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Experts say exercise is a kind of Miracle-Gro for your neocortex, boosting mental agility and mood along with physical fitness.

For some people, fitness comes naturally. Maybe they were on every single sports team growing up, or their idea of the perfect Vancouver day involves a morning spent cycling the seawall, an afternoon snowboarding at Cypress, and a hot-yoga session to unwind. For others, physical activity involves some—or a lot of—struggle. They might be unmotivated, intimidated, or simply turned off by the notion of spending whatever spare time they don’t have on a stair climber.

Nicole Yamanaka wasn’t one of those people who played several different sports when she was younger. The Vancouver personal trainer’s fitness mantra could be summed up in the words of that 1990s R & B group En Vogue: “Free your mind, and the rest will follow.”

You won’t find Yamanaka—who owns Le Physique Personal Training with her husband, Brian—sticking her clients on an elliptical trainer every day of the week. Although she says there’s a place for equipment, Yamanaka thinks outside the gym—literally. Forget the treadmill: instead, the 30-year-old takes her clients snowshoeing, rock-climbing, white-water rafting, pole dancing, skating, golfing, and horseback riding, among other things. They might also swirl a Hula-Hoop or even go to a gun-shooting range.

“It’s all about expanding your mind,” the lean, long-haired Yamanaka tells the Georgia Straight over a hot drink near her False Creek facility. “If you’re not willing to try stuff, if you’re afraid, you’re not going to have a good experience, whether it’s in fitness, work, relationships, life. If you don’t like it, that’s okay. But you might love it.”¦My idea of fitness is that you have to have fun with your body. That’s why I love my job. We get to do so many fun things.”¦Just showing up to the gym twice a week gets boring.

“Whether it’s soccer or martial arts,” she adds, “you’ve got to follow your passion.”

If fitness can be enhanced by having an open mind, exercise can also have a tremendous impact on the mind itself.

“Learning the asanas of yoga, the positions of ballet, the skills of gymnastics, the elements of figure skating, the contortions of Pilates, the forms of karate—all these practices engage nerve cells throughout the brain,” writes Harvard Medical School associate clinical professor of psychiatry John J. Ratey in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (Little, Brown and Company, 2008). Exercise improves alertness, attention, and motivation, he says, and prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind together, a process he calls “the cellular basis for logging in new information”.

Ratey, who cowrote the book with Eric Hagerman, says that a combination of aerobic exercise and “complex activity” maximizes brain power. “A fast-paced workout boosts the production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor,” he explains in his book. “I call it Miracle-Gro for the brain, and physical activity is one of the best ways to release this brain-nourishing protein. A workout at the gym or a brisk walk also seems to build better connections between brain cells. Studies show that regular physical activity may increase the production of cells in the hippocampus, the region of the brain involved in learning and memory. The end result is a brain that’s better able to perform in school, at home or on the job.”

Local fitness expert Ron Zalko wholeheartedly believes that physical activity benefits the mind.

“It puts you from a negative state to a positive state of mind,” Zalko tells the Georgia Straight in a phone interview, noting that if he’s having a stressful day, he gets on a bike “and rides like crazy”, then does yoga to “mellow out”.

“When you start activating the body, you activate the mind. And when your mind is feeling strong, nothing can break you or put you down. When your mind is strong, everything else is easy: your workplace, your relationships. Everyone notices the change in your mood. Being healthy means taking care of your mind and your body.”

Research is increasingly backing up the benefits of exercise for the brain. A study in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology by researchers at the National Cheng Kung University Medical College in Taiwan found that in mice, exercise can reverse the age-related decline in the production of neural stem cells in the hippocampus.

Older adults who exercise regularly show increased cerebral blood flow and a greater number of small blood vessels in the brain compared with those who don’t, according to findings presented last month at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

And a study by Germany’s University of Muenster published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in May 2007 found that people learn new words 20 percent faster after doing a physical activity than before.

