My husband took me out for breakfast this morning. It wasn’t a special day and he hadn’t committed any sin; he just took me out to eat. Yes, he’s a good fellow! Afterwards, we wandered through the bookstore, relaxing as we looked at magazines. Although I normally only look at jewelry design periodicals, today, I picked up a copy of Oprah’s magazine. It seemed to call my name. Hurrying to get on to the other jewelry magazine I had grabbed, I quickly thumbed through the Oprah pages and a picture of the brain caught my eye. The single page of information was divided into regions of the brain, but it was while I read about the hippocampus (No that’s not a school for hippos!) that I questioned the credibility of the article. The information stated that “Arthur Kramer, PhD,. . . show[ed] that exercise actually makes your hippocampus bigger. . . [perhaps] increas[ing] the number of capillaries in the region, which in turn helps new cells grow. “

Upon reading the above information, I basically dismissed what I had read, in the article, since I previously learned that we don’t “grow” new cells, but rather form additional connections. Past learning caused me to question the credibility of the article. Since credibility has to do with the believability of the source, I was quite sure that now I didn’t trust Oprah.  Of course Oprah didn’t actually write the article, but isn’t she responsible for “her people”? Why would THEY print something that was incorrect? That’s when it hit me . . . maybe I was the one who was incorrect.

It didn’t require much of an online search to learn I was the problem! The past few years of research have led researchers to believe that some neurogenesis IS possible. Halleluiah. I thought that I could only branch new dendrites, but now I know that I can actually generate new brain cells in my hippocampus. Here’s the only problem. Dr. Kramer says that one must sweat at least three times a week for this to occur. He’s talking about good aerobic exercise as opposed to simply walking into the grocery store in the Texas heat.

Now, as I sit in my comfortable chair and think about regular aerobic exercise, I’m wondering if I really need those extra neurons in my hippocampus. Those I have seem to have worked pretty well; but what about the cells that are being sloughed off? Hmm . . . maybe I do need to work out . . . let’s see, treadmill? stationary bike? jogging? . . . I’m going to have to sit right here in this comfortable chair and figure that one out.