By now I’m sure you know that regular, moderate exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health and well-being. What you may not know is that new research is showing that regular exercise helps reverse the aging process, gives you more energy, makes you smarter and may even grow new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis).
New research is showing that regular exercise may cause your brain to grow new neurons. Until nine years ago it was thought that you were born with a certain number of neurons and they decreased in number as we got older. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies showed older adults continue to generate new neurons. More recently researchers found with just three hours of walking a week for three months caused so many neurons to grow that the size of people’s brains grew! The best part of this new research is that the part of the brain that grew the most is involved in memory and cognitive function. After three months those who exercised had brain volume of people three years younger. The senior author of this study, Dr. Arthur Kramer, concluded that cardiovascular fitness is associated with sparing brain tissue. These results also suggest a strong biological basis for aerobic fitness in maintaining as well as enhancing central nervous system functioning and cognitive fuctionioning in older adults.