Why Your Brain Cells Need Real Exercise.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 26 June 1914, Page 2

Why Your Brain Cells Need Real Exercise.

THERE IS A VAST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORKING AND EXERCISING YOUR BRAIN.

(By WM. LEE HOWARD, M.D.)

Xf we would take as good care of our brain stuff as we do of our muscles and stomach there would be far less insanity and fewer mental breakdowns. We are getting to realise the value of physical exercise, and we take heed of what goes into the stomach to nourish the body and supply building material for the blood. But the brain is neglected, and we force its function, the mind, to work under many difficulties. The brain must have exercise as well as rest. The average man believes that his daily labour—bookkeeping, selling, financiering, or whatever he does for a living, is brain exercise. It is not ; it is brain work. What is the difference ? There is a great difference. In a man's vocation it is only a certain group of brain cells which work and develop. Among and alongside of these are millions ready to do other kind of work, and if they are allowed to remain idle they will, like unused musclos, shrink to uselessness. It is this one-sidedness of brain work whicn brings on nervous and mental exhaustion, not mental strain alone. Have you not at times when in a half waking state had thoughts and ideas strange and foreign to your daily work ? You commence one line of thought which suddenly sends your mind upon an entirely different track. Then it occurs to you : "How did I reach this particular thought or<memory?" Gradually you travel back over the same thought line, fact for fact, thought station to thought station, and reach the origin of the mind journey. Now this |is a normal mental process. Your ideas and words have literally gone over what we will sail "association tracts;" cells and fibres which have been put into activity. , If we close that portion of our brain shop which has been working all day, close it absolutely as we do the workshop or desk, and take up another line of) thinking, we are exercising certain groups of brain cells and resting the others. If we read on subjects which apparently have nothing to do with our vocation, soon the "association tracts " will show us that there is really nothing useless to our daily work. We shall discover that what we thought was trivial is, indeed, of much value. It is by such mental methods that progress is made ; it is through bringing all brain stuff to work at your command that the man gets out of ruts, invents, goes ahead, keeps youthful, and always has something ahead in view. It relieves the tension of his brain, broadens his views, and really increases his efficiency. Nobody would be so foolish as to try to run a motor-car on one tyre all th« time and let the other three tyres lie idle to grow stiff, worthless, and to lose their elasticity. And no one would think of I trying to kop down to business and back every day on one leg and ! let the muscles, nerves, and blood vessels of the other leg become stiff feeble, and useless. And yet that is just what most of us do with our brains—over and over again, day in and day out, we work and exha\ist one group of brain cells and let the others rust and deteriorate. There are so many millions of brain cells, each capable of doing special. work, that brain exhaustion is practically impossible for the healthy individual. But what can and does happen is exhaustion of certain groups of cells when the worker has not the others at his command to keep 'him happy and contented while the tired ones-rest. There is too much tommy rot about "the tired business man " needing exciting drama or fizzy musical plays to rest his " tired brain." Of course, a little of this amusement does no harm, perhaps it is a benefit at times, but it does not put into activity that brain material latent in every man and woman, the stimulation of which leads to fame and fortune and redounds to the majesty of ruan.