Can Exercise Really Make You Smarter?

Did you know that sweating it out in the gym can literally work out your brain as hard as your biceps? It’s exactly why Einstein and Darwin never missed their sacred daily walks – because exercise can literally raise your IQ. Read on to find out how supercharging your workouts can supercharge your intelligence, too!

A Healthy Mind is a Healthy Body

Familiar with the Latin saying ‘mens sana in corpore sano’? It might be a little less catchy than most of today’s standard Facebook one-liners, but it was still a pretty fierce idea a couple of thousand years ago, in the era when Latin was still the most fashionable vernacular of the day. 

Meaning “a healthy mind is a healthy body”, modern science has only just caught up with what the ancient philosophers of yesteryear had already worked out two thousand years ago – that a truly powerful and unbreakable connection exists between the brain & the body. 

Studies now prove beyond doubt that if you work out your muscles in the gym or your cardiovascular system in a spin class, you can expect to see scientifically observable improvements in brain function that lead to a more powerful memory, greater creativity, mental sharpness & concentration, a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, and even a higher IQ.

Read on to learn more about the science behind the story!

Exercise Can Get You High

One cool fact that we always love to pass on is that exercise can get you high. Exercise really is an opioid – a potent innovator that gets the neurons of your brain firing on all cylinders to clinically improve mood, with a heady mix of testosterone, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin & adrenaline leaving you feeling high, powerful, pumped up, and positive. It also provides a healthy outlet for anger & frustration – if you’ve ever thrown on some sneakers and headed out for a run, favorite tunes playing, to get over a soul-crushing bad day at the office, you’ll know that it really is a sure-fire, great strategy, that really gets results.

What few people know however is that the natural high is accompanied by a major cognitive boost, too. In fact, working out majorly enhances cognitive reasoning, executive and top-down cognitive control – which means that the personal best you smash on the track might lead to a personal best when it comes to your IQ, too.

Exercise Gives Your Brain a Stress ‘Workout’

One compelling reason why exercise makes you cognitively sharper is that stress actually kills the gray matter in the brain. The one thing that can reverse that damage and encourage neurogenesis (new cell growth)? Exercise. But interestingly, the benefits don’t stop there. Curiously, exercise also seems to offer an arena to ‘train’ the brain to handle stress better in the long run. As stated by the APA (American Psychological Association), exercise provides a safe and healthy environment to train our brains to ‘practice’ dealing with stress in a positive way.

One example? Regular workouts help the brain limit feelings of panic when it encounters stress, increasing your mental resilience. 

According to the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation, working out regularly can also reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by an incredible 50%, underscoring its major effects on brain health. As it turns out, getting physically fit means staying cognitively fit, too.

Not Just for Meatheads

Most of us are aware that cardio gets us that natural high, saturating our bodies in endorphins. But few realize that strength training is so important, too. Why? Because strength training floods our brains with anandamide, a natural bliss-inducing cannabinoid, far more powerfully than cardio exercise is able to. 

Majorly boosted during strength training, anandamide powerfully downregulates stress hormones while boosting wellbeing, offering powerful restorative effects for the brain that can lead to the safeguarding of all-around mental acuity. 

Recent studies also report that lifting weights carries the power to boost IQ. The takeaway? Hitting the weights room isn’t just for meatheads, and cardio isn’t the only way of boosting brainpower. Instead, combining strength & aerobic work together offers the most powerful way to naturally optimize intelligence.

Get Creative

There’s a reason why Apple CEO Tim Cook never misses a 5 am workout. Exercise majorly boosts convergent and divergent thinking to boost creativity, partly because it majorly increases oxygenation and glucose levels in the frontal brain regions that govern creative processes.

A neuronal boost to the right part of the brain is exactly what helps innovators, disruptors, executives & artists to maximize creativity, develop new ideas, invent, adapt & succeed. So if you’re looking for inspiration, the gym might just be the best place to start!

Born to Run?

Ultimately, here’s the takeaway. To quote the words of the great Bruce Springsteen, we really were born to run –  or, at least, born to exercise, more or less daily, in some form. Researchers now know that the human brain’s need for exercise evolved as a product of our evolutionary history, during our transition to hunter-gatherers around 2 million years ago. Previous to this, we were a more sedentary species (even without Netflix!) but the complexities of foraging & negotiating difficult terrain to hunt, survive & prosper adapted our brains to include a more powerful brain-body link.

The upshot? Our brains are designed to run on exercise and if we don’t get it, they will function as well as they could. And if we do exercise? Expect powerful brain-boosting effects!

The Doctors Studio Advantage

It can be hard to kickstart an exercise or new health routine, but we’re in the business of optimizing health, so we can help you with any health-related goal – whether that’s improving gut health, losing fat, increasing lean muscle, balancing hormones, getting fit or even restoring hair loss. 

Combining medicine, artistry & science, Doctors Studio blends state-of-the-art, cutting-edge medical advancements, therapies & treatments with a progressive, action-oriented approach. We can offer you the best medical support possible to power you to truly optimized fitness. From physician-grade health supplements to ozone therapies and full 90-day physique transformation programs, we’re always here for you. Contact us today so we can help you kickstart your journey to truly optimized health!