MCADAMISATION

The man with the insight was named John Loudon McAdam. McAdam, a Scottish engineer living in England in the early 1800s, noticed the difficulty people had trying to move goods and supplies over hole-filled, often muddy, frequently impassable dirt roads. He got the splendid idea of raising the level of the road using layers of rock and gravel. This immediately made the roads more stable, less muddy, and less flood-prone. As county after county adopted his process, now called macadamization, an astonishing after-effect occurred. People instantly got more dependable access to one another’s goods and services. Offshoots from the main roads sprang up, and pretty soon entire countrysides had access to far-flung points using stable arteries of transportation. Trade grew. People got richer. By changing the way things moved, McAdam changed the way we lived. What does this have to do with exercise? McAdam’s central notion wasn’t to improve goods and services, but to improve access to goods and services. You can do the same for your brain by increasing the roads in your body, namely your blood vessels, through exercise. Exercise does not provide the oxygen and the food. It provides your body greater access to the oxygen and the food. How this works is easy to understand.