Fitness For Life!

I recently read a newsletter from Dr. Cobb of Z-health where he discussed the neuroscience behind design fluency and its impact on brain adaptability. As we get older we tend to lose our ability to think and respond to new stimuli quickly or at all. We get stuck in our ways so to speak. This is fine when you are picking which deodorant you want but can be troublesome if we fall and our only way of getting up is not available to us.

As we age we still have to engage in new physically challenging ways to keep our body and brain fluid and able to respond to the world we live in. Doing games on your phone might be fun for your brain but it’s not teaching your body and brain to work together which is important as we get older. One very creative way Dr. Cobb suggests we work on this is by setting a clock for 5 minutes and challenging yourself to get up and down off the floor as often as you can but in a new way each time, never repeating the previous attempts.

This might seem simple but getting up and down off the floor might be the single most important thing you can practice on a daily basis as you get older. Studies have suggested that falls, especially with a “long lie” (where the person is unable to get up off the ground for a long time before help arrives) are associated with increased mortality independent of the injury severity.

I would highly suggest you try the 5 minute up & down challenge but also try finding new routes to places, writing with your non-dominate hand, or even just moving your body in new ways. This is how we create long-term brain and body fluency.

Weekly Movement Motivation!

Onward & Upward My Friends….