My cognitive abilities at my actual age (mid 40s) improved significantly when I quit with my younger age lifestyle, much more than exercise could do.
Of course I'm not saying that exercise is futile it surely keeps the body healthy and that's extremely important as years go by.
the old saying "mens sana in corpore sano" ( a healthy mind in an healthy body) is still relevant today for a good reason.
My theory is that is not exercise per se, but the power drained by the excercise.
There's a good example about it in an episode of the BBC series Horizon where people are asked to solve simple arithmetic computations and then to do the same while walking at a fast pace.
All of the people involved need to stop to complete them.
The cognitive part of our brain is very power hungry and can't function properly when power is needed somewhere else.
I think that power drain from exercise can prevent becoming more and more risk adverse because it keeps us from over thinking things, the inner thoughts are mostly about negative outcomes (not specifically negative thoughts, just the outcome)
So theoretically we could gain the same benefits by tricking us into thinking about the positive outcomes.
I am not an expert in such matter, so take everything I say with many grains of salt.
p.s. I was walking when writing this and I had to stop to write something that made sense.
My cognitive abilities at my actual age (mid 40s) improved significantly when I quit with my younger age lifestyle, much more than exercise could do.
Of course I'm not saying that exercise is futile it surely keeps the body healthy and that's extremely important as years go by.
the old saying "mens sana in corpore sano" ( a healthy mind in an healthy body) is still relevant today for a good reason.
My theory is that is not exercise per se, but the power drained by the excercise.
There's a good example about it in an episode of the BBC series Horizon where people are asked to solve simple arithmetic computations and then to do the same while walking at a fast pace.
All of the people involved need to stop to complete them.
The cognitive part of our brain is very power hungry and can't function properly when power is needed somewhere else.
I think that power drain from exercise can prevent becoming more and more risk adverse because it keeps us from over thinking things, the inner thoughts are mostly about negative outcomes (not specifically negative thoughts, just the outcome)
So theoretically we could gain the same benefits by tricking us into thinking about the positive outcomes.
I am not an expert in such matter, so take everything I say with many grains of salt.
p.s. I was walking when writing this and I had to stop to write something that made sense.