End of a busy Saturday. The big news of the day is we met our puppy! She is all picked out and will be ready to come home to her new mommy and daddy on November 18th.
I also got back to my exercise classes. My routine will only be in place for about a week before I go running off on vacation but that is alright. Things will settle down soon after. I hope. No more ride snafus, food poisoning or adventures for a bit.
While I like a little adventure (but not ride snafus or illness!), sameness and predictable are really good. I like the familiar, too.
Such as the Eastern screech owl ‘whinnying’ outside the window. He has been there most nights for several weeks now. According to web sources, that is a territorial defense cry. Wonder what he is defending against? Apparently there is a hidden drama unfolding in the backyard!
One of the other things I got done today was going through some Healio and Medscape posts for articles. They are still publishing that Manchester, U.K. research saying eye shots cause anxiety and depression and my reaction is still “Duh! Ya think so?”
But the next things I came upon were actually related to that article – about depression and mental functioning – and gave me more reason to harp on exercise again.
I absolutely love it when things I enjoy doing are found to be good for not only physical health but cognitive and emotional health, too! It makes me feel so righteous to say I am doing it because it is recommended even though inside I know I would do it anyway. Like being told eating an entire chocolate cake with a half gallon of vanilla ice cream is a nutritious meal! Recommended at least three times a week!
Oh well, that might be a little extreme (a girl can dream; can’t she?). However, the Medscape article ‘Dancing Keeps Older Brains on the Ball’ gave me a rationale for being the ‘grand old lady’ at hip hop class as well as one of the ‘dowagers’ at Zumba. The article talked about how the integration of info from multiple sensory sources such as hearing the music, watching the instructor and feeling how your own body is moving in space is good exercise for your brain. The researchers discovered the demands of learning new dances every week or so in addition to the balance demands of dancing literally beef up your hippocampus. The hippocampus (seahorse in Latin as I mentioned before) is your memory center and tends to shrink in old age. The researchers ended by saying “our study results suggest that social enrichment and a combination of physical and cognitive activities influences neuroprotection best”. So there!
And of course I got so excited about having a SCIENTIFIC rationale for putting on my boogie shoes a couple of times a week, I did not leave myself space to write about the other two articles I found. But good news: one of the articles on exercise and depression talks about the levels of exercise effective for battling depression and guess what? It was practically nuthin’. See? You can read the next page even if I am being a noodge!
October 22nd, 2017