Category: Headache

The Effects of Exercise on Your Brain

When we make the decision to exercise, it’s usually for fear of our beach bod, not our brain power. But while exercise does have a profound impact on whether we can look attractive and still eat ice cream, it actually affects our brain more than our waistlines. Studies have shown that heading to the gym regularly or even adding slightly more activity to our lives sparks the portions of our brain that are left dormant in our sitting lifestyle, and affects our cognitive functions both now and in our older years.

What are the real effects of exercise on your brain, and how can you benefit from them?

1. You’ll Have Greater Focus

Your brain operates much like an engine. If it’s not properly cleaned, lubricated, and fueled, it’s going to be running at unimpressively half strength. Exercising encourages the flow of oxygen to your brain, which serves as fuel, and also boosts the flow of endorphins, the human body’s natural self-defense mechanism to smooth over pain or fatigue so you can complete tasks better, faster, and for longer. While this chemical was originally meant to keep us on point during times of danger, going for a quick powerwalk can give you the same focus our ancestors needed to make intelligent decisions to ensure their survival.

2. Your Mood Will Improve Almost Immediately

Any simple exercise that gets your heart rate up more than when you’re sitting at your desk browsing Facebook will trigger endorphins to flood through your body, giving you relief from muscle pain and aches while encouraging you to work out harder. This is your body’s way of rewarding you and also a method of numbing anything that would prevent you from continuing to run, climb, or maneuver – all things that make it possible to escape danger. As a reward, endorphins dull the hormones in your body that fuel a negative mood, naturally soothing you. So by stopping to do a few sit-ups or take a lap around the office, you’re triggering your body’s natural mood stabilizer.

3. Want a Boost of Creativity? Get Your Blood Pumping

In that afternoon slump where creativity and motivation grinds to a halt, all we need is something to get our brain firing on all cylinders again. You need a little extra gas in the tank to have punch. This comes in the form of a few easy stretches or sit-ups; that increased blood flow encourages a burst of oxygen to the brain, which reactivates the portions of your mind that go dormant during tedious or routine tasks. As a defense mechanism to conserve energy, your brain will in essence reroute power from its creative and long-term memory portions so that you can save this strength for later. Exercise breaks your mind from this routine and lets it know that a new routine is being set in place, so you need more power to take on new tasks. Even if you return to your previous project, your mind will still be enjoying that burst of energy and therefore creativity you need.

4. Your Neural Signals Will Fire Faster and Better

Since exercise snaps your brain to attention, preparing it for important tasks that would usually be a matter of life or death in our early centuries as a species, it also encourages the paths for neural signals and chemical flow to open up, allowing for the signals to transmit to and from the brain more efficiently. This results in faster response times to pain, bringing relief – especially in your back and neck.

5. Your Brain Will Not Only Grow, But Grow Healthier

It’s a sad fact of life that as we age, our brain begins to degenerate; but adding a few exercises that get your blood pumping can do away with this. The human brain thrives on oxygen to function at its peak condition by using it as fuel to create new cells, which effectively grow and rejuvenate your mind. As we get older, our brain slows in its production, but exercises that get our heart pumping encourages cell production to boost. Studies show that patients with degenerating brains who make exercise a regular part of their daily routine see a fantastic improvement in their brain growth after just six months in comparison to those who maintained their sedentary lifestyle.

6. Your Memory Will Get Better and Last Into Your Golden Years

A few too many drinks, a love for the less green food groups, and good ol’ genes can really bite us when it comes to memory – especially in the long run, as we get into our golden years. But taking a few laps up and down the stairs doesn’t just give you killer gluts. A focus group of people aged 55 to 80 showed that those who exercised regularly performed up to four times better on memory tests than those who didn’t. This indicates that exercise has the ability to recover the strength of your memory as well as preserve it before you get older, making it worthwhile to add a few trips to the gym to your schedule if you find yourself forgetting names and dates.

7. Mental Illness Will be Easier to Manage

Of course there’s no magical cure for mental illness – but your brain does have a few tricks up its sleeve when it comes to soothing the affects it has on your body. The production of hormones known as serotonin and dopamine are designed to boost positive mood, pushing back some of the most negative effects of anxiety, depression, and other mental illness that sap you of energy and motivation. But rather than taking medication to kick these chemicals into gear, you can take advantage of exercise to naturally trigger them in your body. By power walking or jogging on a treadmill for a few minutes, and then drinking a few glasses of water, you’re encouraging your body to flood your system with positive chemicals and then flush out toxins that could be making your body unbalanced.

8. Stress Will Melt Away

Let’s face it; we’re all a little stressed. We accept it as a part of life, but few understand the true toll it takes on our bodies. High levels of cortisol as a result from stress inspires fatigue, affects our ability to create new cells, and even damages the portion of your brain responsible for storing long-term memories. However, exercise naturally lowers your cortisol levels, melting away stress and leaving you more balanced and relaxed than before. As an extra advantage, the lower levels of cortisol even stimulate your brain’s dentate gyrus, which processes and stores memories. That means you’re not only keeping your brain strong with less stress, but making it possible to become stronger and more resistant to stress as you increase your levels of exercise.

When you find yourself fatigued, bummed out, forgetting a few names and faces, or in need of that extra punch of creativity to complete a task, don’t go for an energy drink or some fancy medication. Doing a few push-ups or a lap around the block could be exactly what you need to activate your brains dormant abilities.

