Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life

E xe rc i s e a n d t h e B ra i n
Mechanism
Impact
Gene expression
↑
Neuroplasticity (Cotman and Berchtold, 
2002).
BDNF
↑
Neuroplasticity (Adlard, Perreau, and 
Cotman, 2005)
IGF - 1
↑
Neural protection (Carro, Trejo, Busiguina, 
and Torres - Aleman, 2001)
Nerve growth factor
↑
Neuroplasticity (Neeper, Gomez - Pinilla, Choi, 
and Cotman, 1996)
VEGF
↑
Neurogenesis (Fabel, Fabel, Tam, Kaufer, 
Baiker, Simmons, et al., 2003)
Hippocampus
↑
Available neurogenesis (Van Praag, Shubert, 
Zhao, and Gage, 2005)
LTP
↑
Connectivity (Farmer, Zhao, van Praag, 
Wodtke, Gage, and Christie, 2004)
Capillary growth
↑
Available oxygen and glucose (Swain, Harris, 
Wiener, Dutka, Morris, Theien, et al., 2003)
Even just
thinking
about exercise activates the same neuronal 
systems in your brain. The effects of mentally exercising were com-
pared to the effects of actually exercising by observing cortical 
activity and subsequent physical performance. Mental practice 
not only creates changes in the brain but also improves physical 
performance. 
The same parts of the brain are activated during mental prac-
tice and actual physical practice. This fi nding led the researchers 
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H e a l t hy H a b i t s : E xe r c i s e a n d S l e e p
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to see if mental practicing improved subsequent actual physical 
performance. They found that fi ve days of mental practice followed 
by two hours of physical practice improved performance as well as 
fi ve days of physical practice did! 
These fi ndings support the long - held belief in sports psychol-
ogy that visualizing and mentally rehearsing one ’ s performance can 
improve that performance on the playing fi eld. This is true regard-
less of the sport. 
Although you may fi nd that the faster you can imagine doing 
something, the faster you can actually do it, there are limitations 
to what is possible. This is because the mind and the brain are two 
aspects of the same process. For example, if you are right - handed, 
you ’ ll be better at both imagining moving and actually moving your 
right hand than at imagining and moving your left hand. 
This constraint occurs even if you have had a stroke and one side 
of your body is weaker. The side that was not affected is as quick in 
imagining moving as well as in actually moving. This is because you 
are using the same brain systems in imagining moving and actually 
moving.
Regulating Your Sleep 
Sleep has been studied extensively for more than eighty years. Since 
the 1930s, researchers have been able to identify the types and the 
stages of sleep. 
The fi rst stage of sleep is actually a transition state between waking 
and sleeping. Here the brain waves are fast. If you wake up from this 
stage of sleep, you ’ ll probably report that you were not really asleep. 
The second stage of sleep is light, with theta brain waves. Many 
insomnia patients complain that they do not sleep, when in fact they 
are experiencing this stage of sleep. You spend half of the night in 
light sleep. During periods of stress, this stage increases relative to 
the next stage. 
Stages 3 and 4 are considered deep sleep. In this phase you pro-
duce slow brain waves, or delta waves. Deep sleep gives your immune 
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128 Rew i r e
Yo u r
B r a i n
system a boost while allowing your bodily functions to slow down. 
If you are deprived of deep sleep, your immune system tends to be 
suppressed, and your body will ache. Stress increases the release of 
norepinephrine and epinephrine, which decrease the amount of slow -
wave sleep. If you are sleep - deprived, the fi rst stage of sleep to rebound 
is deep sleep, indicating its importance to your overall health. 
A stage of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is the 
stage at which people who are awakened report vivid dreams. REM 
sleep decreases as you age. In REM, most of your body functions 
are at an almost wakeful level of activation. Your metabolism goes 
up during REM sleep, and energizing neurotransmitters are active. 
REM sleep is also called