John Locke said centuries ago that a happy state in this world is a sound mind in a sound body. Modern scientific studies have confirmed that what is good for your body is also good for your mind, and what is good for your heart is good for your brain.
The things you do every day to keep your body healthy also affect your mental health. Getting regular exercise not only benefits your heart, but also your brain. Studies have found that exercise can improve brain function, structure, and connectivity. This can lead to better learning, memory, and cognitive function.
Physical activity can effectively treat depression, anxiety, insomnia, ADHD, and many other psychological problems. Exercise is a form of medicine that can be more effective than taking drugs in many cases. Aerobic activity, strength training, yoga, and mindfulness are all effective forms of exercise.
There is something special about Sardinia. In addition to beautiful beaches, towering forests, and ancient ruins, the Mediterranean island is home to a large number of people over 90 and 100 years old.
Scientists and sociologists have studied the aging population in Sardinia to find key drivers of healthy aging. Although genetics plays a major role, other lifestyle factors like diet, community, and exercise are also important.
Moving Your Body Is Good for Your Mind
The study found that physical activity was linked to white matter integrity and improved cognitive function. Other researchers have long been advocates for physical activity as a key factor in promoting a lifespan of brain health.
In “Exercise on the Brain,” an Op-Ed published in 2007 in the New York Times, Wang and co-author Sandra Aamodt note that exercise is also strongly associated with a reduced risk of dementia later in life. People who exercise regularly in middle age are one-third as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease in their 70s as those who didn't exercise, and even those who begin exercising in their 60s still have their risk reduced by half.
As more and more research is published on the topic, it becomes increasingly clear that physical activity has a plethora of benefits for the mind and brain. In a 2014 study from the University of Montreal, it was shown that aerobic exercise that improves cardiovascular fitness may protect people from cognitive impairment as they age. This is just one of many studies that highlights the importance of maintaining a physically active lifestyle.
The findings of the study suggest that maintaining vessel elasticity may help to slow cognitive aging. This is thought to be achieved by exercise preserving the elasticity of the aorta, the main vessel which leads from the heart. The study found that older adults who had maintained the elasticity of their aorta and who had good aerobic fitness performed better on a cognitive test.
The researchers worked with two groups of people, 31 young people between the ages of 18 and 30 and 54 older participants aged between 55 and 75. This enabled the team to compare the older participants within their peer group to the younger group who had yet to begin the aging processes in question.
The participants of the study had three MRI scans: one to evaluate the blood flow to the brain, one to measure their brain activity as they performed the Stroop task, and one to actually look at the physical state of their aorta. The researchers focused on the brain's blood flow because poorer cardiovascular health can lead to damage of the brain's smaller blood vessels.
The study found that there is a relationship between lower executive function, less aortic elasticity, and being less physically fit. This suggests that being in good vascular health is linked to better brain function, and that being physically active can help improve brain function.
Exercise Shaped Human Evolution
Our ancestors had to move around a lot during the day to find food. This high level of aerobic activity put a lot of stress on their organs. David Raichlen, a professor at the University of Southern California, says that our bodies have evolved so that our organ systems can adapt to the functional needs they are presented with. For example, when you are physically active, your muscles need more oxygen. This puts a stress on your cardiovascular system, and you lay down more blood vessels. Creating new blood vessels makes aerobic activity easier, like how you can run longer distances without losing your breath after a few weeks of training.
The body's organ systems are designed to be efficient in their use of energy. They will adapt to high levels of activity, by creating extra blood vessels for example, but will scale back to a more efficient state during periods of inactivity. We don't yet fully understand why the brain is affected by exercise when it is the muscles and blood vessels that do the most work.
According to Raichlen, the human brain has evolved to be very good at handling physical activity that is also mentally demanding. For most of our history, we have been hunter-gatherers, and this type of lifestyle requires a lot of cognitive skills such as navigation, executive function, and sensory processing.
