Keep Your Body Moving to Stay Brain Young

What does your brain need to Stay Brain Young? A great blood flow. How do you get that? Through physical exercise.

A Dana Foundation reports that Columbia University neuroscientist Scott Small and colleagues found that a "structured exercise training program increases neurogenesis—the birth and development of new nerve cells—in a memory hub of the brain.".

The researchers found that middle-age subjects who had exercised for hour hour a day, four times a week for three months experienced increase blood flow in this memory hub, the dentate gyrus area of the hippocampus. The scientists correlated this with the rate of blood flow in mice along with the growth of nerve cells in this same area.

They inferred that the same type of benefits of increased neurogenesis in the mice was incurring in the human subjects.

In other words, consistent exercising did increase the blood flow and nerve cell growth in the critical area responsible for memory retention.

So what does this mean for you? Get out there and exercise or stay in an exercise. Regardless of where you do it, get off your duff and get going. One! Two! Three! Four! Get your body off the floor!