Recently, I discovered an interesting article in ‘The Wall Street Journal’ that showed that mental and physical exercise can keep the brain fit whilst also preventing capacities lost to disease. As people reach middle age this becomes increasingly relevant. It’s important to understand that ‘brain’s circuitry changes microscopically with experience and activity’ according to work done by Rosenzweig and Merzenich.
Research has found that exercise can lower the risk of experiencing dementia. Peter Elwood from Cardiff University followed a staggering 2,235 men, aged between 45-59 years old for 30 years. The activity with the biggest impact on risk was walking at least 3 km a day (along with not smoking, maintaining a normal weight and a healthy diet). This reduced their risk of dementia by 60%.
Imagine if there was a drug that could do this – it would be an instant best seller.
Tiffany Chow from The University of Toronto pointed out that we don’t just get these diseases because of our genes. She showed that how we live our lives and our environmental factors interact with our genes to allow or deny dementia a foothold.
So getting out to practice or play golf throughout our middle age can be a vital stimulus for our brains. Exercise and mental stimulus involved in learning new skills has been shown to ‘trigger the release of neurotrophic growth factors’, helping the brain to grow, maintain new connections and stay healthy (Erikson, University of Pittsburgh)
Dr Jason Gregg in his pro golf IQ program has developed his program to program the brain to relax and balance your left and right hemispheres to send the correct signals to your body to play that perfect shot. Using mental techniques he shows how to improve your focus which will improve your golf game.
This ‘mental side’ of our golf game has shown to be quite important to reproduce consistent shots. Processes such as mental rehearsal, thought stopping, positive self talk, relaxation, zone in zone out mental behaviour all come from using our brains to help our golf, not just the hundreds of little ‘tips’ of physical information on alignment and stroke mechanics which can cause a wave of ‘‘too much information’ and choke our golf shots.
So, the mental side of golf, the physical exercise of golf and our golf performance and mental health all have something in common, OUR BRAINS !!
We’ve done all the research for you, and found this amazing gluten free Nut & Fruit bread, a perfect snack or breakfast for the savoury lovers…and for those with a sweet tooth out there, refer to our post about overnight oats for breakie: https://fairwaybirdies.com/2017/06/14/first-blog-post/
