How exercise boosts your brain
As life expectancy rises, the number of people living with various forms of dementia is expected to grow significantly.
Dementia Australia says there are an estimated 433,300 Australians living with dementia and that number is expected to rise to an estimated 812,500 by 2054 without significant intervention.
Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett and Dr Daniel Blackmore, dementia specialists with The University of Queensland’s Brain Institute, led a study that discovered an exercise regimen that can enhance cognition in older adults.
Emeritus Professor Bartlett and Dr Blackmore recruited 150 volunteer seniors aged 65 to 85 for the study and divided them into three groups. One group engaged in high-intensity interval training, another in medium-intensity training, and the third group did low-intensity exercise.
All groups exercised three times a week for six months and participants were closely monitored, undergoing blood tests, MRI scans of their brains and cognition testing.
“Those that did a very high-intensity level of exercise were able to show not just delay of cognitive decline, but improvement in their hippocampal cognition over that six-month period,” Emeritus Professor Bartlett said.
The hippocampus is the area of the brain that is responsible for memory and learning.
Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett and Dr Daniel Blackmore found high-intensity exercise can boost cognition for the elderly.
The study found there was a significant increase in hippocampal learning in the high- intensity group and that improvement was maintained for five years after they started exercising, whereas the low-intensity and the medium-intensity groups remained stable.
“The most surprising thing was that when we went back and re-examined these people five years later, those people that had improved had maintained that improvement, even though they hadn't been doing that high-intensity exercise for the last four and a half years,” Emeritus Professor Bartlett said.
“This old idea that there's nothing but a downhill slope as you get older is wrong.
“Clearly, you can change the trajectory and improve cognition even in an older population of people.”
Dr Blackmore said the study was conducted under the guidance of exercise physiologists and recommended that anyone wanting to take up exercise should see their health professionals first and do it in a controlled and safe manner.
He said further research could assess different types of exercise that could be incorporated into aged care.
Exercise intensity levels explained
- Low intensity: Predominantly stretching and motor function tests.
- Medium intensity: Brisk walking on a treadmill.
- High-intensity interval training: Four sets of intense treadmill workouts with a maximum heart rate of 85-95% for four minutes and three minutes of recovery time.
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