Aerobic exercise trumps weights, stretching for preserving memory, brain health: studies
Getty ImagesSwimming, walking or running: Exercise that consistently raises the heart rate can help protect memory and brain functioning in ways that stretching and strengthening exercises cannot, researchers say, even starting as early as middle age.
While much is made of the many benefits of regular exercise, its impact on memory doesn’t make a lot of headlines.
In recent years, several studies have heralded the possibility that exercise can play a positive role in retaining memory, and not just for those over 55.Yet for the growing number of baby boomers, news that exercise can diminish the impact aging has on the brain eclipses that of its more newsworthy benefits like weight loss and gains in muscular strength.
Though most studies regarding exercise and memory have been conducted with older populations, researchers at Michigan State University recently published findings revealing that unfit college-age subjects performed poorer on long-term memory tests than did their fitter peers.
“The findings show that lower-fit individuals lose more memory across time,” said Kimberly Fenn, study co-author and assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University.
The effect of exercise on the brain seems to be most profound in the hippocampus, the part of your brain that is responsible for memory storing, gathering and processing. With age comes a shrinking of the hippocampus and it’s one of the reasons memory begins to fade as the decades pile up.
Those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease experience a greater-than-normal decrease in the size of the hippocampus, which contributes to the difficulty in recalling newer memories while older ones remain intact.
Running guards against dementia, keeps the brain’s memory centre young: study
Those attempting to guard against dementia should put down the crossword and go for a jog, U.K. researchers advise.
For years, people have assumed that puzzles kept the brain active. But Clive Ballard, professor of age-related disease at King’s College London, says those who want the best chance of staving off dementia should opt for a run or a brisk walk.
It has long been known that those who do regular exercise are less likely to develop the condition, but it was only last month that a study at the University of Pittsburgh showed that instead of the brain shrinking — as it does normally at a rate of about 1% a year — it grew by about 2% in those who took a brisk 40-minute walk three times a week. Among those aged between 55 and 80, exercise increased the size of the hippocampus — the brain’s memory hub — knocking almost two years off its biological age.
Studies indicate that regular aerobic exercise has been shown not only to slow age-related shrinking of the hippocampus, but remarkably it can also reverse some of the wasting that has already occurred. A year-long, three-days-a-week walking program recovered as much as two years worth of volume previously lost in healthy, but sedentary, seniors.
Similar results were found in a study of women who were already experiencing mild memory loss. Assigned to one of three exercise groups — aerobic conditioning, weight training or stretching and toning — women in their seventies and eighties exercised twice a week for six months.
The idea was to see whether working out in the weight room or performing a basic stretching program was as effective at improving brain health as aerobic exercises like walking, swimming or cycling.
Turns out that increases in brain volume among the aerobic exercisers was at par with that found in other studies using a similar exercise component.
The same can’t be said for those who worked out in the weight room or performed basic balance and stretching exercises. To benefit from improved brain health, older men and women need a sustained boost in heart rate similar to what occurs while walking, swimming, cycling and running.
But perhaps the most interesting of the recent studies focusing on exercise and memory was reported this spring in the journal Neurology.
The researchers reviewed the data compiled in the CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) study, which included results from a series of physical and cognitive tests performed on 4,966 men and women in 1985-86 when the study subjects were between 18 and 30 years of age. The same tests were repeated two, five, seven, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years later.
What they discovered is that individuals who were in the best shape in 1985-86 scored the highest in the memory tests 25 years later, and that suggests regular exercise in young adulthood adds memory muscle that will come in handy later.
What they discovered is that individuals who were in the best shape in 1985-86 scored the highest in the memory tests 25 years later, and that suggests regular exercise in young adulthood adds memory muscle that will come in handy later.
Also worthy of note is that the small number of middle age participants who posted better fitness stats in their fifties than they did when they were under 30 also benefited from better scores in memory tests compared to their peers, whose fitness either declined or stayed at status quo over the 25-year period.
So while there’s no doubt that exercise keeps the brain primed to enhance memory, it’s doubtful the effects of exercise are powerful enough to make it easier to remember where to find your keys.
What does have a more practical application, says Doig, are the improvements to memory that occur after a single bout of exercise. Newly formed memories are made stronger when immediately followed by aerobic exercise like walking or cycling, which can have implications for learning in the classroom and for physical tasks like learning a new athletic skill.
The take-home message is that combining short- and long-term exercise can result in the greatest potential to boost memory in both young and old. Even better news is that the single bouts of exercise can be relatively short, under 30 minutes, and positive changes to the hippocampus can be achieved by walking as little as 120 minutes a week
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