Exercise Heals the Brain!

Some really exciting news came out in the world of medicine this month: treating dementia with simple exercise!

Professor Perry Bartlett is the founding director of the Queensland Brain Institute. He has shown that exercise can reverse dementia in mice, and now he’s hoping to do the same in people.

A new trial is getting dementia patients onto treadmills and the researchers think this will help their neurons, or brain cells, to regrow.

The science behind it

The basis of this new research is the idea of ‘neuroplasticity’. This is a fairly new, but transformative view that the brain is constantly changing. This mean we can try to heal or improve it at any age. Even better, stem cells have been found in the brain.

Dementia affects over 300,000 Australians and it’s on the rise, so it’s a major focus for medical research. If we can keep our brains healthy with exercise – something that comes without the long list of negative side effects and instead offers countless other health benefits – just think of the possibilities!

Pull out those running shoes folks!

 

The featured image was borrowed and edited with thanks from Patrick Denker under a Creative Commons licence.