Similarly to how adding more blood vessels makes the cardiovascular system more efficient, altering connections between neurons improves brain function. In rodents, running on a wheel can double or triple the number of new neurons born in the dentate gyrus, a subregion of the hippocampus critical for spatial learning, says Henriette van Praag, associate professor of biomedical science at Florida Atlantic University. Van Praag states that not only are more cells being born, but relatively more of these cells also survive and integrate into the circuitry of the dentate gyrus, providing a double benefit. These new neurons may improve spatial navigation and enhance an animal’s ability to remember the location of food.
Physical activity strengthens the brain, while inactivity can weaken it. In an evolutionary context, this is beneficial as it prevents the body from wasting energy needlessly. However, for people who live sedentary lifestyles – which is often the norm in industrialized societies – this adaptation can have a negative impact on brain health and function. “We're now living in what we generally would term a mismatch environment, where the behaviors that we do today are mismatched with the context in which we evolved,” Raichlen says. “And through that mismatch is where you can start to see some health impacts.” The robust health of the Sardinian centenarians is likely due to the similarity between their lifestyle and that of our ancestors: both groups engage in high levels of moderate physical activity, have diets rich in unprocessed foods, and maintain full social lives.
The question of whether neurogenesis, the process of creating new neurons after birth, occurs throughout the lifespan in humans is still controversial. However, there is strong evidence that it happens at least through adolescence. Even if exercise doesn’t trigger the production of new neurons, it still shapes the brain’s circuitry. “It’s more than just adding cells,” van Praag says. “It's how these cells are wired and how those circuits and networks are maintained over the lifespan. And that can be enhanced by exercise.” Luckily, you don’t need to start foraging for mushrooms in the forest to enjoy the cognitive benefits of exercise. “If you're going on a walk, you're already going to be stressing a lot of these cognitive systems by navigating and paying attention to car traffic and making decisions about your route,” Raichlen says.
The Body Talks Back
Scientists are just beginning to unpack how exercise helps the brain. during physical activity, muscles, bones, the liver, and even fat tissue release factors into the blood collectively called “exerkines.” Some exerkines can even cross the blood-brain barrier, the membrane preventing most molecules and pathogens in the blood from entering the brain.
In two studies, scientists found that active mice had higher levels of neurogenesis and better cognition than sedentary mice. The researchers compared the makeup of plasma from both active and sedentary mice to find out which proteins were responsible for the difference. They found that a protein called Glpd1, which is secreted by the liver, was partly responsible.
According to Villeda, the different blood factors associated with exercise could be used to create personalized interventions for aging-related problems. He believes that this knowledge could be used to develop therapies which would bestow the benefits of exercise to those who are unable to do it themselves.
Exercising is the best way to increase your odds of living a long and healthy life.
Raichlen says that the best way to increase your odds of living a long and healthy life is to start exercising right now. He recommends meeting the US Health and Human Services guidelines for physical activity, which is 150 minutes a week or more of aerobic activity.
The message is loud and clear: a sound mind in a sound body is the way to go circa 2014. This means that if you want to be successful and happy, you need to invest in both your physical and mental health. Your physical health is important for obvious reasons – if you're not physically healthy, you won't be able to do much of anything. But your mental health is just as important, if not more so. After all, it's your mind that controls everything you do. If you want to be successful and happy in life, you need to invest in both your physical and mental health. This is especially important in today's fast-paced world. Your physical health is obviously important, but your mental health is just as vital since it controls everything you do.
If you are feeling overworked, underpaid, and burned out it is not uncommon. Many Americans are feeling the same way which can be financially draining, physically, and psychologically.
It is very important to have a combination of motivation, resources and time to have a healthy mind and body. Unfortunately, in today's society, people are more concerned with making money than taking care of their health. Most Americans don't have time for physical activity because they are too busy working to make a living.
In the 1974 song The Bitch Is Back, Elton John prophetically summed up the current statistics of the obesity epidemic when he sang, “Times are changing now the poor get fat.”
The gap between rich and poor is growing, and this is having a negative effect on the health of our nation. The rich can afford to take care of their bodies and buy healthy food, while the majority of people are struggling to make ends meet. This is unfair and it is damaging our society and our health.
