What I read
In " How
does exercise keep your brain young? ", Kelly Servick talks about how exercise can keep the brain
healthy and change the pathway of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The secret behind the exercise is that it helps the brain to produce new
neurons. Although there is a controversy between scientists about
whether humans can make new neurons throughout life or not, but the experiment
conducted on mice running on a wheel shows its ability to make new-born hippocampal
neurons. Furthermore, “the exercising mice that showed brain benefits in the
memory tests also had markers of neurogenesis”. Moreover, the scientists
suggest that neurogenesis in the absence of exercise might not help the brain.
My response
Even though the mechanisms behind the role of exercise to protect the brain from diseases are still murky, but it is well known that exercise keep the human active, healthy, and increase the immune system. Moreover, exercise led to active the blood circulation in the body and makes the heart stronger.
By return back to the article, the author didn't mention about the types of exercise that brain needs. The only one type of exercise was about running which is considered as physical activity. However, it is believed that there are different types of activities that helping to keep the brain young, e.g., chess game which can be classified as mental activity. On the other hand, there is thought that the brain needs both of these types of exercise that I mentioned above because the brain requires a series of important things that keep it in well-condition including a good environment and healthy food.
My question
According to your own experiences, what types of exercise do you need to keep your brain healthy?
Reference
- K. Servick. (2018, September 6). How does exercise keep your brain young?. Science. doi:10.1126/science.aav3283
Although I've known for a long time that physical exercise is good for my brain, I'm very bad at doing it. If I remember correctly, the research is very consistent that regular exercise improves brain function, and in particular that learning is enhanced if there are regular breaks for physical activity, which is why I encourage to get up and move around during our breaks, even if you don't want to run up a couple of flights to stairs.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking that it would be good for me to do that. It would be easy to put on some running shoes and run up a few stairs at my condo every now and then, but I don't!
If anyone has tips on motivating yourself to do what you know is good for you, please share them. I'm afraid that knowledge does not always influence my behaviour as I wish it would. And perhaps education programs often fail because a lot of people are like me in this. I'm always a bit suspicious when I read of government solution to a problem that relies on education: I'm pretty sure, for example, that teenage girls already know what causes pregnancy, and need no education on that. The same is also true for cigarettes and other drugs: everyone already knows that they are unhealthy and cause a range of problems, but that knowledge alone does not seem to be enough to change our behaviour.
Not really related to my last comment, I also like the way that Waleed managed to appropriately use the impersonal language of passive verbs in his response. Our blog is a good place for you to try out new language.
DeleteSince i was a child, I always played tag with my friends and it felt extremely good back then. I still get the feeling of it even now. At that time, my brain worked so well, but now it was destroyed, my observation is very good because of the hide-and-seek and tag games. Being chased is not something I would get used to though, therefore, I have to run for my peaceful life. Also, these kind of games helps develop the creativity, reasonability and acceptability, as we have to find a way to flee and hide from the catcher, especially, when we accept our the defeat. So, I think exercise altogether with some chit chat with other people, encourages our brain to think logically and further develop.
ReplyDeleteAbout your question, calculation is the best way to improve your brain health. When I was young, I was very bad in every subjects, but when my mother took me to an extra class about calculation, my brain developed by using it for a long time, and be able to thought about how to solve a problem. For me, computing many question make me increase the ability of the brain.
ReplyDeleteI like Job's comment, which reminds us that mental activities are like physical activities in that they too improve with regular practice, or deteriorate if not used. This is why it's a good idea to spread our class workload over a few sessions across the week rather than trying to do everything in one long session.
Delete