More Evidence that Exercise Fuels the Brain and Makes Us Smarter
So there’s more evidence of yet another extremely positive thing that regular exercise does for us. Just what is that, you ask? The results of a new study are in and indicate that regular exercise literally fuels the brain and makes us smarter. Who doesn’t want that?
In the NY Times Magazine’s How Exercise Could Lead to a Better Brain, by Gretchen Reynolds, a team of researchers gathered four groups of mice and and set them in four distinct living arrangements. According to the article:
“Only one thing had mattered,” Rhodes says, “and that’s whether they had a running wheel.” Animals that exercised, whether or not they had any other enrichments in their cages, had healthier brains and performed significantly better on cognitive tests than the other mice. Animals that didn’t run, no matter how enriched their world was otherwise, did not improve their brainpower in the complex, lasting ways that Rhodes’s team was studying. “They loved the toys,” Rhodes says, and the mice rarely ventured into the empty, quieter portions of their cages. But unless they also exercised, they did not become smarter.
Just how much more evidence of the plethora of benefits that regular exercise gives do we need to incorporate it into our lifestyles?
Be sure to go read the whole article and then get out and exercise. Better yet, inspire your friends, family and colleagues to do the same with any of DailyEndorphin’s interactive, affordable exercise challenge! Takes just 5 minutes to set up and be off and running today!