Boost Your Brain With Sleep and Exercise

In Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (2008), molecular biologist, Dr John Medina , explores 12 simple principles to understand how our brain works and how we can put that knowledge to practical use. This cognitive literacy can help us discover why we behave in certain ways, as well as help explain the behaviour of others.

Four of the 12 brain rules deal with how you can optimise your brain’s capability by exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. Dr Medina focuses on these two aspects because , as it turns out, while people pay a lot of attention to diet, they tend to overlook the fact that exercise and sleep have a huge impact on their brain power.

Exercise, especially of an aerobic nature, not only boosts your brain power , but can improve your mental agility as it destroys harmful stress chemicals, positively influences cognitive function and optimises executive function, spatial tasks, reaction times and quantitative skills.

Research has shown that regular physical activity can also improve your brain’s plasticity, the brain’s ability to change physically , functionally and chemically , all of which directly influence learning , memory and motor skill coordination. The more ‘plastic’ your brain becomes, the more it is able to reorganise itself, modifying the number and strength of connections between nerve cell and different brain areas. This results in improvements in memory and motor skill coordination.

However, research has been unclear in proving how much exercise you need to improve brain function.A recent study conducted at the University of Adelaide in Australia suggests that one 30-minute session of vigorous exercise can lead to changes in the brain that make it more more ‘plastic’. A similar study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign found that regular exercise can benefit the brain’s supply of white matter, leading to a greater capacity for memory, attention span and cognitive efficiency.

Another benefits of physical exercise is the reduction in stress, which adversely affects your brain functioning. Dr Medina says that chronic stress and exhaustion can dramatically affect your brain’s ability to function and learn. This is because while your body and mind are built to handle stress, prolonged stress destroys brain cells.
Ultimately, most people unfortunately lack simple, clear information about good mental habits and how to nourish their brains; they are generally unaware of what it take to have optimum mental health, which is why you must focus on exercising more and sleeping for at least eight hours every night.

By Fauzia Kerai Khan The writer is Chief Consultant, i&b Consulting , Training, e-learning.

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