Exercise Your Way to a Higher IQ

You heard it here first – Exercise increases your IQ!

Here’s how:

Blood has two primary functions:

1. To carry nutrients (glucose and oxygen) to every cell in the body and
2. To carry waste (free radicals) out from those same cells, through our lungs, in the form of carbon dioxide.

Exercise floods the bloodstream with oxygen. Thus, the more you exercise, the greater the blood flow, the more nutrients you feed your cells and the more waste you remove from the cells in your body.

Also, this additional oxygen eventually makes its way to the brain. Since the brain uses 20% of your oxygen reserves, increased oxygen flow into the brain nourishes brain cells and acts like a janitorial crew, soaking up more cell waste inside each brain cell. This helps make the brain cleaner and healthier. Twenty – thirty minutes of exercise every day has been found to stimulate the growth of the axon branches on each brain cell. The number of axon branches you have is directly correlated to how intelligent you are. Those with more axon branches on their brain cells are more intelligent than those with less. Exercise also increases blood flow into the Dentrate Gyrus. The Dentrate Gyrus is part of the brain’s Hippocampus, a region involved in memory formation and neurogenisis (birth of new brain cells). I’m not done yet. Exercise, particularly weight training exercise, also stimulates the production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDFN). BDFN is miracle grow for brain cells, which keeps them growing and expanding.

Exercise is, in many respects, like candy for the brain. This candy, however, keeps existing brain cells healthy, grows new brain cells, increases the number of axons on each brain cell and improves overall brain performance.

In my five year study of the daily habits of the rich and poor (Rich Habits Study – Background on Methodology), 76% of the successful engaged in some form of daily exercise. Conversely, 77% of the poor did no exercise at all. Daily exercise is one of the over 300 Rich Habits I uncovered in my research. It’s no accident that successful people exercise. If you want succeed in life, just walk in the footsteps of the successful. Or perhaps, jog instead.

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