In our locality, in the last 10 years, at least 5 gymnasiums have been opened up. When I visited one of the gymnasiums for enrolling myself, I was surprised to see that it was quite crowded at around 7-00’o clock in the morning. I enrolled myself on that very day and started my exercise the next day itself. I observed that there were two things, which were on high demand. One was the treadmill, for which the gym management was forced to impose a time limit of 15 minutes per member. The other area, which was very crowded, was the aerobics floor. Many people only came there to do aerobics. But, have we ever thought that we do also need neurobics to keep our brain healthy and fit?
This showed me that people are now more health conscious than ever before. And they are more interested to keep their body fit and flexible rather than building their muscles. Aerobics is supposed to be the best exercise to lose weight and keep ourselves fit and healthy. While we are too much conscious about our health, we do forget about the most important part of our body i.e. brain. As, lack of exercise makes our body unfit, lack of activity in our brain causes it to lose its sharpness slowly. Scientific research stated that as we grow older, our brain slowly dies. There are daily exercises, which can revive our brain cells and slow the process of brain-aging. As we do aerobics to keep our body fit, neurobics should be done to keep our brain sharp and cognitive. Neurobics is the aerobics of the brain. This particular terminology was coined by late neurobiologist Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin in their book “Keep Your Brain Alive”.
Before we dig deep in to the theory, let us recapitulate ourselves how our brain works. Though all the living beings have brain, human brain is quite unique in nature. So why, human can talk, understand, sing, dance, think and correlate different ideas and objects. The brain consists of approximately 100 billion nerve cells, called NEURONS. Each of our activities is controlled by signals given by neurons. Neurons transmit electrochemical signals to govern each and every activity. It has three body parts i.e. Cell Body, Axon and Dendrites or nerve ending. Cell body is the main part of the neuron. DNA is one of the constituents of the cell body. If the cell body dies, the neuron dies. Axon is the part, which carries the electrochemical message. Dendrites or nerve ending makes connections to the other neurons. The neurons are distinguished based on their functions. There are three different kinds of neurons.
Sensory Neurons – It carries signals from our external body parts to our central nervous system.
Motor Neurons – It carries signals from our central nervous system to the external body parts.
Interneurons – It is a connector between neurons.
There is scientific evidence that as we grow old, our brain experiences age-induced cognitive deficit. Lawrence Katz has mentioned in his book that through neurobics, we can slow the process of brain-aging. According to him, though we do different activities all over the day, the same may not be termed as neurobics. Routine action becomes so automatic to the individual that it doesn’t generate required stimulation in our new brain circuits. In contrast, non-routine activities or change in pattern activates the growth of neurons. There may be three ways that you can imbibe yourself in neurobics (as per Larence C. Katz and Manning Rubin)
a)Try to involve more senses in your regular activity – Here it has been suggested that you try to involve some other senses in your routine work. The change should be a noticeable change. For example, you do generally write with a pen. Now you have changed it to a pencil. This kind of change will not help your brain to participate in neurobics. However, if you try to write with your left hand, the signal from the brain should flow to your left hand instead of the right. It will create a new circuit with a new area of brain involved in the same.
The other examples in this area are getting dressed or taking shower with your eyes closed.
b)Do something which evokes emotion – Do something special, unusual, fun, which evoke one of your basic emotions like happiness. For example, you can go for a long tour with your family.
c)Change in pattern of routine activities – Here you need to break the pattern of your routine activity so that it can differently sensualize our brain. For an example, take a different route to your office or rearrange your office with a new look.
Henceforth, whenever you visit your fitness center for a quick warm up, don’t forget to go for neurobics when you come back to home J
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