SKIRMISHER

Athletes and people who exercise not only have better bods — they have better brains too, a host of studies have now firmly established.

A review of studies published earlier this month, in fact, found that a balanced diet and regular exercise can protect the brain and ward off mental disorders.

Other research has focused just on the effects of exercise. The bottom line: Exercisers learn faster, remember more, think clearer and bounce back more easily from brain injuries such as a stroke. They are also less prone to depression and age-related cognitive decline.

But why should a mindless half-hour on a treadmill affect your brain?

Exercise, like hunger, is a stress on your body. “And sometimes,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla of UCLA, “stress can be good.”

Because it burns calories so quickly, aerobic exercise is a threat to the body’s energy reserves. Heeding this danger, the body acts to protect one of its most precious, and energy-demanding, organs: the brain.

Unlike cells in less critical organs, neurons are extremely vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply. “If deprived of energy for more than one minute,” said Gomez-Pinilla, “the neuron dies.” For that reason, he continued, “all the physiology of the body is designed to protect the brain.”

By acting as a mild stressor, exercise is an alternative way to spur many of the protective benefits associated with calorie restriction and the release of brain-building growth factors, said Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at the University of California in Irvine.

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