Is Sleep Deprivation Making You Fat?

May 15, 2012

Reblog

Elephants need only three to four hours of sleep a night, while mice sleep 14 hours. Humans are somewhere in the middle, but some of us push it and try to get by on “elephant sleep.” 

The people who claim they do “just fine” on four to five hours of sleep a night are deluding themselves. With a few exceptions, adult humans need a minimum of seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Here are some other sleep myths.

MYTH:  “The early bird gets the worm.” 

REALITY:  Not every bird needs worms.  Someone who loves to get up early is called an “early chronotype,” while someone who prefers to sleep late is a “late chronotype.” Despite cultural bias toward preferring the early chronotype, there is an evolutionary basis for all types. When we were hunter-gatherers, some people had to stay awake from night to night to guard the tribe. And those genes get passed on. Like everything else about humanity, there is a lot of variety, and we are not all intended to be early risers. We all function best if we can match our schedule to our preferences.

MYTH:  “Older people need less sleep.”

REALTIY:  Human adults need seven to nine hours of sleep at every age. Kids usually need a little more – around nine to 11 hours. Just because older individuals struggle more often with sleep due to smaller prostates making men get up to go more often, menopausal women having hot flashes, and both genders making less melatonin (a hormone that promotes restful sleep), does not mean it is normal. Since it happens so frequently, the myth that it is normal becomes more common and easier to believe.

Photo Source: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

Losing a Lot More Than Z’s

Lack of sleep erodes our bodies, our brains and keeps us from making good decisions. Missing sleep also makes learning harder. While sleeping, the brain processes information we absorbed through the day and often continues problem-solving while we snooze. This is one of the many uses of dreaming by the brain. 

Very bad sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations. So powerful is the brain’s need to “dream” that you’ve likely noticed that if you’ve been sleep deprived and nodded off momentarily in what is called a “microsleep”, you had a quick dream even during a split-second.

Limit bright light at night, overstimulating books and movies, and if you do have to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, don’t turn on any room lights as light entering the eye is a trigger for your brain to stop melatonin production and start waking you up. Use night lights instead.

About 30 percent of adults complain of problems sleeping, according to the National Institutes of Health.  People who average less than six hours a night may have a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. 

Sleep Less, Eat More

Sleep deprivation raises blood levels of ghrelin, a hormone that increases appetite, and lowers their blood levels of leptin, a hormone that inhibits appetite. Both of these hormones are normal. When we eat a larger meal, ghrelin levels drop and leptin levels increase. When it is getting closer to the time to eat again, the opposite happens and the increase ghrelin levels trigger us to begin eating again. Sleep deprivation throws this balance off and drives us to eat more when we are sleep-deprived in an effort to get more energy.

It’s funny how proper sleep always seems more important when you’re struggling to wake up after not getting enough. Trying to get by as a human on an elephant amount of sleep will just have you looking like one. Don’t fight it - feeling well-rested feels like nothing else. And not only will you feel better, but you’ll look better and think better too!  

More on Sleep and Your Health:

10 Signs You're Sleep-Deprived

How Are Sleep and Heart Disease Linked?

9 Most Common Sleep Disorders

 

Photo Source: Thinkstock/Creatas (upper right)

The Surprising Similarity Between Chocolate, Cannabis and Exercise

May 01, 2012

Reblog

What do marijuana, exercise, and chocolate have in common? All three activate the same receptors in the brain. This isn’t the same story you’ve heard about endorphins and exercise. This is about endocannabinoids, a class of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers in the brain.)

Sure, there might be some health benefits to medical marijuana, but a lot of it depends on the method of delivery. Smoke of any type is toxic to the human lung, so smoking anything is unequivocally unwise – period. 

What about chocolate? Lots of health benefits; lots of calories, too. And too often, it is has so much added sugar to outweigh the positives. 

But exercise? It’s the high with no downside! Endocannabinoids are produced in the body and the brain when we exercise. They go all over the place – the spinal cord, the brain. And they spread good feelings everywhere they travel.

