Aerobics For Lasting Mental Health By Mike Cosentino At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

It’s a fact, exercise like aerobics not only has a positive effect on your body as a whole, but also on your brain in particular. Exercising is a great way to increase your positive outlook on life, by boosting production of the “gang of four” hormones and neurotransmitters in your brain, namely dopamine, serotonin, melatonin and norepinephrine. Between them, these natural chemical substances can make life seem more enjoyable, less stressed and better focused.

However, aerobics also has longer lasting benefits as well. Besides the immediate effects of stimulating the right chemical production in your brain, aerobics also promotes mental health on a long-term basis, when done regularly and under the right conditions. It’s a link that is regularly reinforced by scientific research on the subject, which also shows that diet is an important factor as well. Brainpower and brain fitness can suffer not only from a lack of oxygen-enriched blood that exercise brings, but also from eating too many high-sugar foods. Although the brain needs glucose in order to function at optimal capacity, it is the body’s job to manufacture this to order when you eat the right foods, rather than trying to inject sugar directly into your system.

Avoiding Alzheimer’s

The longer lasting benefits of better blood flow keep you mentally active and healthy. The right amount of oxygen in the blood getting to the right parts of the brain make you more alert and better equipped to answer questions, solve problems and stay on top of things that relate to overall brain fitness. They help to keep mental illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and general dementia away. While a person is active in a professional capacity for example, these illnesses may not seem to be a risk. Daily use of one’s brain, exercising ones “mental muscles”, affords a certain amount of protection. But when a person is no longer active professionally, there needs to be some replacement activity or else blood flow to the brain seizes up and the way is open for the mental illnesses mentioned.

Aerobics stimulates deep breathing, which is one of the key factors in enriching the blood supply with oxygen to the right level. Deep, steady breathing is associated with a number of fitness activities including long distance running and slow steady swimming. These exercises make the most of the capacity of your lungs to breath in, exchange respiratory waste products for oxygen laden fresh air and fix the oxygen in your blood for it to be transported all around your body. This ultimately gets to the brain and leads to brain fitness.

Aerobics and its relations

People who practice aerobics sometimes find themselves in a state of mental clarity and focus similar to that produced by meditation. This is no coincidence, as the same breathing techniques exist in both cases. If you have already done yoga, you will know what importance is attached in yoga to deep breathing in conjunction with the other physical activities. Both yoga and simple walking have the same positive effects as aerobics in terms of breathing deeply, and provide good options or additional exercise as well.

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