Tag Archives: brain

15 Fun Facts About Your Brain

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The complexity of the human brain is truly mind-bending. It is the command station of all our thoughts, actions and movements. Let’s take a peek at some of the things your brain is responsible for:

  1. There are approximately 100 billion nerve cells in the human brain that communicate information to other parts of the body.
  2. There are over 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain.
  3. The right side of your brain interacts predominantly with the left side of your body and vice versa. Science is still in pursuit of the reason for this opposite function.
  4. The brain weighs over 3 pounds, and makes up just about 2% of your bodyweight.
  5. While many large animals have bigger brains, humans have the largest brains per body size of any type of animal.
  6. The skull, which acts as the brain’s protective casing, is comprised of more than 20 different small bones.
  7. The brain is made up of over 75% water.
  8. When deprived of oxygen, the brain will begin to die after about 5 minutes, resulting in brain damage.
  9. Humans have, on average, 70,000 different thoughts daily.
  10. Even though the brain takes up little space in the body, it utilizes over 20% of your body’s blood and oxygen.
  11. Your brain processes new information at the whopping speed of 268 miles an hour!
  12. Even though the brain controls how you feel pain, there are no pain receptors in your actual brain, so if somehow were to poke you in the brain somehow with a sharp object, you wouldn’t feel the pain.
  13. A baby’s brain triples its size in the first year of life.
  14. When you blink, your brain amazingly keeps things illuminated so your world doesn’t go dark 20,000 times daily.
  15. Ever feel like a thought, name or question is on the tip of your tongue? Well this tip-of-the-tongue syndrome has a medical name: lethologica.

So, how about that? Our brains are pretty neat. Stay tuned as we look at other interesting organs in future! Thanks for visiting DocChat.

8 Ways Exercise Boosts Your Brain

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We all know exercise is essential for a healthy body, but did you know how good exercise is for the brain specifically? Turns out, pretty awesome! Here are 9 research-backed benefits of exercise for the brain:

  1. Improves Brain Plasticity

Research suggests that even as brief as a 30-minute burst of exercise can improve brain plasticity, which helps with many things such as coordination of motor skills.

  1. Reduces Risk of Stroke

Cardio helps reduce your risk of having a stroke (also known as ‘brain attack’) by lowering blood pressure, helping you lose weight, reducing your stress and strengthening blood vessels.

  1. May Help Combat Alzheimer’s Disease

Exercise appears to have a hand in preventing or slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by improving memory and overall cognitive function, as well as helping combat or slow brain connection impairments associated with aging.

  1. Reduces Stress, Anxiety and Pain

During exercise, the brain releases natural analgesics like oxytocin and ‘feel good’ chemicals called endorphins. Neurotransmitter serotonin also has a large part to play in how exercise reduces stress, as its mood-boosting quality counters the effects of stress hormones like cortisol. Since pain signals are sent from the brain, natural pain-killing chemicals help redirect or block unpleasant pain sensations (sometimes only during exercise and for a short time after).

  1. Helps With Brain Cell Protection and Growth

According to Harvard Medical School, exercise stimulates the production of growth factors, which help new blood vessels grow in the brain as well as protecting new brain cells so they thrive and survive.

  1. Improves mood

Exercise improves mood the same way it helps control stress and anxiety, by producing mood-boosting endorphins, neurotransmitters and hormones like serotonin and dopamine which do exactly that – they boost your mood! Both routine exercise and diet play a key role in helping ease symptoms of mild depression.

  1. Clears The Mind

Exercise melts away the worries and events of the day by keeping you focused on the task at hand. This can serve as almost a type of meditation by emptying your head of clattering daily thoughts, giving your brain a rest as your body works up a lather.

  1. Improves Day-to-Day Brain Functioning

Routine exercise can help lift brain fog and help improve focus and motivation, which in turn can help sharpen interpersonal skills, job performance and increased creativity.

So, it turns out your brain needs routine exercise just as much as the rest of you does! Thanks for visiting DocChat, we hope you’ll return again soon!