To get the most from your brain performance as you take physical exercise,  follow this simple advice:

Exercise within the boundaries of your fitness level. Work out a training program that suits you and never over-do it. From week to week gradually increase the length of your exercise sessions and along with improving your physical fitness, you will also begin to feel the benefits mentally.

Stay aerobic. Unless you are a serious athlete training for a specific race, there is little need to move outside your aerobic threshold when you exercise. Exercise at a comfortable pace and keep your breathing regular. While running or cycling you should be able to hold a conversation without feeling out of breath or panting. If you do feel out of breath, slow down.

Warm up and cool down. If you do need to do some high-intensity exercise make sure you warm up and cool down with some easy aerobic exercise before and after to get your brain back in gear.

Stay hydrated. Dehydration will stop your brain and body from functioning normally. If you don’t drink plenty of water during and after exercising, you may not feel any of the rewards, either physically or mentally. If anything, it will slow you down. Don’t risk it and always have water close at hand.

Keep goals. It is difficult to imagine running a marathon if you’ve never walked a mile. Stay focused and keep manageable goals that will take you just outside your comfort zone. When you reach one goal then make another. The mental strength needed to run a marathon will then develop naturally along with your physical fitness.

Have you ever experienced the benefits of physical exercise on your brain performance?

Source: www.healthfitness.com.au

Can you match which cognitive skills are needed for excellence in all sports? For example, in the game of horseshoes, hand-eye coordination and mental focus are critical to a successful game. How about swimming, rowing or tennis?

Find out the answers tomorrow in our blog!

Last Saturday, August 1st, the 2009 Summer National Senior Games started in San Francisco. HAPPYneuron was proud to be present with its sponsoring partner Humana.

Senior Games, you’re saying? Surely, seniors can be active and do regular exercise but doesn’t the term “games” involve a competition? Are seniors actually able to compete in a sports competition?

The answer is yes, they are, and the Summer National Senior Games, also known as the Senior Olympics (the first edition took place in 1987) gives men and women age 50 and older the opportunity to compete in their favorite sport, just like proper athletes.

Like Vivian Stancil, 56, who is blind and has been swimming for years, thus losing 135 pounds and being able to compete at events like the Senior Olympics, the exercise making her feel much happier. Then, there is also Johnie, 82, and Dee, 78, Howard who have been playing tennis, even taking part in competitions, ever since they married in 1995!

The Senior Olympics does not merely provide excellent exercise for older adults but also provides something else very important: the opportunity to socialize and meet new people that share a common interest.

The Summer National Senior Games website gives excellent advice about preparation, training, and workout, all need to do is click on your sport -  whether you wish to try out for the 2011 Senior Olympics or  just for fun of keeping fit!

We are very excited to share that the findings of a recently conducted scientific study of 271 HAPPYneuron members showing performance improvement of 8.5% on average after just 150 games played.

Upon analysis it was found that in those users that played consistently 3+ times per week for 20+ minutes, there is an average score improvement of over 8.5% after just 150 games. The 150 games were played within a period of 3 months. What’s important to note here is that the first 75 games played by each user were not factored in the study to ensure that the (un)familiarization effect was accounted for. The resulting score improvement increase would have been even higher if these initial 75 games were included.

This demonstrates that significant improvement is realized after just 150 games played. This is a refinement of previous studies conducted with 85 HAPPYneuron users that correlated improvement of an average of 16% after 500 games played.

I look forward to publishing this most recent study in collaboration of the HAPPYneuron scientific team very soon. In the mean time, continue your brain training…it DOES make a difference.

The “tip of the tongue” phenomenon just got a little more help. You’ll be pleased to learn that 25 new word categories and over 2,500 new words have been added to this addictive game. Click here to play now….

We continue to add more and more categories to this Language Cognitive Exercise all the time. If you have a favorite hobby or interest, why not let us know and we’ll look to add it. If there’s a category that you have an interest in, be sure that others will too and enjoy de-splitting the words! Make your suggestions to feedback@happy-neuron.com.

Here’s an article in the New York Times that suggests ways to improve our thinking. Learning new material, yoga, aerobic exercise and caffeine are all mentioned as ways to stay sharp and in tune. In addition, there’s a link to another article that explains what mental status tests are, how they are performed and what the results mean. Click here for more….

It is now well known that, for rodents, physical exercise is beneficial for brain health. Indeed, mice allowed to freely run on an exercise wheel grow more new neurons that mice not allowed to move freely. Importantly, these new neurons grow in an area crucial for memory formation: the hippocampus.

Neurogenesis (the birth and development of neurons) is difficult to estimate in the human brain as there are no way to directly count new neurons…
Recently, Small and his colleagues (2007) were able to use neuroimaging to study the effect of physical exercise on neurogenesis in humans. Their study involved a group of 11 middle-aged adults who had been exercising about four times a week, for three months. Results show exercise-related changes in the hippocampus, suggesting neurogenesis in this area.

This new study adds to the numerous results showing that physical exercise is good for the brain. Let’s keep moving then!

Read the original article here.
Read a report on the original article here.

For people in their 60s, regular walking appears to lower the risk of dementia.

The finding, published this week in the medical journal Neurology, is the latest study to show that exercise helps delay some of the age related decline of body AND mind.

The recent research tracked the exercise habits of 749 men and women in Italy who were over age 65 and were in good health, with no indication of memory problems at the beginning of the study. After four years, they found that the most-frequent walkers had a 27 percent lower risk for developing vascular dementia than those people who walked the least.

What’s important about the study is that it again shows exercise doesn’t have to be excruciating to reap the benefits. “It’s important to note that an easy-to-perform moderate activity like walking provided the same cognitive benefits as other, more demanding activities,” said study author Dr. Giovanni Ravaglia of University Hospital S. Orsola Malpighi, in Bologna, Italy.

Last year, the Annals of Internal Medicine reported on a study of more than 1,700 adults over 65 that also showed regular walkers have lower dementia risk. In that study, walkers who exercised three or more times a week showed a dementia risk of 13 per 1,000 person years, but the adults who walked less often had a risk of 19.7 per 1,000 person years. That translates to a nearly 40 percent reduction in risk.

Walking may help stave off dementia because it improves cerebral blood flow and lowers the risk of vascular disease. So get out there for a good walk. Your brain, as well as your body, will thank you.

Take the informative Brain Food Quiz at WebMD