Light weights – sharper minds

A new Canadian study about exercise and the brain,   shows for the first time, that  light weight training can sharpen mental activity as we grow older.

The results of the study,  by scientists from the Aging, Mobility and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and other institutions have shown, for the first time, that light-duty weight training shows  how well older women think and how blood flows within their brains.

After 12 months of lifting weights twice a week, the women performed significantly better on tests of mental processing ability than a control group of women who completed a balance and toning program, while functional M.R.I. scans showed that portions of the brain that control such thinking were considerably more active in the weight trainers.

“We’re not trying to show that lifting weights is better than aerobic-style activity” for staving off cognitive decline, said the study leader Teresa Liu-Ambrose, an assistant professor at UBC:  “But it does appear to be a viable option, and if people enjoy it, as our participants did, and stick with it,” then more of us might be able, potentially, to ameliorate mental decline well into late life. The results were published in  Neurobiology of Aging.

Two other  studies also  show that exercise is not just good for the body but  the best medicine to keep the brain active as we get older.

Canadian researchers   at the University of Waterloo,  the home of the Blackberry, measured the energy expenditure and cognitive functioning of a large group of elderly adults over the course of two to five years. Most of the volunteers did not exercise, per se, and almost none worked out vigorously. Their activities generally consisted of “walking around the block, cooking, gardening, cleaning and that sort of thing,” said Laura Middleton, an associate professor and lead author of the study, published inthe Archives of Internal Medicine.

But even the effects of this limited activity on the brain were remarkable, Dr. Middleton said. The wholly sedentary volunteers, scored significantly worse over the years on tests of cognitive function, while the most active group showed little decline. About 90 percent of those with the greatest daily energy expenditure continued to think and remember just almost as well, as the years passed by

The results indicated that vigorous exercise wasm’t necessary to protect the mind, Dr. Middleton said. “I think that’s exciting. It might inspire people who would be intimidated about the idea of “exercising” to just get up and move.”

Another study  conducted at at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical Schoolpublished in the journal involved, women, mostly in their 70s, with vascular disease or multiple risk factors for developing that condition who completed cognitive tests and surveys of their activities over a period of five years. There were no marathon runners among them. The most active walked. But there was “a decreasing rate of cognitive decline” among the active group, the authors wrote. Their ability to remember and think did still diminish, but not as rapidly as among the sedentary.

“If an inactive 70-year-old is heading toward dementia at 50 miles per hour, by the time she’s 75 or 76, she’s speeding there at 75 miles per hour,” said Jae H. Kang, an assistant professor of medicine and senior author of the study. “But the active 76-year-olds in our study moved toward dementia at more like 50 miles per hour.” Walking and other light activity had bought them, essentially, five years of better brainpower.

“If we can push out the onset of dementia by 5, 10 or more years, that changes the dynamics of aging,” said Dr. Eric Larson, the vice president of research at Group Health Research Institute in Seattle and author of an editorial accompanying the two studies.

“None of us wants to lose our minds,” he said. “but the growing body of science linking activity and improved mental functioning “is a wake-up call. We have to find ways to get everybody moving.”