Everyone knows that exercise is good for your body. We’ve heard about the benefits of exercise all of our lives. It keeps your heart and muscles in tip top shape. It decreases your chances of terrible things like stroke, diabetes, and osteoporosis. But, did you know that it’s also good for your brain?

People who exercise for a half hour at least twice a week decrease their risk of getting dementia and Alzheimer’s disease by forty to fifty percent. That’s a small amount of exercise to get such good results. Exercise also helps you improve the speed you process information (maybe my husband should get some more exercise), response times and your memory. It can also help your brain more easily distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors.

Physical activity helps keep the small blood vessels in the brain healthy. This protects you from getting condition that can lead to dementia. The most exciting thing is that exercise helps you grow more neurons in you hippocampus, the area in your brain used for memory. It also helps you build new connections between the neurons you already have.

If you want to be sharp when you get older, get out and start exercising now. Aerobic activity for a half an hour a couple times a week isn’t that difficult when you consider the trade off.

I used to exercise several times a week on a regular basis, but I haven’t been doing that recently. Honestly, I’ve just been lazy. Maybe the cold weather does that to you. I’m through with making excuses. I’m going to get up out of my chair and start exercising. It’ll make me smarter. I like the idea of being smarter.

Photo by Celso Flores