The relationship between exercise and brain health is well known given the multiple investigations in this regard. Now, is there any type of exercise capable of lifting the mood, improving memory and at the same time protecting the brain from cognitive deterioration caused by age?
With aerobic exercise, researchers refer to any exercise that increases heart rate, movement and sweating for a minimum period of time: walking, running, cycling or basically any exercise that involves moving – performing weight lifting would be exercise mostly anaerobic, for example.
According to the researchers, some of these benefits can occur almost immediately or within a few minutes of physical exercise – such as improving mood. Others, on the other hand, require several weeks – such as memory improvement. To note these benefits, the researchers suggest that aerobic exercise should be done on a regular and constant basis, with a minimum of 45 minutes of continuous practice.
If there is a disease concern and much is Alzheimer’s. So they are increasingly frequent in research being conducted around the world about this mental illness.
Exercise for Alzheimer’s
The latest to be published in the journal Neurology notes the importance of daily exercise to prevent this disease. According to these results, the daily physical activity, even in older people, may help slow Alzheimer’s disease and improve their health and well-being.
In this research on Alzheimer’s disease also came to the conclusion that persons carrying out a physical activity infer to ten certainly had more than twice as likely to develop this mental illness.
The research emphasizes that not only the fact of physical exercise, but also other activities that contribute to their physical and mental, such as cooking or washing dishes.
The study showed that people with a daily physical activity less than 10 percent had more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those who exceeded this figure.
On the other hand, a review has been published in BMC Public Health that extols the benefits of physical exercise on the brain even more: increasing aerobic activity is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and may even benefit those individuals who already suffer from brain disease.
The study, conducted by Kathleen Martin Ginis and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, reviewed data from more than 150 studies, where the relationship between physical exercise and Alzheimer’s was observed.
According to Ginis, physical activity is a practical, economical and accessible intervention, which could work both as a form of prevention and treatment in Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementias such as Parkinson’s disease or Huntington’s disease.
On the other hand, other studies such as the one published in 2016 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society state that other types of physical exercises can also protect the brain against alzheimer and other cognitive deficits: weightlifting.
Although this and other studies have joined all those who show that physical exercise, both aerobic and anaerobic, can improve memory and even prevent neurological diseases that can damage it, it is still necessary to carry out more research in this regard to corroborate this evidence. And to be able to better understand how such protection occurs in the brain.