According
to neurologist Etienne van der Walt, keeping active is one of the best ways
to improve brain health. As he told Quartz earlier this year, “Specific forms
of exercises have been shown to be very beneficial for … brain growth.”
Simply
speaking, when we exercise, our heart rate increases, oxygen is pumped to the
brain at a much faster rate, and new brain cells develop more quickly.
The
more brain cells we create, the easier it is for cells to communicate with one
another, developing new neural pathways.
Ultimately,
our brains become more efficient and plastic, which means better cognitive
performance.
A
2014 study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that
children who regularly exercised had higher “attentional inhibition,” defined
by The New York Times as “the ability to block out irrelevant information and
concentrate on the task at hand.” The Times article also noted that
study participants ended the with “heightened abilities to toggle between
cognitive tasks.”
It
doesn’t even take that much sweat to keep your brain in good shape. A
study conducted by the department of exercise science at the University of
Georgia in 2003 found that an exercise bout of just 20 minutes is enough to
change the brain’s information processing and memory functions.
Bottom
line: however you decide to keep active, just keep moving.
- Vivian Giang
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