This year, 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a global action plan on physical activity, which can be downloaded from this WHO page. According to the document, one in every four adults in the world does not exercise as much as they should. Three in every four adolescents should be exercising more. The recommendation of at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week for adults aged 18-65 and further information can be found in this WHO document.

Why am I talking about exercise in a blog about online learning? Evidence is growing that not only do your muscles and cardiovascular health benefit, the brain does also. Dr Terrence Sejnowski in the online course Learning How to Learn explains the benefits of exercise for learning and brain health. He claims that exercise is far better for learning than any drug on the market. You might sleep better too.

How Exercise Helps the Brain

New neurons grow in the brain’s hypothalamus daily, but if we don’t nurture them they will die. Learning throughout life helps those new neurons survive. Physical exercise also helps.

Improved blood flow brings oxygen and nutrients to brain cells. Production of hormones such as Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) has been shown in animal experiments to increase with activity. You might ask: so what? Researchers have established that BDNF helps neurone and synapse function. In other words, brain cells are healthier and communicate better with each other with higher levels of BDNF. Better communication in the brain leads to multiple benefits. Research shows that those benefits include delaying the onset and slowing the progression of dementia.

With life expectancy increasing all over the world, the incidence of dementia is expected to almost triple by 2050. Anything we can do to reduce the risk is worth trying. You can find more information in these excellent courses that I have recently finished: Understanding Dementia and Preventing Dementia. There are other courses on dementia as well, find them on Class Central’s database.

Why We Need to Exercise

For thousands of years, people have had the exercise they need by simply going about their daily tasks. Many jobs, both in and out of the home, took a reasonable amount of physical activity. Finding or catching food, preparing it, washing clothes and keeping houses clean required plenty of movement and elbow grease. Most jobs needed physical exertion. If you wanted to go anywhere, usually a fair amount of walking was required. Even sitting in a bumpy carriage took more energy than riding in a well-sprung car, secured in place by a seatbelt.

Compare those levels of activity with the ubiquitous screen-watching of today.

Some Other Courses About Exercise

Easing the burden of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease takes a big-picture view of chronic health problems caused mainly by poor diet and lack of exercise. It shows reduced death rates from contagious diseases as countries develop and general health improves. Correspondingly, non-communicable disease rates increase. According to this interesting course (which I am still working through), there are many factors involved in this trend. “These factors are genetic, environmental, psychological, economic, social, developmental, and media related.” The educators on this course believe that governments should do more to make it easy for people to fit exercise into their lives. Safe walking and bicycle paths are one recommendation.

Exercise Prescription for the Prevention and Treatment of Disease is another useful course. It teaches participants about physical activity measurements and mentions some fitness and strength tests. Benefits to the brain, cardiovascular system, type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal system and chronic pulmonary obstructive disease are described.

Participants should have a health check with their medical advisor before beginning any new exercise regimen.

Excuses for Not Exercising

A big problem with getting enough exercise is the way we humans think. Exercise has long-term benefits, but so often we focus on the short-term:

• I’ll get all hot and sweaty.
• I’ll exercise later (then before we know it, the day is gone and we haven’t exercised).
• I don’t have time.
• This (any activity from phoning a friend to watching your favourite television program to cooking dinner) is more important than exercise. Yes, some things are important (we need to eat), but convincing ourselves that exercise is also high priority can be hard to do.
• I will have sore muscles tomorrow.
• I’m too tired.

How do We Overcome These Thought Processes?

• Find an activity you enjoy doing. If team sports aren’t your thing, try dancing, self-defence, a walking club. Anything that uses some muscles and increases your heart and respiration rates.
• Create a habit. If we get into the habit of doing exercise at a certain time each day, or several days a week, it’s easier to stick to the routine. Habits often take at least 30 days to establish.
• Use a Pomodoro to put off exercise procrastination. 30 minutes moderate activity and you’re done for the day.
• You don’t have to go full bore. Moderate aerobic exercise is great to maintain physical fitness.
• Reward yourself for doing the recommended exercise, and I don’t mean a high-calorie food reward that is likely to cancel the health benefit! Try allowing yourself a few minutes of reading, listening to music, or a quick video game.
• Remind yourself that moderate exercise will help you feel more energized and you will achieve more in other areas of your life. You will learn more easily and your body will stay healthier for longer.
• What about a punishment if no other strategies work? Daphne Gray-Grant of Publication Coach recommends making a donation to your least-favourite political party if you don’t achieve your goal. She writes about writing, but the same strategy could possibly work for exercise.

A Final Thought

EdX has a self-paced course titled Healthy Ageing in 6 Steps. Let your environment do the work. I look forward to trying out this course which claims to make it easier for us to make healthy choices by making changes to our environment.

By Pat Bowden, published June 19, 2018.