Would you do it?

What we are talking about are the physical affects of simply moving your body that have immediate, long-lasting and protective benefits for your brain. What Dr. Suzuki set out to understand is the underlying science that demonstrates why exercise is the most important thing you can do for your brain.

It all starts with the hippocampus. How is it possible that this mass of tissue can form a memory based on an experience that can last an entire lifetime? Science shows that brief bursts of electrical activity is how neurons communicate with each other. Those brief bursts either allow us to form a new memory or not.

Through her research, she discovered the brain changing effects of exercise. At the time of her discovery, she was becoming known in her field for memory work. Scientifically, everything was going great until she realized something. She was alone in her work. She had no social life and she wasn't moving her body throughout the day. She had gained 25 pounds and she was miserable.

After an ah-ha moment, she decided to join a gym as many people do and what she discovered was how good she felt after exercising and how the ripple effect of exercise lasted throughout her day.

As a neuroscientist, she had never thought about connecting the dots between exercise and memory, so she did what came naturally and looked at the available research about the effects of exercise and the brain. What she found was a growing body of literature that was confirming everything she was experiencing in herself. Better Mood, energy, memory and attention. This discovery led her to completely shift her research focus and she has now come to the following conclusion:

Exercise is the most trans formative thing that you can do for your brain today for the following 3 reasons:

1. Exercise has immediate effects on your brain by releasing neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline which enhances your mood.
2. Your focus improvement will last for at least two hours after exercise.
3. Exercise improves your reaction times.

These are the short term effects of exercise but in order to get the long lasting effects, you need to make exercise a regular if not daily habit. Daily exercise actually changes the brains anatomy, physiology and function.

How?

1. Daily aerobic exercise actually creates brand new brain cells in the hippocampus which increases its volume, as well as improves long-term memory.
2. Long term exercise improves attention function.
3. You get long lasting increases in good mood neurotransmitters.

But the most trans formative thing that exercise will do is increase it's protective effects on your brain.

Think of the brain like a muscle. The more you work out on a regular basis, the bigger the muscle gets. Your hippocampus and prefrontal cortex react the same way.

Why is this important? Because the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are the two areas of your brain that are most susceptible to neuro degenerative diseases and normal cognitive decline due to aging. "We're not saying that with increased exercise over a lifetime that we are going to cure Alzheimer's and Dementia. What we are saying is that with exercise you can create the strongest, biggest hippocampus and prefrontal cortex so that it takes longer for these diseases to actually have any effect."

Exercise is like a supercharged 401K for your brain!

The good news is that you don't have to be a triathlete to get these effects (boo), but you do need to exercise 3-4 times a week aerobically for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Exercise will protect your brain from INCURABLE DISEASES and it will change the trajectory of your life for the better.

For those of you not familiar with my story, 12 years ago at the age of 40, I took this advice to the extreme becoming an Ironman triathlete, learning to train at a heart rate in the aerobic zone that promoted the most Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factors (BDNF). I have a long history of Alzheimer's and Dementia in my family. My father passed away last year at 74 due to complications from this disease but truthfully, we lost him 10 years earlier before he entered the nursing home.

First he lost his drivers license, then he lost his motor skills, then he lost his speech, then he lost all dignity and finally, he lost his battle with pneumonia. My father was fit, but not aerobically fit. I wonder if he had invested more time exercising in the aerobic zone, if that would have made a difference? This is the hope that I cling to and why I think that Growth Mindsets are so important. Being on top of the science matters.

The last thing I can vividly remember my fathers neurologist saying to me was "crosswords are for entertainment, exercise is brain food".

Dave Buzanko is a Growth Mindset Influencer helping people move from Fixed to Growth Mindsets.