In the spinal cord, they block pain signals from getting to the brain. They light up the reward centers in our brain. And some recent success has been found with using gradually increasing doses of exercise to successfully treat chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

Photo Source: Thinkstock/Pixland

The link between exercise and these natural painkillers makes a lot of sense. When humans were hunter/gatherers, we couldn’t allow a little joint pain to stop us. 

Interestingly, endorphins are larger molecules than the endocannabinoids. This means that, endorphins can’t cross the blood-brain barrier (keeps larger molecules from entering the brain.)  As a result, many researchers now believe that it’s the endocannabinoids that are responsible for the runner’s high commonly attributed to endorphins. 

So you can choose marijuana, which will lower your fullness signals in the brain and make you overeat.  You might over consume chocolate – and feel good for a little while as you lose motivation and watch your waistline grow. Or you can exercise, get the same effect, and the side-effect is a better body and better brain. This choice really is a no-brainer.  

More on the Human Brain:

Top 10 Brain Myths

Do We Really Only Use 10 Percent of Our Brain?

Top 5 Ways Your Brain Influences Your Emotions

Photo Source (upper right): Thinkstock/Digital Vision

Meal Comparison: How Much Can You Eat in 500 Calories?

April 16, 2012

Reblog

What do the following three things have in common?

• Red velvet cupcake (from Crumbs Bake Shop)
• Small piece of fried chicken, a few fries and a cup of soda
• Chicken with seasonal tomatoes and rice pilaf, mixed melons, baby arugula salad and two cups of unsweetened iced tea

They are all 500 calories. But if you lined them all up next to each other, you’d see something pretty amazing. The first one is just a big cupcake. The second is small plate of food with a glass of soda. The third is a large plate with the chicken and rice pilaf, a small side plate for the salad and a small side bowl of fruit plus the glass of tea.

You can get your 500 calories in a lot of food or a little. You can participate in our embarrassing child-like national love affair with cupcakes and knock out 500 calories in one hand, or you can chow down on 500 calories and have a complete meal.

Would you rather eat one cupcake, or a whole chicken dinner?

The secret is the water content and calorie density of the food. Water adds weight and volume, but no calories. It’s 100 pounds of lead vs. 100 pounds of feathers. The feathers would take up far more room, but 100 pounds is 100 pounds so they would weigh the same.

There’s been some fascinating research on this, much of it done with 700 people in a year-long trial, the results of which have formed the basis for The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet by Barbara Rolls, Chair of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State.The big take-away is this: If people were eating a diet that was less calorie-dense, they were eating significantly more food – about a pound more a day – and they were eating fewer calories and losing weight.

I know, it sounds like the latest bogus miracle cure for weight loss: “Eat more and weigh less”. But that’s exactly the truth. It’s just that “more” in this case means “more volume” and not “more calories”. 

It’s not big portions that are leading to obesity. It is big portions of calorie-dense foods and even not-so-big portions of junk foods.

How do you eat foods with more water and/or less calories? You use lots of fruits and vegetables! These are the same foods that are good for just about everything else.

Perhaps it’s time we grew up, put down our gourmet cupcakes and stopped asking why “it’s so hard to lose weight”. It isn’t hard. It’s just hard when we eat the wrong foods. The main recommendations for which foods promote health haven’t really changed much in the last several decades. So while you often hear debate on the finer points of nutrition, the basics have stayed fairly consistent.

As author Michael Pollan says, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

More on Diet and Fitness:

How Calories Work

5 Healthy, Effective Diets

You on a Diet: What You Need to Know

 

Photo Sources: Thinkstock

3 Common Women's Exercise Questions Explained

March 20, 2012

Reblog

The following three questions I often get from women about weight training and cardio address many of the concerns I get asked about over and over. And over and over. This should provide some clarity on these commonly misunderstood topics!

QUESTION 1: It seems women tend to lift the same amount of weight, year after year. Shouldn't we pick up something heavier than those little three-pound dumbells?

