At the considerable risk of sounding preachy, I’ve been harping on a simple but crucial theme: remember to exercise. But can exercise itself help you remember? Yes, it can.
Exercise promotes emotional and psychological well-being by fighting depression, dissipating anxiety, and improving sleep. That should help mental function—and there is more. Animal studies show that exercise can increase blood flow to the brain and enhance communication between nerve cells by promoting new connections (synapses) between brain cells. A study of mice even found that running increased the production and survival of new nerve cells in the aging rodents’ brains.
Seven recent studies of more than forty thousand elderly Americans, Canadians, and Europeans have all linked regular physical activity with a reduced risk of cognitive decline in the “golden years.” As compared with the least active people, those who got the most exercise were 15 to 50 percent less likely to suffer from mental impairment. In one study, for every mile a woman walked each day, her risk of cognitive decline dropped by 13 percent. In a study from Cleveland, regular exercise between the ages of twenty and sixty was linked to a nearly fourfold reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age. And in 2005, researchers in Baltimore reported that people who carry a gene that increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease enjoy the most protection from exercise.
In case you’ve forgotten, the moral is simple: for your mind as well as your body, remember to exercise regularly. It’s another case of new research confirming old insights, in this case the eighteenth-century wisdom of Alexander Pope: “Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.”
Exercise promotes emotional and psychological well-being by fighting depression, dissipating anxiety, and improving sleep. That should help mental function—and there is more. Animal studies show that exercise can increase blood flow to the brain and enhance communication between nerve cells by promoting new connections (synapses) between brain cells. A study of mice even found that running increased the production and survival of new nerve cells in the aging rodents’ brains.
Seven recent studies of more than forty thousand elderly Americans, Canadians, and Europeans have all linked regular physical activity with a reduced risk of cognitive decline in the “golden years.” As compared with the least active people, those who got the most exercise were 15 to 50 percent less likely to suffer from mental impairment. In one study, for every mile a woman walked each day, her risk of cognitive decline dropped by 13 percent. In a study from Cleveland, regular exercise between the ages of twenty and sixty was linked to a nearly fourfold reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age. And in 2005, researchers in Baltimore reported that people who carry a gene that increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease enjoy the most protection from exercise.
In case you’ve forgotten, the moral is simple: for your mind as well as your body, remember to exercise regularly. It’s another case of new research confirming old insights, in this case the eighteenth-century wisdom of Alexander Pope: “Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.”
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