“No matter what your age, being a physical slug is bad for your brain, even if you are spending all of your time doing New York Times crossword puzzles,” writes neuroscientist and brain-imaging expert Daniel G. Amen in Magnificent Mind at Any Age: Natural Ways to Unleash Your Brain’s Maximum Potential (Harmony, $27.95). “The brain needs physical exercise,” says Amen, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at the University of California at Irvine’s school of medicine. “Without it, the brain struggles. Exercise boosts blood flow to the brain, which helps supply oxygen, glucose, and nutrients and takes away toxic substances. Anything that limits blood flow results in poorer oxygenation, glucose delivery, and nutrient deficiencies. If the deep areas of the brain are starved of healthy blood flow you will have problems with coordination and processing complex thoughts.

“Whatever is good for your heart is also good for your brain,” he explains. “Too little exercise allows blood vessels to become droopy and less efficient.”

Besides being an antidote to stress, exercise can have a potent effect on mood. Researchers from Durham, North Carolina’s Duke University Medical Center published findings in 1999 in the Archives of Internal Medicine showing that exercise was as effective as the antidepressant sertraline (sometimes sold under the brand name Zoloft), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, when it comes to treating depression.

“Aside from elevating endorphins, exercise regulates all of the neurotransmitters targeted by antidepressants,” Ratey writes in Spark. “It wakes up the brain and gets it going and improves self-esteem, which is one component of depression. Exercise also boosts dopamine, which improves mood and feelings of wellness.”¦Studies have shown that chronic exercise increases dopamine storage in the brain,” Ratey adds, noting that this can help control addictions.

Once she starting teaching group aerobics, Yamanaka witnessed the transformative effects exercise could have on people and was so moved that she gave up her studies in marine biology to pursue fitness full-time.

“I saw what it did for people,” Yamanaka says. “Fitness allowed people to be who they wanted to be: confident, outgoing, strong, capable.”

She herself discovered a sense of calm through yoga, despite initially being skeptical of the form’s virtues. “I tried it, and I loved it,” she says. “I’m a type A personality. Yoga brought peace to me.”

Yamanaka—who was named the 2008 British Columbia Recreation and Parks Association’s personal trainer of the year and is a director of the B.C. Association of Kinesiologists—has her own trainer, whom she meets four times a week. If she didn’t have that commitment, she says, she’d likely be doing paperwork instead of working out.

Any health professional will say that one of the best ways to stick with an exercise regime is to find an activity you enjoy. Yamanaka says it helps to get encouragement from family and friends. “Let people know what you’re doing and that you’re going to need some help. You might see a trainer twice a week, but who’s really influencing you? Get a friend to say, ”˜Let’s go for that walk.’ ”

And a walk could do the trick: exercising for your mental health doesn’t necessarily mean the kind of hard-core regimen that makes boot camps look like a mere warm-up. However, Ratey says that doing some form of aerobic exercise for 60 minutes every day is ideal. Strength and flexibility training are also important, but their effect on the brain isn’t as clear; there’s far less research on how nonaerobic exercise affects learning, attention, anxiety, and depression. The Public Health Agency of Canada’s Physical Activity Guide points out that exercise can be broken up into 10-minute segments throughout the day and still have the same benefits.

“The process of getting fit is all about building up your aerobic base,” Ratey writes. “The more you work your heart and lungs, the more efficient they become at delivering oxygen to your body and brain.”

Make your workout fun, Yamanaka advises, and remember that there’s more to exercise than slimming down or toning up. As people think about fulfilling New Year’s resolutions to improve themselves physically, they shouldn’t overlook the mental benefits of exercise.

“You want to keep the big picture in mind,” Yamanaka says. “A lot of people might say they want to lose 10 pounds, and so they decide they’re going to run a five- or 10K race. They join a running clinic, but then they focus only on the running: their feet hurt, their knees hurt, and then they think, ”˜Running sucks.’ You lose sight of the end goal. You need to know what it is you want and why you want it, and to go deeper than just wanting to lose 10 pounds: once you lose it, you’ll feel better about yourself, and you’ll be better able to take care of yourself, your kids—whatever it is. You’ll feel better in every way. It all ties together.”