The “Golden Rule” of exercise is this: If you want change, you need a challenge. And lifting the same cute little weights over and over again won’t cut it. Many women lift and carry their children (and all the related supplies), briefcases, shopping bags and various household items that are heavier than those three and five-pound dumbbells they’ve been using forever. But when it’s time to do weight training, many of these same women are scared of lifting too heavy. (If it’s officially “exercise” we must be intimidated by it!)

Without progressive resistance, there is plateau. And with plateau comes ceasing of exercise. Adding more weight when the muscles are ready stimulates metabolism, and the little extra muscle you add gives your body a greater fat-burning capacity (since muscle is the place where fat is burned.)

Going for a walk with three-pound dumbbells is NOT weight training. Even worse, it will do more harm than good, as it will likely lead to tendonitis in the elbows or shoulders. Weight training is done for a relatively low number of reps (eight to 15) to be effective. It’s best to vary the rep ranges frequently (e.g. focus on eight reps one workout, 15 the next), as this approach has shown to be a more effective strategy – especially for females. Each set should bring your muscles to a point of fatigue. (And your muscles know fatigue, they don’t count. So train for the feeling not the number.) Any time you can lift two more reps than your goal, it is time to go up in weight.

QUESTION 2:  What about women who worry about bulking up and looking too muscular– is lifting heavier weight going to make us less feminine?

If you’ve been skipping weight training because of a fear of bulking up, it’s time for a reality check. It is exceedingly difficult to bulk up for anyone – and even more so for females. Females have less testosterone than males. This means that their bodies will have a less dramatic response to weight training than males. Bulking up simply does not happen that easily. Young males - the group with the highest testosterone levels - have to stay dedicated and have hard workouts in order to build muscle. 

 

Photo Source: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

QUESTION 3:  Another question about taking it up a notch: what about those people who do the same number of minutes and resistance every time they get on the treadmill or bicycle? Do you think that's fine, or could they do better by changing their routine?

(See the “Golden Rule” above). Once the body adapts to a stimulus, it is no longer a stimulus! If exercise isn’t stimulating change, then it can only maintain current fitness levels. You can either add speed or add incline, but adding more time is probably the least favorable option. Why? Most people are already short on time. Furthermore, doing more time at an intensity your body is used to is pretty easy for your body to pull off (e.g., if you’ve been walking for 30 minutes, how hard is it to walk for five more minutes?). You’ll know you are getting a good workout when you feel a little bit breathless but aren’t gasping for air. This is creating an “oxygen debt” that forces your cardiovascular system to get better at processing and delivering oxygen.

More on Women's Health:

22 Leg Exercises for Women

Pilates 101

Triceps Exercises

Photo Source (upper right): Thinkstock/Photodisc

Stay On Track with Your Fitness Routine on Vacation

March 06, 2012

Reblog

After landing on a recent cross-country flight, I along with many of my fellow travelers, stood up immediately as the plane got to the gate. From several rows behind me, I heard a comment, “I don’t know why everyone’s getting up so quickly, no one’s going anywhere right away!” This comment can only come from someone who is out of touch with their body and current events. 

As many articles and news stories have detailed recently, the more you sit, the more your risk for inactivity-related disease increases – even if you do exercise consistently. Smart people get up as soon as they can when the plane stops. They also walk on the moving walkways in airports. They get up and stretch their legs when they can on flights. They don’t necessarily have to sit at the gate and wait for the plane. It’s okay, and even healthy, to stand.

If you let it, travelling can be a very passive activity. And it often gets worse when you get to your destination. The fatigue of travelling itself can make the idea of exercising once you arrive at your destination seem ridiculous. But it actually makes you feel better. Options for staying on track with fitness while traveling are available to you – and here’s a few:

Stay at Even Hotels

Part of the InterContinental Hotel family, Even Hotels is a new line of fitness and health conscious hotel opening later this year focusing on better exercise options, better food options, and better rest and relaxation options. You can also do a little research and ensure that you pick a hotel that either has a gym, or if you’re going somewhere temperate, has nearby access to public areas to do some outdoor movement. 

