Grow a brain?!

What’s that all about? Don’t tell me you can grow a brain, because you can’t! You come into this world with a brain and, if you’re lucky, you leave this world with the same brain. Okay, that’s said and done, but what about growing a brain then? It’s actually quite simple; you can improve your brain and let it grow that way ;-) Hmmz…that must be difficult? No, its not, I assure you. It’s just like gardening; the most important ingredient is a good fertilizer.

All you really need to do is exercise, walking counts as exercise, and how difficult is that?
Weird hey! As it turns out, exercise helps your brain cells to grow and make new connections. Working yourself in a sweat on a regular basis is like a fertilizer for brain cells. New brain cells will sprout and will make more connections. And if that’s not enough, these new connections work better too, which in turn helps to preserve the frontal lobes, that’s the area of the brain where ageing is most noticeable.

Exercise helps your brain to make a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which creates brain cells and connections. New small blood vessels also grow with exercise, nourishing these cells and connections that would otherwise wither away under the pressure of ageing.

Good nutrition, education, and positive thinking all help to keep your brain young. But the most important factor is aerobics. It has remarkable beneficial effects on the structure and function of the brain.

Great news isn’t it? And by the way I didn’t dream this up myself; it’s the conclusion of 10 years of research done by Professor Ian Robertson - University of Dublin