Walking makes you smarter

On Friday I strayed a bit, I swapped my legs for a bike, but no worries, I'm walking again. And that's a good thing too, because it seems to do everything with the gray area in my brain.

I find that quite concerning, that you and I have gray areas in our brains. Gray doesn't sound very smart or productive to me, so if there's something we can do to get that mass moving, I want to know what. My goal was anyway to come out of this quarantine smarter and now it turns out I'm already making strides without even realizing it. In my head, because I'm walking a lot.

We already know that walking creates space in your head (and otherwise I'm happy to catch you up here). It reduces stress, it creates space in your head and it could even help with grief processing, which doesn't sound so crazy, but it actually makes you smarter. Besides gray matter, there is also white matter in your brain, which fortunately sounds a lot less useless. The white matter in your brain is responsible for signal transmission between the gray areas (and connection is good, right?). However, the white matter needs a lot of blood to make that connection, and that's where walking comes to your aid, explains neuropsychologist Erik Scherder to RTLnieuws. By being active every day, like all that walking in quarantine, your heart works better, which means your brain gets better blood flow and the connections work better again and voilà: smarter. And suddenly that little walk becomes a much more important pastime.

It's of course nice to stroll through your city or countryside, but do take a step up if you're on your way anyway. Your heart rate needs to go up to reach a moderate intensity (try saying that five times fast). Just taking it easy won't work.

Besides making you smart, walking also makes you creative, as it promotes theta brain waves (wow), and being active has a positive effect on your immune system. Suddenly starting to run or training hard can actually have a counterproductive effect on that system, so be careful not to overdo it. It has been shown that walking strengthens the immune system, making it harder for viruses to invade your body. Seems like something you'd want right now.

A girl laughing while holding a cup with a building in the background these are nice walking routes.