Don’t Forget to Bring Yourself

You have gravity and your body wherever you go – so you’re never out of options for getting some movement in. If you’re in a new city, take a walk for a few blocks around the hotel to get the lay of the land. You might find a park where you can do some quick body weight exercises or if you’d prefer, do the exercises in your room.

Humans move by sitting, walking, twisting, pushing and pulling. So if you do those movements, in just a few short minutes you’ll be covered. Some squats, lunges, rotations, push-ups on a table or dresser, and perhaps some rows with your laptop bag would cover everything. 

For more ideas, check out my video below with tips on exercising anywhere. 

 

Pack Your Gym

Whenever I travel, for the last six years, I’ve been taking my suspension trainer with me. I can either hook it over a door in the hotel, or if it’s nice, take it outside and use my own bodyweight to get a full body weight training workout featuring exercises not possible without something to hold. You can make any exercise harder or easier to successfully accommodate any fitness level.

Also, buying a simple pair of plastic furniture sliders can give you some great options for a few quick and challenging exercises right in your hotel room. The furniture sliders are a cheap option, but if you want the official fitness equipment version, consider the Gliding Discs, or Valslides. 

The advantage of working out in your hotel is that if you’re a business traveler, you can get in a quick workout before the day's meetings start. We all know how it will turn out if you try to plan a workout at the end of the day! 

Choose to Move

Moving is a choice and it’s one that your body will love. It’s expected that travel can disrupt many of your routines, but your fitness doesn’t have to be one of them. With a little advanced planning and some creativity at your destination, you can stay active.

 

More Fitness Tips and Advice:

5 Exercises to Do at Work

Walking to Lose Weight

Walk Away from the Boob Tube

 

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Transformations 101: How to Start and Stay on the Path to Fitness

February 22, 2012

Reblog

Get engaged with exercise. That’s how real transformations are made.

Life is coming at you full speed, and the demands and responsibilities pile up…and sometimes so do the pounds. It’s hard to get started, and it’s even harder to keep going. But that’s because we often make exercise “hard,” and the changes that we make feel like suffering.

We teach our own brains to feel like it’s a big, difficult, long, dull and miserable task ahead of us – and then we wonder why it’s so hard to stick with it. Everything is learned…no one is naturally anything. We learn the alphabet, our multiplication tables, how to drive, how to use a computer, and everything is hard before it becomes easy.

No one naturally hates exercise…the human body is literally covered in muscle and we get so many physical and mental benefits from movement that it is impossible to be born with a dislike for something that sustains life. We learn to dislike it from bad experiences as children or adults.

There are no fish born with a natural dislike of water.

The solution is to find engagement with exercise. Essentially, exercise has to stimulate the senses, engage you and renew a sense of enjoyment with movement. If you exercise with someone, commit to only discussing positive things like your children or grandchildren (and only the good stuff in their lives), your favorite movie you’ve seen recently or just something good that happened to you or someone you love. This begins to make positive associations with movement and exercise that can literally change the way you “feel” about exercise.

Photo Source: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

When you’re picking activities, don’t let them stay boring. If you’re going for a walk, then bounce a tennis ball to yourself or kick some stones along as you walk. Listen to your favorite, uplifting music.  Walk sideways. Walk backwards. Walk in a zig-zag pattern. It’s not crazy…it will engage your mind.

When picking exercises at home or at the gym, don’t pick anything that lets you turn your brain off. Don’t sit down to do a chest press. Pick exercises that are slightly complex – just enough to get your attention so that your mind is engaged. Try some medicine ball tosses, bounces or slams. Experiment with balance exercises. Pick a random number of reps to do on each set rather than perform the same number every time. 

