5 Types Of Exercise To Keep Your Mind Sharp

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In order to have a healthy body, physical activities are important as we all know. However, physical activity is not only important for the body but also your mind as well. When you increase your physical activities during the day, your heart pumps more blood than it normally does to feed cells with oxygen and naturally, you feed your brain more effectively when you increase your physical activities during the day.

According to experts, physical activities actually do more than just increasing blood flow through the brain. Specific activities such as high-intensity interval training, aerobic exercise, weight training, yoga and other similar activities help you to activate different functions of your brain. These functions include memory, complex thinking, navigation, problem solving and dealing with multiple tasks.

Walk To Have A Stronger Heart

In order to improve the skeletal and the muscular system, brisk walking for 30 minutes a day and exercising 3 days a week would be more than enough. Active lifestyle not only extends your life expectancy but also helps you to socialize and boosts your mood.

  • Brisk walking makes your heart stronger by forcing it to pump more blood and help you to get rid of belly fat
  • Weight training and working out make your muscles and bones stronger
  • Yoga calms your body and mind, the stretching you do during yoga can increase muscle length and relaxes your body.

1. High-Intensity Interval Training

High-intensity interval training stimulates the hypothalamus and gets your appetite under control. When you desire something to eat out of nowhere or become addicted to something, that means you have no control over your hypothalamus. An effective way to increase your willpower is to discipline your hypothalamus with high-intensity interval training.

2. Aerobic Exercise

Activities such as brisk walking, running and cycling are good choices as an aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercises also stimulate your hypothalamus, which improves your memory and navigation skills. Researches prove that people who do aerobic exercises three days a week have larger hypothalamus and they have better scores on memory tests. The hypothalamus is one of the first regions that affected by Alzheimer’s disease. There are also studies that prove aerobic exercise, especially brisk walking, provides very effective results for distracted and hyperactive children.

3. Weight Training

Either body-weight exercises like push-ups, sit-ups or weight exercises including punching bag stimulate prefrontal cortex, which improves complex thinking, problem-solving and dealing with multiple tasks. Teenagers who are preparing for exams can increase their efficiency by sparing some time for these exercises but unfortunately, most people see it as a waste of time. Aerobic exercises but especially weight training make your body release growth hormone, which improves bone and muscle density.

4. Yoga

Yoga is actually sparing some time for thinking and cleansing your mind since meditation is a part of yoga. During yoga and meditation, the frontal lobe of the brain is actively used and that improves abilities like controlling your emotions, focus and planning. Even if most people find it difficult to believe but it is proven that every living being glows a different kind and color of glow. Japanese scientists from the University of Tokyo are able to visually capture aura using very sensitive cameras. Yoga and meditation help you to control and even manipulate your aura.

5. The Opposite Rule

Using opposite hand, leg or arm force your brain to use the opposite side of the brain. Brushing your teeth with opposite hand is a good point to start with, you can even try to write with opposite hand but that requires more and more practice. Which leg do you put in first when wearing your pants? Right leg or the left leg? The answer doesn’t matter actually, trying to put opposite leg first will do the same effect. Same thing goes for wearing jackets, putting on socks, putting on shoes and other similar things. When you try to use opposite side of your brain, you active both sides of the brain. It also strengthens neural connections in your brain and it can even grow new ones.

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