Exercising, not only your body but your brain too!

Attending Art Kramer’s talk was a very interesting experience. He spoke about training your body to enhance your mind and brain. Kramer mentioned that there was a woman named Olga Kotelko, who started track and field at the age of 75 and she is now 93. Although she does not exercise as much as she used to, still a considerable amount at 6 hours, has white matter that is much better than that of 60 year old women when it was tested. This, in a way, proves his idea that levels of performance are malleable and open to enhancement throughout the human lifespan. Although Olga started exercising intensely at and older age, the proof is in the white matter seen in her brain. Overall he found that exercise does help cognition and in fact, it helps women more.  He found that there is a correlated change in white matter and aerobic fitness. In addition he found that there is a positive effect of exercise even with younger students but it doesn't help that we continue to take away physical education in schools. It is interesting to see that these are just a few of the correlations that Kramer found in his studies.

Although many people do not realize it, exercise not only helps with your physical health, it also helps with your cognition. As a college student it is easy to stray from a regimen of exercising because we think that we need more time to do things like study and complete assignments. It may actually be beneficial to take the time out of you day and spend it on exercising because ultimately it may help studying and completion of assignments more efficient because it helps cognitive processes. Now this is only something that I thought may be true and it could be or not but I have noticed that when I exercise daily, not only am I less sluggish but feel more energized to power through the work that I may have to get done. Ever since attending this talk it makes me want to continue exercising my body and mind and on those days where I feel like not exercising I remember it may actually help me with my cognitive thought processes and get right back into it.