The ideas are limitless here. Insert some skill acquisition and cognitive processing into exercise, and you’ll greatly enhance the body and the brain benefit…and get you’ll feel more engaged during the activity and have more positive experiences and memories of it – you’ll be learning to enjoy movement a little more.

More on Weight Loss:

Why Do I Lose Weight When I Sleep?

Could Stapling My Ear Make Me Lose Weight?

10 Weight Gain Prevention Tips

 

Photo Source (upper right): Thinkstock/iStockphoto

 

Do You Worry Too Little?

February 08, 2012

Reblog

Many people worry a lot, but do you worry too little? No, I haven’t lost my mind, and in general, I’m not recommending that you worry more. As it turns out, the “don’t worry, be happy” people tend to die earlier.

Conscientious people live longer.

In looking at a group of people that were followed for 80 years, this is the conclusion drawn from the data by Leslie Martin and Howard Friedman, two psychology professors, and discussed in a recent article in The Atlantic and detailed in their book, The Longevity Project.

There are three reasons conscientious people tend to stay healthier and live longer.

1. Conscientious people do more things to protect their health. They engage in fewer risky activities like smoking, drinking to excess, abusing drugs or driving too fast. 
2. Some people actually seem to be biologically predisposed both to have that personality trait and to be healthier. It appears likely that conscientious and unconscientious people have different levels of certain chemicals in their brains, including serotonin, which may be involved. 
3. Having a conscientious personality leads people into healthier situations and relationships. When you care enough to make sure you’re doing the right things – especially as it pertains to health – you’re more likely to live longer. 

Overly optimistic people have a tendency to ignore details, meaning they don't follow doctor's orders correctly or lead themselves into unhealthy situations or addictions. You can’t think yourself thin or wish yourself wealthy, despite claims from silly self-help books. The path to health and vitality is the same as it has always been. It’s taking care of your shiny new toy.

When you get a new car, new house –  new anything, really – it comes with an owner’s manual that provides instructions for how to care for it. If you ignore the information in there, your car or house will fall apart much faster. And it’s no different from your body.

The owner’s manual for the human body details how we need to have something to strive for – something for our will to push against.  If we strive to be more fit and capable, we have ambition for a better experience in our own bodies.  And this leads to choices and behaviors that line up with healthier, longer lives.  Like eating the right foods and engaging in a host of health-promoting behaviors.

I was once exercising on a step-mill next to someone who was leaning over using terrible posture as the only way to keep up with the high intensity setting they were using.  When I offered a better posture to use while on the machine, the reply I got was, “I’ve always felt that if you do things from a positive spirit that everything will work out well.”  This shockingly naïve, child-like approach to life won’t just injure you, it could cost you your life. 

So the next time someone dismisses your efforts at health with, “Eat well, stay fit, and die anyway,” you can ask them, “So what’s your rush?”

More on Health Living:

7 Step Plan for Healthy Living

10 Ways to Eat Healthier

9 Tools for Quitting Smoking

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How Can You Motivate a Loved One to Lose Weight?

January 24, 2012

Reblog

What can you do about a loved one who will not exercise? This can be one of the most dangerous, emotionally charged and difficult subjects to discuss. But it’s probably worth the effort.

I watched the last 10 years of my father’s life and they weren’t pretty. He got heavier, angrier, heavier, more bitter, heavier, grumpier and heavier until obesity-related issues took his life at 424 pounds. As he got heavier, his world got smaller. He often asked for help with basic tasks.

He was also the type of person not to be told what to do. A former United States Marine, it was often “my way or the highway” with him. 

I was too young to have any influence over him at the time he died, but I think often about how I might interact with him now if he were still alive.

Exercising for Overall Health

There are two main issues to address when it comes to exercise: exercising for health maintenance and exercising for fitness. Not everyone must seek to be “fit,” but it’s our duty to maintain our health. And, like it or not, that includes physical activity.  All humans need some degree of physical activity to function best both physically and mentally. The fact is, active people are smarter, have less pain and less issues with depression. 

