Here is ques­tion 18 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:
Is phys­i­cal fit­ness impor­tant to your brain fitness?

Key Points:

• Exer­cise improves learn­ing through increased blood sup­ply and growth hormones.
• Exer­cise is an anti-depressant by reduc­ing stress and pro­mot­ing neurogenesis.
• Exer­cise pro­tects the brain from dam­age and dis­ease, as well as speed­ing the recovery.
• Exer­cise ben­e­fits you the most when you start young.

Answer:

Yes. Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”

Accord­ing to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Chil­drens Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that higher lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cantly more ben­e­fi­cial than lower amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none. He also found that start­ing an exer­cise pro­gram early in life to be an effec­tive way to lower the risk of devel­op­ing Parkinson’s dis­ease later in life.

As lit­tle as three hours a week of brisk walk­ing has been shown to halt, and even reverse, the brain shrink­age that starts in a person’s 40s, espe­cially in the regions respon­si­ble for mem­ory and higher cog­ni­tion. The exer­cise increased the brain’s vol­ume of gray mat­ter (actual neu­rons) and white mat­ter (con­nec­tions between neurons).

Increased blood flow to the brain trig­gers bio­chem­i­cal changes that spur the pro­duc­tion of new brain neu­rons. Brain exer­cise then pro­tects these fledg­ling neu­rons by bathing them in nerve growth fac­tor and form­ing func­tional con­nec­tions with neigh­bor­ing neurons.

Dr. Kramer said “After only three months, the peo­ple who exer­cised had the brain vol­umes of peo­ple three years younger. This is the first time any­one has shown that exer­cise increases brain vol­ume in the elderly. It sug­gests that aer­o­bic exer­cise can stave off neural decline, and even roll back some nor­mal age-related dete­ri­o­ra­tion of brain struc­ture.

Fur­ther Reading

• How to Keep Your Aging Brain Fit: Aer­o­bics by Sharon Beg­ley, Wall Street Jour­nal, Nov. 16, 2006.
• Buff and Brainy: Exer­cis­ing the Body can Ben­e­fit the Mind by Chris­ten Brown­lee, Sci­ence News, Feb. 25, 2006;169(8):122.
• Col­combe SJ, Erick­son KI, Raz N, Webb AG, Cohen NJ, McAuley E, Kramer AF. Aer­o­bic fit­ness reduces brain tis­sue loss in aging humans. J Geron­tol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2003;58:176–80.
• Cot­man CW, Berch­told NC. Exer­cise: a behav­ioral inter­ven­tion to enhance brain health and plas­tic­ity. Trends Neu­rosci. 2002;25:295–301.
• Ding Q, Vayn­man S, Souda P, White­legge JP, Gomez-Pinilla F. Exer­cise affects energy metab­o­lism and neural plasticity-related pro­teins in the hip­pocam­pus as revealed by pro­teomic analy­sis. Eur J Neu­rosci. 2006;24:1265–76.
• Heyn P, Abreu BC, Otten­bacher KJ. The effects of exer­cise train­ing on elderly per­sons with cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia: a meta-analysis. Arch Phys Med Reha­bil. 2004;85:1694–704.
• van Praag H, Shu­bert T, Zhao C, Gage FH. Exer­cise enhances learn­ing and hip­pocam­pal neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis in aged mice. J Neu­rosci. 2005;25:8680–5.
• Vayn­man S, Gomez-Pinilla F. Revenge of the “sit”: how lifestyle impacts neu­ronal and cog­ni­tive health through mol­e­c­u­lar sys­tems that inter­face energy metab­o­lism with neu­ronal plas­tic­ity. J Neu­rosci Res. 2006;84:699–715.

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