Want to keep your brain in shape? One of the best things you can do is exercise.
It doesn’t surprise John Ratey, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Exercise, like mental stimulation, provides a “challenge” to the brain, he says. “The brain needs to get the message that we need it to keep functioning,” says Ratey. A bunch of different mechanisms are thought to be responsible for the exercise-brain connection, including a growth factor called FGF-2 that is produced by exercise and is thought to be involved in the generation of new neurons.
FWIW, constantly coming up with more elaborate excuses to avoid exercise can also keep the bean pretty sharp.
