How Physical Activity Makes Your Brain Cells Grow!

Our brain is constantly changing and evolving.

We are growing thousands of new Neurons each day, they are evolving from neuronal stem cells all the time, and then form new connections.
This process is called neurogenesis, and is extremely important for our health and well-being: Newly created brain cells have different abilities than older ones, they're more easy to stimulate and play a big role in our learning and memorizing abilities.
Until 20 years ago, scientists actually believed that new Neurons stopped growing at a certain age.
But in 1998, a study by a swedish scientist showed that our brain keeps generating new brain cells, no matter how old we get!

So how exactly do new brain cells grow?

They develop from neuronal stem cells, and the creation gets a boost when we do or experience something new.
But if we don't use the newly formed brain cells and they don't get stimulated, they will die off again.
So this means that activities like learning a new skill, solving a problem or even positive social interactions help keep our cognitive abilities intact.

Recently, scientists have found out that another factor boosts our neurogenesis process - it's physical activity.

They did several tests with rats - one group of them was living in a relatively small cage, while the other had access to many different treadmills and other activities.
And the results have shown that the rats that were more active grew a lot more new brain cells during the time period than the other group!

And WHY is that the case?

When we engage in physical activity, our VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) rises - it's the growth factors in our blood that increases.
And this is what might stimulate Neurogenesis - although researchers at Stanford are still testing that theory.

It's also been proven that the level of a mother's physical fitness has a direct influence on the baby's neurogenesis.
Scientists from Berlin found out that the Babies of very active mice, that were continuously engaging in physical activity during the pregnancy, showed up to 40% more nervous cells in the Hippocampus.
Although the results would probably vary for humans, that's still a very significant difference!

Also, there are many different parts of our brain being stimulated when we're doing any kind of sport.

Our brain has to coordinate the movements of different limbs at the same time, as well as keep our body balance, focus on the environment around us, not lose orientation etc.
This process alone is already complex and might have a direct link to neurogenesis!

And lastly, when we exercise, our heart beats much faster and our bloodflow increases.

This signals almost every aspect of our body to grow and gets past it's limit - and the same goes for our brain cells!
Whenever our body feels like the capacity is being used up, it's making sure to provide more of whatever that might be - and in this case, it's more brain cells.

This topic hasn't been fully researched yet, but many theories show that there is indeed a connection between physical activity and the growth of our brain cells!

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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