Exercise is something we all need to include in our day to day habits and routines. I could list one hundred different reasons why we need to include exercise in our daily routine, however I will not go into a long drawn out list in this article. Generally speaking daily exercise benefits us in many ways including increased blood flow, lymph flow, injury prevention, and improved cognitive function. However, the way certain types of exercise benefits brain health have been particularly intriguing to me the past few years. This gives me another “why” behind making sure I exercise daily, and making sure I am performing the most beneficial type of exercise to enhance my brain health.

Our gut can be considered like a huge factory. 2/3rds of our immune system is embedded in our gastrointestinal tract. Our gut has more bacteria than there are cells in our entire body, and our gut contains more neurotransmitters than our brain. Our brain contains about 100 billion neurons and our gut contains approximately 500 million neurons, which all communicate with the brain via the nervous system. One of the biggest nerves that supplies this communication is the vagus nerve. This nerve sends signals in both directions. This is how stress signals from the brain send signals down to your gut influencing or even acting as the root cause of gastrointestinal problems.

The autonomic nervous system is the part of the nervous system that controls our internal organs such as our blood vessels, stomach, intestine, liver, kidneys, bladder, genitals, lungs, pupils, heart, and our sweat, salivary, and digestive glands. The autonomic nervous system has two main divisions call the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

The Finnish word sauna means “bath” or “bathhouse”. This has been around for thousands of years, with a written description of the activity dating back to 1112. Originally they dug an embankment in the ground, however today we have come a long way with more sophisticated structures, technologies, and devices used to achieve the benefits of sauna bathing.