Working Out All Your Muscles

The Inter­na­tion­al Health, Rac­quet and Sports­club Asso­ci­a­tion (IHRSA), main asso­ci­a­tion for health and fit­ness cen­ters, pub­lished an arti­cle today titled Are You Sure Your Mem­bers are Work­ing Out ALL Their Mus­cles? writ­ten by none oth­er than our own Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Dr. Goldberg.

Here are some highlights:

  • Phys­i­cal exer­cise boosts the brain’s rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis through­out one’s life, while men­tal exer­cise increas­es the rate at which those new brain cells sur­vive and make func­tion­al con­nec­tions into your exist­ing neur­al net­works. Both phys­i­cal exer­cise and the chal­lenge from men­tal exer­cise increase the secre­tion of nerve growth fac­tor, which helps your neu­rons grow and stay healthy. The bot­tom line is that humans need both phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise for good brain health.
  • In the short term, mem­bers can expect to see improved per­for­mance (atten­tion, mem­o­ry and stress man­age­ment), as with any oth­er mus­cle. In the long term, they will notice the pre­ven­tion and delay of deficits due to aging or disease.”
  • Fur­ther­more, the effects of men­tal train­ing seem to trans­fer or gen­er­al­ize beyond the specifics of a par­tic­u­lar exer­cise. This means that peo­ple don’t just get bet­ter at the spe­cif­ic task they’re doing, but the skills actu­al­ly trans­fer to gen­er­al cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and men­tal fac­ul­ties, as mea­sured inde­pen­dent­ly from the task itself.”

At Sharp­Brains, we hope your res­o­lu­tions for 2007 include:

  1. Reg­u­lar phys­i­cal exercise
  2. Reg­u­lar men­tal exercise
  3. Good nutri­tion and lots of water
  4. Plen­ty of rest and reduced stress

2 Comments

  1. Kate on January 3, 2007 at 5:06

    Thanks for your con­tri­bu­tion to The Healthy & Fit fam­i­ly post­ed yes­ter­day here:
    http://www.babylune.com/the-eighth-healthy-fit-family-carnival/

    I’m hap­py to send traf­fic your way!

    I hope you might make the effort to be fair by link­ing back and think­ing about hosting.



  2. Alvaro on January 5, 2007 at 8:57

    Kate, thanks for your com­ment. Car­o­line linked back yesterday.

    We hope you con­tribute to our new brain fit­ness carnival!
    http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_880.html

    Regards



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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