5 Incredible Ways Exercise Improves Brain Function

Exercise, particularly the kind that gets your heart pumping, has a whole host of positive effects on the brain, even to the point of enhancing its structure. Here are just five of the ways exercise improves your already miraculous brain.Exercising is good for your brain.

Exercise Turns Your Brain into a Pleasure Powerhouse

Exercise stimulates a rich concoction of feel-good chemicals in the brain, including dopamine, serotonin, endocannabinoids, and norepinephrine, each of which has different roles in managing stress, enhancing feelings of wellbeing, and promoting an active interest in life.

• It’s estimated that we all lose approximately 13 percent of our dopamine receptors each decade, which can cause us to experience diminishing pleasure in everyday life. Exercise can reverse this.

Exercise Increases the Thickness of the Cerebral Cortex

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine (hopkinsmedicine.org), exercise can thicken the cerebral cortex.

• Researchers speculate that some of the reason for this is that exercise, particularly aerobic, involves continually making split-second decisions.

Exercise Improves Neuroplasticity

Even just one workout session can elevate your brain’s neuroplasticITY

• Exercise encourages the growth of new neural connections in the brain, and exercise has a suppressant effect on gamma-Aminobutyric acid, or GABA, which inhibits certain types of neurotransmitters.

Exercise Stimulates Neurogenesis

We’re all born with approximately 100 billion neurons in the brain, which regenerate at a fast rate in our childhoods but slow as we mature

• It was once thought that this eventually stopped completely, but it’s since been proven that neurogenesis can last a lifetime
• In a study conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital (massgeneral.org), doctors experimented with lab rats to see if medicine could ignite neogenesis. While it could, the neurons died before they had any potential

Exercise Improves Memory and Learning

Multiple studies have shown that adults who exercise perform better on memory, learning, and decision-making tasks than their counterparts who do not exercise.

• Exercise is one of the leading forms of therapy for people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s, says the APA.

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