Is physical fitness important to your brain fitness?

Here is ques­tion 18 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Is phys­i­cal fit­ness important?Key Points: Exer­cise improves learn­ing through increased blood sup­ply and growth hormones.Exercise is an anti-depres­sant by reduc­ing stress and pro­mot­ing neurogenesis.Exercise pro­tects the brain from dam­age and dis­ease, as well speed­ing the recovery.Answer:Yes. Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”According to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that high­er lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ben­e­fi­cial than low­er amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none.

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I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp?

Ques­tion 15 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. I don’t want to ever retire. What can I do to remain sharp? Pro­vide your brain with reg­u­lar men­tal stim­u­la­tion that is nov­el and challenging.Maintain your social net­work for both stim­u­la­tion and stress reduction.Work out, eat well, stim­u­late your brain, and reduce chron­ic stress.Any good brain fit­ness pro­gram must pro­vide you a vari­ety of new chal­lenges over time. Stress reduc­tion is anoth­er major con­cern. Main­tain­ing your exer­cise rou­tine and social net­works will help a lot in this regard. Make social appoint­ments to go for a walk with a friend or fam­i­ly member.

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Brain Fitness Blog Carnival #1

Wel­come to the inau­gur­al edi­tion of the Brain Fit­ness Blog Car­ni­val. The tim­ing could­n’t be bet­ter  you have prob­a­bly seen the fea­tured CBS News/TIME Series on Brain Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty. Thanks to the over 40 peo­ple who sub­mit­ted posts. We have had to select the posts we enjoyed the most to help facil­i­tate an engag­ing and informed…

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The Dana Guide to Brain Health and Brain Research

Dana Press kind­ly sent us a cou­ple of books. One of them, The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Prac­ti­cal Fam­i­ly Ref­er­ence From Med­ical Experts, is our top­ic today. We are impressed by what Dana is doing to insert neu­ro­science find­ings and impli­ca­tions into the pub­lic dis­course. No big sur­prise then, to find out so much…

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Working Out All Your Muscles

Click on this link for 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.

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