Keeping Your Cognitive Abilities in Top Form

On the Psychcentral web site, is an excellent article, titled "Forgo the Brain Training, Drugs, Vitamins & Meditation and Just Get Some Exercise" on how to keep your cognitive abilities in tip top shape. I found the same recommendation in the book, "Brain Rules" by John Medina, which is to physically exercise to keep your brain healthy.

Here is an except from the psychentral blog:

"Exercise, keep your body healthy (which in turn keeps your brain healthy), and keep yourself challenged with doing something new or different regularly. It doesn’t have to be with special brain exercises or cognitive seminars or training. It’s simply doing the daily crossword or Soduko. It’s taking a walk every day, or bicycling, or going to the gym. It’s trying to figure out a different way to do something at work or in your life that will make things better or easier. It’s taking the longer, more arduous path in your journey, rather than the easy, expected one.

But at the end of the day, it’s really about simple, cheap exercise, as Sandra Aamodt, the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience writes:

How might exercise help the brain? In people, fitness training slows the age-related shrinkage of the frontal cortex, which is important for executive function. In rodents, exercise increases the number of capillaries in the brain, which should improve blood flow, and therefore the availability of energy, to neurons. Exercise may also help the brain by improving cardiovascular health, preventing heart attacks and strokes that can cause brain damage. Finally, exercise causes the release of growth factors, proteins that increase the number of connections between neurons, and the birth of neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region important for memory. Any of these effects might improve cognitive performance, though it’s not known which ones are most important.
So instead of spending money on computer games or puzzles to improve your brain’s health, invest in a gym membership. Or just turn off the computer and go for a brisk walk.

I’m going for that walk! "

Charles