Live better
glorious minute of it.
The lesson is that, no matter how sedentary and inactive you have been, if you now begin to indulge in regular, relatively undemanding exercise – a brisk 40 minute walk in the National Park, for instance – it will do you immeasurable good. No need to play hard squash or badminton or join a football team or enter for the next half-marathon. Much less than that is excellent for you. The only thing to remember is that the exercise must be regular. It must not be in bursts, arising from some temporary good resolution. The benefits of exercise cannot be stored up, they must be earned day in and day out. But if you do exercise, not very strenuously, day in and day out see how much better you will feel within a month.
And there will be added bonuses. Research also shows conclusively that people who exercise regularly recover from illnesses more quickly; they fall over less
Soften; and they are much less likely to suffer from depression.
Even more importantly, and of extraordinary interest, is the impact of exercise on the functioning of the brain. It had been thought that brain cells slowly but continually die with no hope of regeneration. But recently it has been found that neurogenesis, the creation of neurons in the brain, is possible. Specifically, one definite means of neurogenesis has been identified: aerobic exercise. In her book “Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News From the Front Lines of Memory Research,” Sue Halpern explains the process by which exercise leads to “brain-gain”: it promotes new cell growth in old brains by increasing their blood volume and cell growth improves memory. “In addition”, Ms. Halpern explains, “exercise… increased the amount of the chemical BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) circulating in the brain and it was BDNF that stimulated the birth of new brain cells… BDNF also enhanced neural plasticity, which was to say that it enabled the brain to prosper. In diseases like Alzheimer’s’, depression, Parkinson’s and dementia more generally, BDNF levels were low. In people who exercised, BDNF levels rose.” o while we await that far-off day when some marvelous elixir of fish-oil, blueberries, the nectar of wild orchids and Amazonian herbs banishes MCI (mild cognitive impairment) which afflicts us all sooner or later – and even overcomes the dreaded Alzheimer’s, until that day, there is something we all can do to assist not only our physical wellbeing but also our mental health.
Samuel Johnson, that great old English 18th Century poet and man of letters, knew what he was saying: “I have found in life how much happiness is gained, or, to put it more carefully, how much misery is escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.”