Daily Health News Blog

There are two kinds of good news about brain power: First, you aren't stuck with the number of brain cells you were born with. And second, it isn't true that brain cells will inevitably die off as you age and can never be replaced. Pumping up your body and mind with extra oxygen from exercise is the magic that gives birth to more brain cells and keeps the ones you already have in top shape. It turns out that aerobic exercise is one key to "getting smart" and staying that way. Neurologist Fred H. Gage was the first to challenge the "no new brain cells" doctrine. A professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., Gage discovered newborn cells in the brains of terminally ill cancer patients. The new cells appeared in the part of the brain associated with learning and memory. In further experiments, Gage shows that the number of brain cells in mice will increase too, but only when the mice run. In 1999, he demonstrated that exercising mice had twic