Exercise Slows Brain Aging
It seems that being physically active isn’t just good for our bodies but for our brains as well. A new study published in the journal of Neurology has found that getting in a walk, or working out at the gym, can slow brain aging by as much as 10 years! In fact, people who exercised less showed sharper declines in their cognitive scores than people who were more active.
For the study, researchers asked a group of 1,228 men and women, of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds living in Manhattan, about their regular exercise habits. They answered questions testing their cognitive abilities, including their memory, organization, reasoning and thinking speed and five years later, they performed the same tests again on about half of the study group.
Those in the study who reported doing more physical activity also showed higher scores on cognitive tests (these results were consistent with previous studies linking more exercise to better brain health). However, adjusting for the effect that factors like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease can have on brain function, that link disappeared. From the Time article, “Conditions like these could impair blood flow to the brain and therefore compromise cognitive functions, says Dr. Clinton Wright, associate professor of neurology and public health sciences at University of Miami and senior author of the study. ‘That suggests that people with low physical activity levels also had a greater burden of those risk factors,’ he says.”
While the data doesn’t prove that exercise can reverse or prevent a slowdown in higher level thinking skills, it suggests that physical activity may help people with blood flow issues to the brain, maintain cognitive health. Given this information, Dr. Wright is now studying a new group of patients; for the study they will wear activity monitors and be randomly assigned to a physical exercise program (or not) to see if there is any difference in their test scores over time.
Source: Time
