Physical Exercise and Brain Health- By Dr. Pascale Michelon Have you heard of or read John Ratey's book “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise

promoting brain heath. I am sure you have also heard that exercising your mind promotes brain health. What is the connection between physical and mental exercises? Do they have additive effects on brain health? Are they redundant? Let’s start by reviewing what we know about the effects of physical exercise on the brain. The effect of physical exercise on cognitive performance Early studies compared groups of people who exercised to groups of people who did not exercise much. Results showed that people who exercised usually had better performance in a range of cognitive tasks compared to non-exercisers. Laurin and colleagues (2001) even suggested that moderate and high levels of physical activity were associated with lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. The problem with these studies is that the exercisers and the non-exercisers may differ on other factors than just exercise. The advantage that exerciser show may not come from exercising but from other factors such as more resources, better brain health to start with, better diet, etc. The solution to this problem is to randomly assigned people to either an aerobic training group or