Did you know that Exercise has amazing effects for both short term outcomes for your brain?
In the short-term appropriate exercise can boost your:
- Ability to solve problems
- Feelings of wellbeing
- Ability to deal with stress
- Ability to deal with anxiety
- Blood flow to the brain
- Ability to focus and pay attention
In the long-term exercise can:
- Improve your long-term memory
- Significantly reduce your chances of getting dementia and other neurological diseases
- Improve your cognitive function
And this is all well studied and proven information. No pseudoscience. Why is this so?
Well here is some pseudoscience for you. Humans evolved moving, walking, climbing, foraging, hunting, dancing! We evolved moving so frequently that many of our organs and body processes evolved to require movement in order to function most efficiently.
However, we no longer live the same lifestyle as we did for the majority of our evolution. We no longer need to move in order to survive. We no longer need to store fat, as food is always readily available. Our brains and bodies generally are programmed to be conservative, don’t waste energy unless necessary. This has created a big problem.
Our development over tens of thousands of years has not prepared our bodies to function well this new type of lifestyle. We are seeing a rise in mostly preventable diseases and disorders as a result. Diseases that are in part caused by lack of physical activity, and a poor diet. Diseases and disorders such as Dementia, Depression, Anxiety, Obesity to name a few. All sorts of illnesses or disorders that have not existed in such numbers before. All thanks to our modern lifestyle, that doesn’t match our evolutionary needs.
We no longer have movement as a non-negotiable part of our lives, so we must insert it in an artificial form – exercise. Moving for the sake of moving. We must also try to feed ourselves diet that is more natural to us. A good rule of thumb is, if you can’t recognise where the food exists in nature – it’s probably not something you should be basing the bulk of your diet on.
You could argue that modern medicine has also taken away many other illnesses that plagued our ancestors. And you would be correct. You could also argue that people didn’t live old enough to get dementia 500 years ago, and you’d likely be correct too. But the reality is, you are going to live to be very old, and the quality of your life at 85 is going to be dictated by how you treat yourself today. You’ll notice changes in every aspect of your life, simply by getting moving for 30 minutes or more every day.
