Exercise Your IQ

By getting the body to run better, exercise improves the functioning of the mind. The brain may think it’s the boss, but without a healthy body supporting it, it’s about as powerful as a candidate with no votes.
Research now concludes that regular physical exercise can improve brain Function by:

1) Improving memory. Memory depends on good communication among all parts of the brain, and exercise appears to help keep the wires (blood vessels) responsible for that communication in good condition.

2) Increasing problem-solving ability and creativity. The brain cell benefiting from exercise may also be the more clever brain cell, as attested by recent research with business executives — plus the cerebral track records of such avid exercisers as Wordsworth, Thoreau, Einstein, and Aristotle.

3) Creating stronger immunity to stress. “Exercise appears to burn up excess stress chemicals by using them tor energy expressed outwardly rather than inwardly, where they can do harm,” explains cardiologist Robert S. Elliot.

4) Helping us to keep our chins up. And not just over the bar. Exercise is a potent mood—elevator, as shown in clinical studies with depressed mental patients. To be thanked: the TOO percent all—natural uppers called endorphins.

5) Improving stamina. Let’s face it: It’s tough to be smart when you’re pooped. Exercise can give the physical boost that intellectual stamina cannot do without.

Adequate physical activity has been found to be so important to good health that a recent report in the Archives of Internal Medicine warned that insufficient levels of exercise should be considered as detrimental to health as - believe it or not - smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.

To add to the alarming findings of that report, doctors presented statistics a year later in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that people who don’t exercise, when compared to those who exercise moderately, could expect their risk of dying prematurely to double.