Use It, or Lose It!

In Maintaining optimum health, we often focus on the physical benefits of exercise, we gain good toned muscle when we exercise, exercise is good for the heart; it helps to maintain a desired weight, lowers high blood pressure, helps increase the body's immunity against common colds and flu, it has anti-aging effects, improves sleeping patterns, helps manage degenerative diseases and the list is endless, but suppose after long hard months of exercise we decide to relax? Yip as the saying goes, 'use it, or lose it.' 

If exercise does all these wonderful things for our bodies; how about a good dose of mental exercise? Health professionals claim that regular exercise "arouses the brain and slows down degeneration of the central nervous system." Since the very act of exercising increases blood flow to the brain and improves circulation to the heart and the different parts of the body, the activity is said to encourage growth of nerve cells in the part of the brain involved in memory.

Neurologist Bernard Croisile mentions that the mind has 5 main cognitive functions namely memory, attention, language, visual-spatial skills and executive function. These need to be challenged by exercising all 5 areas in order to stay mentally sharp. Croisile suggests a few ways to keep our brain active, among which he mentions that in order to improve memory we need to read (good spiritual material) and also 'think big.' Croisile claims that using our opposite hand to brush our teeth, helps build new associations between different neural connections in the brain. 

Furthermore, to improve our attention span, he advises that when we change routines like using a different direction to work, or re-organizing your desk, the brain breaks the habit of routines and re-focuses again (learning new things). Listening to an audio book (or classical music) while exercising or doing math, helps the brain to learn how to focus on doing two or more tasks simultaneously.

With the emergence of technology, social plugins, and media, many people hardly read, write or communicate effectively. Our irritability and stress levels have gone up, our patience levels have gone down and we look for anything that will make things easier and faster. So we chat on our phones and on the internet but 'forget' to use proper language and as a result our memory, grammar, fluency skills and vocabulary is affected.

It is recommended that one ought to try reading different material and get exposure to new (clean) words, if we don’t understand some of the words, we can make use of the dictionary thus improve our language skills. There you have it! exercise = brain power, so no more trouble memorizing those Bible verses, study and exam material. Exercise your body, exercise your mind. 

Sources: Bernard Croisile, M.D. PhD. Neuropsychology

S. Erasmus