This comprehensive Newsweek article is a must read.  It clearly documents the increasingly held scientific view that there is a direct link between exercise and improved cognition.

 

Please read the whole article, but here are some of the main points:

 

  1. In a study involving 259 Illinois grade school children, “kids with the fittest bodies were the ones with the fittest brains even when factors such as socioeconomic status were taken into account.”
  2. “Last week, in a landmark paper, researchers announced that they had coaxed the human brain into growing new nerve cells, a process that for decades had been thought impossible, simply by putting subjects on a three-month aerobic-workout regimen.”
  3. “Researchers are realizing that the mental effects of exercise are far more profound and complex than they once thought.    Exercise ramps up bodily production of certain chemicals, including brain-derived neurotrophic factor or “BDNF.”  “BDNF fuels almost all the activities that lead to higher thought… and… “brains with more of it have a greater capacity for knowledge.”
  4.  Exercise may not only slow the aging process in the brain, it may actually reverse it.
  5. “Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine—all of these are elevated after a bout of exercise, so having a workout will help with focus, calming down, impulsivity…”
  6. To keep the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain, you have to keep working out.  The benefits fade if you quit.
  7. “Early studies suggest that people who exercise at least a few times a week tend to develop Alzheimer's less often and later than their more sedentary counterparts.”
  8. Weight training seems to be less effective than aerobic exercise.  More studies are needed here.
  9. The ability to replicate the beneficial effects of exercise on cognition in a pill is a long way off, but scientists are studying this kind of synthesis.

 

 

 

This summary doesn’t do the article justice.  Please read it all.  If you were lacking motivation to gear up your exercise program, this article will provide it.