Tomorrow I start My 6 week- Class at the JCC “The Jewish Community Center”: 6 Fridays at Noon
JCC Wellness: Michael Gonzalez-Wallace
The Jewish Community Center presents Super Body,Super Brain by Michael Gonzalez-Wallace
Very excited with my upcoming Class Series at one of the best and most respected Health Centers in USA, the The JCC in Manhattan ! When? This coming Friday at noon. I will be conducting a series of classes and teach how your brain works with specific and targeted movements. If you are around this Friday stop by here is the link
Results? Listen to Cathy who took my Class Super Body, Super Brain at Englewood Hospital:
Exercise makes you feel better, you probably have heard that before but why? One of the most incredible aspects that we tend to not pay too much attention is how our brain controls our body. There are specific areas that control movement, the more challenging the better. More brain areas are involved but also different neurotransmitters associated to those neurons.
Brain activity and movement
Hormones and Neurotransmitters are affected by exercise
Hormones are chemical messengers released by your endocrine glands to support the normal functioning of your body. These hormones regulate sexual development (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone), digestion (insulin) and stress (the corticosteroids: cortisol and epinephrine)
Now lets talk how targeted physical movement and the brain. We know that movement does not happen in one part of the brain but in several of them: the more challenging the movement the more brain areas are integrated. The main areas of the brain in challenging movements we could summarize mainly in: prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum, hippocampus. Why is this important for stress? really simple: Chemical messengers or neurotransmitters are needed to transmit the information from one neuron to the next one. At the end the result is that if we use complex movement and incorporate thinking and coordinating a specific movement we may have several chemical messengers in different parts of the brain influencing positively the brain at the same time. lets say that exercise and physical movement helps to fire specific neurotransmitters such as dopamine (muscle movement, logical thinking),serotonin (emotional mood) or Acetyl-choline (cardiovascular) among others. There are approximately 28-30 different neurotransmitters and several of them are affected by exercise.
“Exercise makes you feel better” You probably have heard this before but the reality is that we have such a wonderful cocktail of brain chemicals that helps us move, communicate, speak and more! One of the greatest ways of improving these brain chemicals is through exercise. Try this exercise to feel how these chemicals function in less than 10 seconds:
From a standing position start clapping and taping as fast as possible. how do you feel? Exactly your brain chemicals are functioning! Exercise improves our brain chemicals. Over hundred studies have shown the incredible benefits of moving.
Neurotransmitters refer to those spaces between nerve cells that different neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) need to leap across in order to transmit their information to other neurons.
We have billions of neurons does that mean that we have million of neurotransmitters? Absolutely not. Think of our alphabet how many letters do you know? 26? How many words exist? Billions (Robert Sapolsky, neurobiologist Stanford University). So we are looking at thirty neurotransmitters but would like to focus in those ones that are affected by exercise. By the way there are many more but will speak about the following ones:
Dopamine is attracted by novelty, logical reasoning and muscle movement. Dopamine regulates processes that regulate movement, posture, blood pressure and more!
It is one of the most popular neurotransmitters since gets affects our emotional state. Exercise raises our serotonin levels improving its balance
The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the heart, blood vessels, sweat glands, the large internal organs, and the adrenal medulla in the brain. Like dopamine, norepinephrine has a stimulating effect, fosters alertness, and plays an important regulatory role in long-term memory and learning
They are your brain built in chemical system that help us go through pain and also induce mild euphoria. Exercise it is the absolute best way for raising our endorphins levels and trigger that feeling of the ‘runners high”
To read my research and experience my Super Body, Super Brain Fitness Program click here
Biomechanics and physical movement
JCC Wellness
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