Scientists have long known that some of the benefits of exercise are a simple matter of plumbing. Exercise makes blood vessels bigger and keeps them functioning smoothly, which makes them less likely to plug up and cause a heart attack or stroke. There have been hints that this may also mean more blood flow to the brain, which could help prevent cognitive decline. For example, studies have linked exercise to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s.
Now researchers are making a more explicit connection between exercise and brain health. They are discovering that the full benefit of exercise comes not from mere physical movement but from actual physical fitness, the body’s cardiovascular health. A long-term study of Norwegian military recruits, for example, found that their aerobic fitness at age 18 was highly predictive of their risk of dementia in old age. And Swedish women who were highly fit in middle age had an eight times lower risk of dementia over the next 44 years than women of only moderate fitness, researchers reported in 2018 in Neurology.
Another recent study, led by K. Sreekumaran Nair, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, found that after just 12 weeks of a high-intensity exercise regimen, participants’ brains showed increased glucose uptake and higher metabolic activity, particularly in regions that usually show decline in Alzheimer’s disease. High-intensity exercise was found to have a similar effect on the parts of the brain most affected by Parkinson’s disease, in research led by Marcas Bamman, an exercise physiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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High Intensity Interval Training
STUDY: "Physical Activity Linked to Larger Volume, Increased Health of Brain"