Essentially, active people have a lot less problems with the bad stuff, and they get a lot more of the good stuff out of life. So why isn’t everyone at least active enough to take care of themselves?

Your Body is Your Home

One of the more strange and silly things about our world today is that people get so angry when you try and tell them what to do when it comes to health, but will willingly give up tons of freedom – and pay for the “privilege” – in other areas of life.

For some reason, many people have no problem with paying hundreds of dollars a month to a Homeowner’s Association or Condo Association to then be told what color their door can/can’t be, what size or where their shed can be located, etc. It’s all done under the guise of maintaining a certain quality of the homes and of the neighborhood so that we have a pleasing place to live.

Aren’t our bodies really the same thing? Doesn’t everyone want a pleasing place to live? And you live in your body 24 hours a day. But try and tell someone what to do with their body and how to maintain it, and as a response you get whining about the food police and cries for freedom that are silent when it comes to home ownership.

 

Ask Them How They Feel

The truth is, we can’t nag or force anyone into taking care of themselves. But we can get them thinking about how they feel…in their body…right now…today. What does it feel like to live in your own body? No judgment, just a question. 

If it’s a bad experience to live in your body, then it’s likely that you are very limited in what you can do. And that means you’re limited in the experiences you can have with loved ones. Your world gets smaller and more limited like my father’s was. 

The next question to ask is “What are you willing to do about it?” And I’m not talking about drugs, surgery or doctor visits. “What are YOU willing to do about it?” 

If the answer is “nothing,” then your response should be, “Then until you are willing to make an effort, please stop complaining about it.” You can’t tell someone what to do, but you can tell them what you’re willing to listen to. 

This might seem harsh, but it’s no different than how we react with everything else. If all someone in your life does is complain about their job, but never looks for ways to change or improve the situation, don’t you eventually lose interest in hearing about it? Of course you do.  No one wants to come along for the ride when someone is wallowing in self-pity and unwilling to change. There comes a time when the problem has been identified and it’s time to start looking for solutions.

An answer of “nothing” means the person isn’t ready to change. And it also means you don’t need to keep providing an audience for the complaints. If they are willing to change something, focus on the behaviors and the effort they make to change them, not on the outcomes. This is the most important way to encourage continued effort.

A focus on outcomes like “Did you exercise today?” or “How many pounds did you lose last week?” don’t typically help someone make any real and lasting progress because it has the tone of a parent asking a child if they did their chores or homework. And health behaviors shouldn’t feel that way.

Ways to Encourage:

• “How was your mood today?” 
• “How did you feel after we went for that walk this morning?” 
• “What can I do to make it easier for you to improve your health?” 
• “I love you, and want you not to just be around for a long time, but for us to be able to share enjoyable experiences together for a long time.” 

Yes, this is hard stuff to do. Aren’t the people you love worth the effort? You don’t want to quietly sit by and watch someone you love killing themselves and then wish you’d said something when it’s too late. If they get angry, just remember, their anger is coming from their own realization that they aren’t doing something they should be. 

Too many people live in denial about their health. Inactivity leads to disease, obesity, loss of vitality and death. So step up and lovingly take a stand for the people you love. They might get offended, but just because they get offended, it doesn’t mean they are right. Often our first reaction to harsh truth is to attack. It doesn’t change the truth; it’s just our emotions fighting back. And it will pass. 

If you have a tip for what to say to motivate a loved one, please share it in the comments. There are endless strategies that will work to lovingly motivate someone to get active and treat their body properly.

More on Weight Loss:

Stay on Track with Your Weight Loss

20 Home Remedies for Weight Loss

Dr. Pam Peeke's 10 Weight Prevention Tips

Photo Source: Thinkstock/Digital Vision

What is Lack of Movement Doing to Our Bodies?

January 10, 2012

Reblog

Do you suffer from Acute Motion Starvation?  A lot of people do.

Do you have any of the following symptoms?

