Key 2: Activate Your Mind–Body Connection
Key Points:
1. The benefits of moving your body are unparalleled. It stimulates new neurons to grow, extends lifespan, protects our DNA from aging as quickly, and it can help prevent certain cancers and other illnesses.
2. The more exercise, the better, but even as simple as a 15 minute walk can offer many of these benefits.
3. Along with extending the lifespan, incorporating regular physical activity into our lives is key for optimal physical and mental health.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
When you move your body, you activate different parts of your brain. Different kinds of movement can have powerful effects on our mental health, lowering both anxiety and depression and making us happier and more confident. As a bonus, exercise stimulates the growth of new neurons, which is the foundation of neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change in response to learning and experience). So what kind of physical movement will both stimulate growth in your brain and allow you to achieve a reflective mental state?
Research indicates that mild to moderate physical activity seems to increase brainwave activity and shift blood away from the higher-level thinking centres of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex. But beyond putting our minds more at ease, rhythmic activities create changes in the body as well.
Our bodies contain a protein kinase called mTOR (short for “mammalian target of rapamycin”). Growth in the body—both positive and negative—as well as lack of growth are partly controlled by mTOR. Cells that grow too much or too fast can be a problem for our health, so inhibiting mTOR has several benefits, including reducing cancer tumours and extending a person’s lifespan. Interesting and powerful research tells us that we can block mTOR and extend lifespan simply by doing aerobic exercise, such as walking, jogging, cycling, or swimming.
We also know that when we engage in aerobic exercise, we create something called AMP kinase, an enzyme in our bodies that has a massive positive impact on everything from muscles to bones to the brain.
Multiple studies have determined that aerobic training actually changes our DNA. At the end of every DNA strand, there is a little cap that looks like the plastic end of a shoelace. It’s called a telomere, and it holds your DNA together and protects it from damage. As we age, our telomeres shrink, and once they shrink enough, our DNA starts to fray and come apart, which causes errors to start to accumulate.
Telomeres can also be damaged by inflammation that accompanies being sedentary and eating highly processed foods, which means that by getting a bit exercise we can often reverse the negative effects of not having previously gotten enough exercise. In recent studies, researchers compared the telomeres of runners to more sedentary non-runners. They found that endurance exercise appears to protect the telomeres in DNA of the runners. Those older athletes had literally changed their genetics at a foundational level. It’s never too late to get started.
But you don’t need to be a runner. Other activities have tremendous physiological benefits: As little as a 15-minute walk can decrease your risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. And it does not seem to matter how fast you walk! Slow walkers experienced the same benefits when compared to people who walked at a faster pace. Similar benefits are seen with cycling, so if you prefer riding your bike go for it! Further, people who exercise daily have 75% fewer colds and flus—exercise facilitates the effective functioning of the lymphatic system in combating disease.
Another physiological benefit of physical activity is that exercise stimulates the release of stem cells, the incredible cells that can differentiate and change themselves into pretty much any other type of cell in the body. As adults, stem cells are stored on the surface of blood vessels in our muscles. Scientists have learned that when we exercise at a sufficient intensity to produce waste products like lactic acid (when muscles burn) and carbon dioxide (when breathing hard enough to hear the breathing), we stimulate the release of stem cells from our muscles and blood vessels, which then circulate around the body and repair tissue.
Most forms of exercise have incredibly powerful life-extending effects. I encourage everyone to incorporate movement into their lives every day. It enables us to extend our lifespan, to enter a relaxed and creative state, and to improve our mind–body health.
A Simple Mind–Body Connection Protocol
Physical activity calms the mind and decreases active thinking, enabling you to enter into a state of reflection and open up the potential for learning. Just about any activity performed at a comfortable pace before a mental task will enhance your ability to learn.
Researchers have proven time and again that exercise boosts learning. In one study, a research team divided students into three groups. The control group did nothing out of the ordinary; they just carried on with their schooling as usual. The second group walked up and down the halls for 20 minutes before math class. The third group walked up and down stairs for 40 minutes before math class. The results were staggering: Both groups of kids who exercised before math improved their learning and achievement—and the effect was dose dependent. The more the kids exercised, the better they did at math. The control group didn’t change.
Interestingly, the Athenians in ancient Greece already understood the mind–body connection. The whole point of their “gymnasia” was to prepare the body for learning. Students would come to learn and mix up their time in lectures and discussion with time spent doing gymnastics—stretching, jumping, bounding, and moving. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to use our body to achieve a reflective state that makes learning from experience so much more effective.
Today’s Call to Action: Sprinkle Physical Activity into your Day
A little bit of physical activity every day goes a long way. However, in today’s hustle and bustle culture, people find it hard to even get in a 15-minute walk. However, if you sprinkle in small bouts of physical activity throughout the day, the time commitment is more manageable, and you’ll find you’ll have more energy and your mind will be clearer for the rest of the day.
The first step is to find out how much physical activity you’re currently doing. From there you can figure out where you can add in more physical activity on a daily basis. Use the Physical Activity Tracker, on page 21 of the Rest, Refocus, Recharge Workbook, to help you keep track of your physical activity and determine where and how you can improve.
Today’s Bonus Video
Click Here for a bonus podcast with behavioural change expert Dr. Marc Mitchell. Also, check out this video Here highlighting the many benefits of exercise for our brains.
The information and advice provided in this program is intended to assist you with improving your performance, as well as your general health. It is not intended and should not be used in place of advice from your own physician or for treatment or diagnosis of any specific health issue. By participating in this program you acknowledge that undertaking any new health, diet and/or exercise regime involves certain inherent risks, that you assume such risks, and that you release Wells Performance Inc. from any responsibility or claim relating to such participation.