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Daily exercise boosts the brain of middle aged and older people

It paves the way for the development of new gadgets that can help people’s brains stay active as they age.

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Elderly couple doing pilates class at the gym with a group of diverse younger people balancing on the gym ball with raised arms to tone their muscles in an active retirement concept

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

Daily exercise boosts the brain of middle-aged and older people, according to a new study.

Researchers found a group of 90 people aged 50 to 74 were better able to get things done on days when they were physically active compared to days when they were idle.

The link between physical activity and better brain function still held up when variables such as age, sex, education, race and HIV status were taken into account.

But academics from the University of California, San Diego, said the link between exercise and brain function only held for people who rely on others to perform everyday chores such as paying bills and managing household activities.

The work adds to a canon of research suggesting exercise helps people stay brainy, but in a new way.

For the new study, participants were told to wear an accelerometer when they were exercising and they did the brain tests from home.

They did not order people to get out and about, instead comparing days when people exercised voluntarily compared with days when they did not.

The researchers say their new methods for conducting their study show lifestyle interventions can be done easily from home.

It paves the way for the development of new gadgets that can help people’s brains stay active as they age.

Principal investigator Dr. Raeanne Moore said: “The future of lifestyle interventions really needs to be remote-based. The pandemic has made this especially clear.

“There was a very linear relationship between exercise and brain function. We hypothesized that we would find this, but we couldn’t be sure because we weren’t telling people to increase their physical activity. They just did what they do every day.”

First author Dr. Zvinka Zlatar said: “Future interventions, in which we ask people to increase their physical activity, will help us determine if daily changes in physical activity lead to daily gains in cognition measured remotely or vice versa.

“We don’t know yet if there’s a cumulative, long-term effect to these small daily fluctuations in cognition.

“That’s something we plan to study next – to see if performing physical activity at different intensities over time, in unsupervised settings, can produce long-term improvements in brain health and sustained behavior change.”

The findings were published in the journal mHealth.

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