• Your body hurts in one or more places with no real reason (no pathology or other injury)
• You work out two to three days a week but don’t move too much apart from the workouts
• Your mind begins to seek reasons to move less instead of move more
• You have a desk job
• You have a long commute spent seated in a car/bus/train
• You need to “unwind” for 2 or more hours a day in front of the TV
• You feel “down” or mildly depressed often and with no real reason

If any of the above describes you, then you probably are suffering from something I like to call AMS (Acute Motion Starvation). 

There is a treatment for this condition that has a nearly 100 percent success rate, and it involves reversing what caused the condition. Get moving!!

Movement Therapy

Your body literally thrives on movement. It comes alive when moving. It sends small electrical signals all over the place to turn various muscles on or off at the right times, to sense where your body is in space and how fast you are moving. 

Movement also sends blood around the body and this brings warm, nutrient-rich blood to all your joints and muscles. Joints feel more stiff and painful when they are moved less, not more.  The only way blood gets into your joints is from the pumping action of muscles contracting and relaxing. No movement equals no blood flow. This is why joints (whether healthy or injured) feel stiffer when they are motionless for any length of time.

To apply movement therapy, use a daily dose of movement for at least ten to 15 minutes a day. If desired, you can double the dose as this has often been shown to magnify the results of the treatment. 

Feel free to self-administer this treatment whenever you have ten minutes available. The type of movement matters very little to your body so long as it involves motion of the larger joints in the body – the shoulder, trunk, and hips.

Apply movement therapy one to two times per day for a period of seven days, and if symptoms are reduced, feel free to continue the treatment indefinitely. Movement therapy is available without a prescription, and you’ll find it wherever there is gravity.

 

More on Fitness:

5 Easy Exercises to Do at Work

Best Workout Equipment for the Office

Weight Lifting for Women

Photo Source: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

Can Exercise Increase Brain Function?

December 19, 2011

Reblog

“Exercise doesn’t make you smarter…it just makes you normal.” This great quote from John Medina in Brain Rules illustrates the essential role that physical activity plays in maintaining a sharp mind. The brain is best at solving problems related to surviving in an unstable environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. This is what the brain did for virtually all of human history until we engineered the need for physical activity out of everyday life.

Rush to the Head

Exercise literally increases the blood volume in a region of the brain called the dentate gyrus, a vital part of the hippocampus. Exercise also stimulates BDNF, a protein which exerts a fertilizer-like growth effect on certain neurons. This protein keeps existing neurons young and healthy, rendering them much more willing to connect with one another. It also encourages neurogenesis, the formation of new cells in the brain. The cells most sensitive to this are in the hippocampus, inside the very regions deeply involved to human cognition and memory.

It’s what happens after exercise that optimizes the brain. Exercise increases levels of IGF-1 (a growth hormone), and in the hippocampus IGF-1 increases neuroplasticity (the way we learn associations with things), and neurogenesis. It’s another way exercise helps our neurons bind.

“The way exercise changes our brains is more effective than wine, medicines, and doughnuts,” says John Ratey, author of Spark. But too often, this is what we use to attempt to manage stress.

Find Stress Relief

Stress, lack of exercise, and junk food harms your brain. Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. The hormones released in response to stress are meant for immediate danger response, not chronic stress. Chronic stress makes adrenaline scar blood vessels while cortisol damages the cells of the hippocampus. Since exercise influences metabolism, it serves as a powerful way to influence synaptic function, and thus the way we think and feel.

As hard as it might be right now, instead of wine, medicine and doughnuts, what might be best to deal with stress is to get moving. Even if it’s just taking a short walk. The more you move, the better you’ll feel. Your movement choices don’t have to be exercise or nothing. A little exercise with a lot of movement in general can help you cope with stress – a great coping strategy to have at this time of year.

No matter how sharp or smart you are, your brain gets better with physical activity. It has a 100% effectiveness rate and the side effects are a healthier body as well!

More on Exercise:

Is 90 Minutes Per Week the Ideal Amount of Exercise?

Cardio vs. Weight Training

Can Exercise Improve Sex Life?

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