Save Your Brain: The 5 Things You Must Do to Keep Your Mind Young and Sharp_8

Critical Area 1: Socialization 89 groups in your community with similar passion. Once again, your hobbies can be shared with others and may represent the vehicle to create a new social network. • Remain active in pursuits that are meaningful to you. By understand- ing your passions, you can develop your personal mission that gives you meaning and purpose. This leads to a natural sharing with others and social networking. This page intentionally left blank 6 Physical Activity It is the physically active, not the passive, brain that will benefit most. 7 t is an amazing fact that your brain demands 25 percent of the blood from each heartbeat! I often refer to this as “market share”—and real narcissism—on the part of your brain. There is a real reason we call the brain the central nervous system, as it really is the center of the universe. It’s easy to understand why physical activity is so important to brain health when you rec-ognize how much benefit the brain derives from each heartbeat. We need to have a healthy heart that pumps blood effi ciently for healthy brain function, and physical activity such as exercise has been proven to be a robust correlate to heart health. Today we are able to say with confidence that many different forms of physical activity are also good for your brain, so we need to get moving. When you are moving, you can feel good about the fact that you are making your brain very happy! 91 92 Save Your Brain Animals that ran on a wheel generated new brain cells in studies conducted in the late 1950s. This research underscores the importance of physical activity to animal brain health. The same relationship between physical activity and brain health appears to be true for humans. It is important to understand why physical activity relates to brain health. Every time your heart beats, 25 percent of the blood and nutrients from that one heartbeat goes directly to your brain. We have known for some time that physical exercise is critical to cardiac health, but research is now beginning to support a similar value for physical exercise to brain health! Exercise and the Human Brain A 2006 study published in the Journal of Gerontology found that as little as three hours a week of brisk walking, an excellent aero-bic exercise, increases blood flow to the brain and may trigger neurochemical changes that increase production of new brain cells. The regions of the brain most affected by the aerobic exer-cise included the frontal lobes, important for complex thinking, reasoning, and attention, and the corpus callosum, the bundle of white matter that bridges the two sides of the brain. This brain study is important for several reasons: • The results further support brain plasticity and new brain cell development in humans. • The study was conducted on persons aged sixty to seventy-nine, indicating brain health can improve in later life. This Critical Area 2: Physical Activity 93 is consistent with animal brain research showing positive effects at advanced ages. Remember, I do not believe in a critical period of brain development unless it is defi ned as life! The traditional idea of a “critical period of brain development” being in the first five or six years of your life is no longer considered valid. With our new understanding of the human brain and neural plasticity, we recognize the brain can be shaped for health across the entire life span. In this regard, the critical period of brain development is probably best characterized as life itself, from the time we are developing in our mother’s womb until our last day. • This may be the first study to demonstrate healthy struc-tural changes in the human brain with physical activity, a finding we know exists for animals. • We know a relationship exists between physical changes in the brain, positive and negative, and functional or cogni-tive ability. Many other studies have shown that physical activity and exercise such as walking promote the health of the human brain. Research has demonstrated an increased relationship between development of the myelin sheath, the lipid substance that sur-rounds brain cells and nerve tracts propelling rapid information flow, and exercise; increased learning and exercise; increased test scores in school and exercise; and even improvement in mood and physical exercise. Mobility and blood flow are criti-cal for human beings and necessary for brain health. This rela-tionship likely exists at all ages and with healthy and diseased brains. Other research suggests that walking on a daily basis or at least several times a week can reduce the risk of dementia. ... - tailieumienphi.vn