Can exercise make you smarter?

Check out this story...

Pumping up the brain

Here some stats from Napperville School District.
19,000 students
Before: 30% overweight and poor academic performance
After: 3% overweight and #1 in science and #6 in math in the WORLD!!!!!

This information has also been published in books and research such as Brain Gym by Dr. Dennison and his follow up books, also the book by Sharon Promislow - Making the Brain Body Connection, shows more of this. The better our body works, the better our brains work.

As explained in the news story along with the books, it is relatively simple science. We have to use our brains to move and exercise. This increases blood flow to the brain and improves how it works. Not only in exercise and movement functions but also language, math, science, etc. Our brain has a main component, the corpus callosum, that connects the right side and left side of the brain. When we exercise and use both right and left sides of our body, the two sides of the brain have to send lots of info back and forth through the corpus callosum. Our right side of our brain is generally the artistic side, where the left side is the more analytical side. The improved communication between the two sides allows us to better bring these two sides together to maximize our brain function.  Also the increase in brain activity improves the neurotransmitters in the brain.

So next time you or your child is struggling and you need to improve your brain power, think about maybe taking a walk and getting some exercise to boost your potential.

So, why is it with so much research and data out there that shows significant improvements in academic performance can be achieved with increased exercise that schools have less gym and recess time? Why is this information not getting through to school administrators and our legislators to make programs like this mandatory for all schools? Also I ask for your support on pointing these issues out to your school boards, principles, and legislators. If we could put more exercise back into school, we might actually see our children's academic performance start improving again.