What’s good for your heart is good for your brain!
Studies have shown that regular physical activity can help lower the risk of dementia, hearts disease, and other major ailments that plague us.
Older adults who remain active have higher levels of brain proteins that enhance connections between neurons, which in turn improves their memory and boosts cognition.
Also, when seniors exercise consistently, they have better cardiovascular health, reducing the risk of falls, maintaining independence, managing chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease,
and improving overall strength, balance, and flexibility,
allowing them to live more active and fulfilling lives.
It’s Never Too Late to Start
Every movement counts when it comes to brain and body health.
Let’s reduce our risk of falling
Let’s improve our cardiovascular health.
Let’s maintain muscle mass and bone density and improve flexibility, making daily activities easier to perform.
Let’s improve our mood, stress levels, and think sharper.
Finally, seniors can continue to perform daily tasks independently while promoting quality of life through movement.
5 Exercises for You
- Walking for Aerobics … Regular aerobic exercise boosts blood flow to your brain, and also boosts the size of your hippocampus, the part of your brain that’s involved in verbal memory and learning. You need about 20 minutes every day to accomplish this. Walk you block at a moderate pace for 2 minutes and then pick up the pace for 20 seconds. Repeat this for at least 3 times. Then, just enjoy the rest of your walk and let your senses make you feel alive and youthful.
2. Weight Training … Strength training can help prevent shrinkage of the hippocampus in older adults. You hippocampus helps with learning and memory. It’s located in the temporal lobe, and is part of the limbic system.
More than balance and toning your muscles, pumping iron helps you focus on form and performing specific moves, which in turn exercises the neural circuits in your brain.
Weight training twice a week working the major muscle groups and doing compound exercises, for about 10 minutes each time, will give you many positive results.
3. Tai Chi … This fluid slow moving ancient Chinese martial art done daily will prevent falls, osteoarthritis, Parkinson disease, rehabilitation for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cognitive capacity in older adults. You don’t have to memorize all 108 moves. Just pick your favourites and have fun. You might want to do this workout in a park or a place that makes you feel positive.
3. Meditative Yoga … Yoga done for 12 minutes daily and maybe a one hour class with an expert once a week, shows significant improvements in both verbal memory (the ability to remember word lists) and visual-spatial memory (the ability to find and remember locations).
5. Dancing … Moving to music reduces the risk of dementia by 76% according to extensive studies. Either turn on your tunes at home and move some of the furniture at least once a week or join others in your community and kick up your heels.
Ease into Physical Activity
If you tend to sit more than you move,
• park further from the grocery store
• do a wall sit while brushing your teeth
• go for a walk while talking on the phone
• stand in a meeting
• pause the tv show, and do your favourite exercise 10 times
The more naturally movement can fit into your day-to-day life, the easier it will be to maintain.
Remember … Practice Makes Permanent!
Learn the Hustle with Bob!
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