There are many reasons to exercise. Protecting your brain health and optimizing your thinking ability is one of them. In fact, there’s compelling evidence that exercise produces large cognitive gains, improves memory, and helps fight dementia.
For example, a 2010 study on primates revealed that regular exercise helped the monkeys learn new tasks twice as quickly as non-exercising monkeys, and researchers believe this might hold true for people as well.
Exercise helps protect and improve your brain function by:
- Improving and increasing blood flow to your brain
- Increasing production of nerve-protecting compounds
- Improving development and survival of neurons
- Reducing damaging plaques in your brain
- Altering the way these damaging proteins reside inside your brain, which appears to slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease
Lifting Weights Boosts Memory
Strength training in particular has been shown to have a very beneficial impact on brain function and memory. In one study — featured in the video above — just 20 minutes of strength training was found to enhance long-term memory by about 10 percent.
In this experiment, 46 volunteers were randomly assigned to one of two groups — one active, and one passive. Initially, all of the participants viewed a series of 90 images. Afterward, they were asked to recall as many images as they could.
Next, the active group was told to do 50 leg extensions at personal maximum effort using a resistance exercise machine. The passive participants were asked to let the machine move their leg, without exerting any personal effort.
Two days later the participants returned to the lab, where they were shown a series of 180 pictures — the 90 original photos, plus 90 new ones. Interestingly, even though it was two days since they performed the leg extensions, those in the active group had markedly improved image recall.
The passive control group recalled about 50 percent of the original photos, whereas the active group remembered about 60 percent of the previously shown images.
As reported by The Epoch Times:
“Our study indicates that people don’t have to dedicate large amounts of time to give their brain a boost,' says Lisa Weinberg... who led the project.
Although the study used weight exercises... resistance activities such as squats or knee bends would likely produce the same results. In other words, exercises that don’t require the person to be in good enough to shape to bike, run, or participate in prolonged aerobic exercises...”
The Intriguing Link Between Leg Power and Brain Function
Another recent study supports these findings, and suggests that working your leg muscles helps maintain cognitive function as you get older. According to the authors, simply walking more could help maintain brain function well into old age.
This study followed 324 female twins, aged 43 to 73, for a decade. Cognitive function such as learning and memory was tested at the outset and at the conclusion of the study. Interestingly, as reported by MedicineNet.com:
“The researchers found that leg strength was a better predictor of brain health than any other lifestyle factor looked at in the study.
Generally, the twin with more leg strength at the start of the study maintained her mental abilities better and had fewer age-related brain changes than the twin with weaker legs...
‘It’s compelling to see such differences in cognition [thinking] and brain structure in identical twins, who had different leg power 10 years before,’ [lead author Claire] Steves add
‘It suggests that simple lifestyle changes to boost our physical activity may help to keep us both mentally and physically healthy.’”
Previous research has demonstrated that exercise promotes brain health by releasing hormones from the muscles, which encourage the growth of new brain cells — a process known as neurogenesis or neuroplasticity.
Your brain’s hippocampus, i.e. your memory center, is particularly adaptable and capable of growing new cells throughout your entire lifetime, even into your 90s, provided your lifestyle supports it.
For example, one year-long study found that adults who exercised regularly were actually enlarging their brain’s memory center by one to two percent per year, where typically that center shrinks with age.
The study on twins is said to be the first showing a specific link between leg power and cognition in normal, healthy people, and this is great news, as your leg muscles are among the largest in your body and can be easily worked, either through seated leg exercises, or by standing and walking.
