We get how tough it is to stick to working out consistently. But here’s another reason we should really put in the extra effort to do it: a new study published in the journal Neurology found that physical activity can slow brain aging by as much as 10 years.
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The researchers asked a group of 1,228 men and women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds living in Manhattan about their regular exercise habits and tested their cognitive abilities, including their memory, organization, reasoning and thinking speed. Five years later, they performed the same tests on about half of the study group, and found that the people who did more physical activity scored higher on cognitive tests—even when factoring in effects like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, which impair blood flow to the brain and compromise cognitive functions. This suggests that people with low physical activity levels also had a greater burden of those risk factors.
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The researchers found that people who exercised less showed sharper declines in their cognitive scores than people who were more active. The drops were equivalent to the declines found during normal aging over about 10 years, they concluded.
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Unfortunately, the study didn’t give details on what kind of exercise or specifically how much exercise reaped the most benefits. It also doesn’t prove that exercise can actually reverse or prevent a slowdown in higher level thinking skills. But what it does suggest is that physical activity may help people with blood flow issues to the brain, such as stroke patients, maintain their cognitive status. That’s enough to get us to keep moving.
Relevant source:
Time.com