Top 10 Natural Detox Foods

Bad eating habits, stress, and the residue of some nasty sicknesses begin to catch up with our body. In a few years, this has a profound effect on our mood, health, strength, and endurance.

By taking advantage of natural foods that detox the body of these harmful chemicals and impurities, you can experience an immediate and drastic improvement with weight loss efforts and mental health. If you already have injuries such as a herniated disk, liver damage, or a torn muscle, the body can devote even more effort to pain management and healing if cleansed of all the toxins built up inside of you.

Here are 10 of the top natural detox foods that not only taste great, but get you back into prime condition.

1. Ginger

Ginger is revered as an excellent cure to most of the human body’s ails. With healing effects on headaches, stomach aches, and even mood imbalances, it’s no wonder this root also serves to pry out all the impurities lingering in your body and flush them out for a renewed feeling. You can dice up ginger and add it to your regular meals, or use it in tea for a quick morning pick-me-up in place of soda or coffee, which add toxins to the body. You can also chew on the root for a faster effect.

2. Wheatgrass

Wheatgrass has earned a bad reputation as a favorite of health nuts who don’t mind the taste, but you can find ways to get around the flavor and still reap the healthy benefits. One is to squeeze half a lemon into your wheatgrass smoothie; the sharp tastes balance each other out into a more pleasant flavor. A smoothie a day will give your body a boost of alkaline, lower your blood pressure, give you more energy, and most of all, cleanse your liver of current or old party days.

3. Hibiscus Tea

A great drink for relaxing and purifying your body, hibiscus tea is a favorite of those trying to lose weight with a lack of stress and some good ol’ natural remedies in one. The water of course helps your body better function, but the hibiscus works to fight back against the natural bloat that occurs when you consume too much sodium or your body has its fill of toxins. By counteracting your aldosterone levels, your body will release its bloat and water weight, taking off extra pounds so that your strained disks and muscles can feel better.

4. Guacamole

Ever been told that feeling the burn is a good thing? Then no wonder this Mexican food favorite is great for detoxing your body. The avocado in guacamole works to rid your liver of toxins while the cilantro contains a blend of linalool and geranyl, which calm the stomach, improving your body’s ability to digest and process further toxins. If you find that your back injury is giving you greater discomfort, adding guacamole to your diet will ease the strain your internal organs are experiencing so they can work better to relieve you of pain. If you’re looking to lose weight, without the roadblocks of poor digestion and an overly toxic liver, you can process your foods and drop unnecessary weight faster.

5. Grapefruit

Juicy, flavorful, and able to go with anything, grapefruit is a large citrus that can gather toxins to it and flush it from your system almost instantly. Since it’s such a juicy fruit, its high water levels help fight against dehydration and work to better flush out your system. While doing that, it’s also contributing fiber for better digestion and vitamins C and B1 to boost your energy and health. It encourages the body to drop extra fat and detoxes your system at the same time.

6. Green Tea

By now you’d think that green tea fixes nearly everything, right? You’d be correct. Green tea contains less caffeine than any other kind of tea, but replaces its low levels with energizing antioxidants that hunt down and eliminate free radicals within your body before they can drain you of your health. In essence, by allowing your body to function at its peak condition, there’s no need for supplements to give you the energy you lack. By fighting free radicals as they appear and better hydrating your body – while cola and coffee dehydrate you – green tea helps your body work better by staying lubricated and encouraged to flush out unnecessary fat.

7. Olive Oil

For emergencies and for everyday good eating, olive oil is an excellent natural detox food. You can use it instead of butter in all your cooking, top your salads with it, and even spread it across bread for a wholesome snack to give you energy. Olive oil contains 93% of your daily allowance of vitamin E and is more healthy than some other oily alternatives. If you mix it with fruit juice and drink down a glass, your liver will be encouraged to cleanse itself of toxins and gallstones, but even in lighter doses, it works to drain your body of impurities.

8. Kale

Nothing kicks back against toxins quite like kale. This lefty green plant has a more appealing taste than some other plants of its kind, and offers specialized abilities in cleansing your kidneys of built-up toxins. As kidneys are somewhat overlooked in the detoxing arena, even if you observe a healthy diet, your kidneys could need some help. It’s a highly effective anti-inflammatory packed with nutrients and antioxidants, so blend it into a smoothie for the most heavy-hitting punch at kicking impurities from your system.

9. Water

You can’t argue with good ol’ water. The human body is meant to drink, on average, a gallon of water a day – but few people do. However, water serves as an excellent substitute to most other drinks as it curbs hunger, prevents migraines, and by staying hydrated, the joints and discs of your body are able to function better without pain. As the discs in our back rely on water to keep their proper distance from one another, a herniated disc will experience less pain if kept well hydrated. Livers and kidneys work much in the same, and cannot properly filter and flush toxins if they’re running dry. By upping your water intake, you can detox unnecessary fat and even improve your pain levels in injuries.

10. Asparagus

You’d think something so tasty would be low on the healthy level, but on the contrary, asparagus is a favorite for flushing your system to be as pure and pristine as it was meant to be. Its natural nutrients are designed to peel out the toxins lingering in those hard-to-reach places and help our organs flush them from the body. This leaves your skin healthier and looking younger, kicks back against cancer, calms the stomach, and strengthens the heart. If you’re looking for improved health all around as well as starting back at square one, steaming some asparagus and adding it to your diet is the trick.

When you’re looking to purify your body, all you need is these 10 foods added to your diet. Tasty and effective, you can cleanse your body with every meal.