Exercising Changes Your Brain

For years I’ve been recommending that stressed clients get aerobic exercise, which is the kind that raises your heart rate. Therapists, doctors and scientists have known for a long time that exercise helps with stress. Now scientists have run experiments which show exercise actually changes the brain so it handles stressful situations better, at least in rats.For more details, check out the New York Times blog post from last month reviewing three of those recent studies.

So now that there’s proof exercise really does make a difference there’s no excuse to not exercise. Don’t skip it this time of year because you have a term paper due before break, or your mom keeps yelling at you because she has to write 300 Christmas cards, or you have to spend too many days in a row with your annoying younger brother. Those are the very stressful situations that exercise will help you handle calmly.

And if you haven’t already, start exercising right away. The big changes in their brains started sometime after the rats had been exercising for three weeks. The scientists don’t know if it takes the same time in humans. They haven’t done that research yet. But they agree that the sooner you start exercising, the sooner you’ll feel more relaxed.