Exercise and Your Nervous System

Your nervous system is among the two primary control systems of your body. Other control system is your endocrine system. The nervous system regulates the voluntary and involuntary activities and functions of the body. Therefore, it works with other organ systems in a coordinated manner and regulates their functions. It helps respond to challenges like exercise, sports, physical activities, and diseases. Your nervous system can be easily divided into central and peripheral nervous systems. However, these two parts work together closely. The central nervous system basically consists of the brain and the spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system mainly contains sensory (afferent) and motor (efferent) nerve fibres (these nerve fibres arise from the central nervous system) as well as the motor end plates on muscle fibres, and sensory receptors.

The sensory nerve fibres carry electrical signals like sensations or information from the peripheries, including sensory organs and other organ systems, to the central nervous system (the brain and the spinal cord). Therefore, this process allows for a quick and coordinated regulation of all organ systems according to the movements. Your motor nerve fibres carry electrical signals or commands from the central nervous system to the muscles (skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles) and the glands of the body.

The motor nerve fibres (efferent neurons) can be further divided into the voluntary (somatic) and the involuntary (autonomic) neurons (nerves). Somatic (voluntary) nerves carry electrical signals from the central nervous system to your skeletal muscles, which are under your control. Therefore, they help regulate movements of your skeletal muscles and create movements. The autonomic nervous system, which is an involuntary system, can be divided into two parts. They are the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems, which bring electrical signals or commands to the smooth and cardiac muscles and the glands. These involuntary nervous systems help regulate various functions of the body. They control the activity of cardiac muscle, smooth muscles, and the glands during physical activities as well as the rest. The autonomic nervous system also regulates the centres for respiratory, digestive, and cardiovascular systems.

Your nervous system also helps you to keep up the balance and enable proper positioning of the body during any movement. It regulates the body temperature, urine output, thirst, and food intake. Therefore, it controls the internal environment of your body, removal of waste products, and the supply of energy to the tissues during physical activities. Your nervous system helps regulate the thinking, self-consciousness, decision making, memory, creativity, and movements of the body. Consequently, it coordinates any movement during exercise, physical activities, and sports.

The level of the sympathetic nervous system’s activity is increased when your body is needed to respond to the stressful situations. During physical activities and exercise, your sympathetic nervous system activates the body. Your parasympathetic nervous system helps you to calm down and is more active following food consumption and during resting conditions. These two systems help regulate body functions in a coordinated manner according to the situation.

During the start of exercise or sport, the level of sympathetic nervous system’s activity is increased gradually while the level of parasympathetic nervous system’s activity is decreased progressively. This process results in increased strength of cardiac contraction, heart rate, and blood pressure. It helps redistribute blood flow from the inactive tissues such as the digestive system and urinary system to active tissues like the skeletal muscles and the heart. Therefore, this process helps your body respond to meet the demands of physical activities, exercise, and sports.

Your skeletal muscles play a significant role in controlling the body movements during exercise and sports. These voluntary movements and physical activities are controlled by the higher brain centres in a coordinated manner as you wish.

Many neurologic diseases can affect the performance of exercise, physical activities, and sports. However, many affected people can achieve considerable health benefits with participation in regular physical activities and exercise.

A disease, which is known as cerebral palsy, interferes the normal brain development hence the control of the spinal reflexes and muscle tone. Therefore, individuals with cerebral palsy get decreased movements of the body and cannot keep up their balance and body posture. Affected part of the brain and the extent of the lesion or injury determine the severity of the condition. A suitable exercise programme according to the functional ability should be identified with the help of doctors. It usually improves the general fitness, flexibility, strength of the muscles, work capacity, sense of wellness, and the cardiovascular fitness. Resistance exercise may be the more suitable kind of exercise for people with cerebral palsy. According to the nature of the neurologic illness, an appropriate well-planned exercise and physical activity programme should be selected.

The following table shows some of the neurologic diseases and health benefits of regular exercise programmes, which can be achieved by the affected individuals.

Neurologic disease	Health benefits of regular exercise
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis	Keep up the strength in healthy muscle fibres and range of movements in joints
Deafness and difficulty hearing	Improved balance, confidence, self-image, fitness, and socialisation skills
Psychiatric illnesses	Improved mood, fitness, self-concept, work behaviour, and decreased anxiety and depression
Multiple sclerosis	Improved physical performance and fitness
Parkinson disease	Improved functions and movements
Spinal cord injury	Improved sense of well-being and physical fitness
Visual impairment	Improved balance, confidence, physical fitness, self-image, and socialisation skills
Alzheimer disease	Improved cognitive or intellectual function, fitness, physical performance, and positive behaviour
Cerebral palsy	Improved sense of well-being, working ability, fitness, flexibility, strength of the muscles
Epilepsy	Improved physical fitness
Mental retardation	Improved working ability and strength of the muscles
Muscular dystrophy	Decreased or even reverse the decline in muscular activities
Polio and post-polio syndrome	Increased lower limb strength and physical fitness
Stroke and head injury	Increased strength of the muscles and physical fitness

 

Each part of your nervous system plays an important role in exercise, athletic, and sport performance. Regular aerobic endurance physical activities make some changes to your autonomic (involuntary) nervous system, which may cause performance enhancements. Your heart relaxes and fills with blood during diastole. It contracts and pumps the blood during systole. The muscle of your heart (myocardium or cardiac muscle) usually receives its blood supply during diastole. Right after the training, the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system rises progressively. It slows the heart rate and hence increases the period of diastole gradually, raising the filling time. Then, the heart can pump more blood volume during each contraction (systole), causing a larger stroke volume. This process increases the output of the heart per unit time (cardiac output) and hence the blood supply to active tissues. The changes of the autonomic nervous system activity also help improve the blood flow to working tissues during exercise. Therefore, the higher cardiac output enhances the blood supply, causing increased oxygen and nutrient delivery to your skeletal muscles. It helps improve the performance in aerobic endurance activities.




Related Links:

Exercise and Your Muscles
Exercise and Your Skeletal System
Exercise and Your Cardiovascular System
Exercise and Your Respiratory System
Exercise and Your Urinary System
Exercise and Your Digestive System