Die, brain cell, die!

We used to think that once brain cells were killed you could not replace them. A joke was that "alcohol kills brain cells but only the weak ones". Science has shown that new brain cells will grow, though. And the excerpt below from an article by Gretchen Reynolds tells of a study that shows exercise promotes their growth. A link to her blog is at the bottom.
So, keep working out. And read the article on her blog about women and exercise recovery.

What goes on inside your brain when you exercise? That question has preoccupied a growing number of scientists in recent years, as well as many of us who exercise. In the late 1990s, Dr. Fred Gage and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute in San Diego elegantly proved that human and animal brains produce new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis) and that exercise increases neurogenesis. The brains of mice and rats that were allowed to run on wheels pulsed with vigorous, newly born neurons, and those animals then breezed through mazes and other tests of rodent I.Q., showing that neurogenesis improves thinking.


http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/author/gretchen-reynolds/