Building a Better Brain. Don’t Be A Slug.

In my former life as a neuroscientist (over 25 years ago), I did physiology research on certain aspects of the brain and behavior. At some point after a long week of working with monkeys, a few of us went out for a beer at the local place. And I guess because we just hadn’t had enough brain-speak during the week, we started talking about what it would take to build a better brain. Imagine that, a bunch of brain researchers using their brains to talk about how to improve our brains.

My friends thought it was the beer talking, but I piped up that exercising improved your brain whether you used it for thinking, doing puzzles, or not. After I offered my little hypothesis, it was like one of those moments in a group where someone says something SO non sequitur that everyone all stops talking, looks, pauses during the extended blank staring epoch, and then goes back to their conversation.

To their defense, the brain IS a unique system from the musculoskeletal system. Why in the Universe would these two be linked?

We’ve learned a lot since then. Like, for example, the increase in blood pressure that happens when you exercise, also happens within the brain. And that increased pressure and flow can help keep those passages open, providing more oxygen and nutrients to this cold gray cerebral organ that also happens to need more glucose than any other organ in the body (by far!).

That’s why its so important to keep the arteries clean as a whistle. And a good way to help with that is to move. In fact, we now know that regular physical activity improves your cognitive skills, prevents you from sliding into that old age phase of having to act like you still remember things, and it works for any age level as well.

So, if you want to build a better brain. Don’t be a slug. Get out and move!