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Walking Helps Heart and Brain

Aerobic exercise is known to benefit the heart, but researchers say that an aerobic workout may also build brain.

General aerobic exercise, for example, walking may protect the memory focus in the brain, while stretching effort may cause the center — called the hippocampus — to shrink, researchers reported.

In a randomized study involving men and women in their mid-60s, walking three times a week for a year led to increases in the volume of the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory. On the other hand, control members who took stretching classes saw drops in the volume of the hippocampus. 

The findings suggest that it’s conceivable to overcome the age-related decrease in hippocampal volume with only moderate exercise.The volume of the hippocampus is known to fall with age by between 1 percent and 2 percent a year, the specialists noted, leading to impaired memory and expanded risk for dementia.

But animal inquire about suggests that exercise reduces the loss of volume and preserves memory, they included.

To test the impact on people, they enrolled 120 men and women in their mid-sixties and randomly assigned 60 of them to a program of aerobic walking three times every week for a year. The remaining 60 were given stretch classes three times every week and filled in as a control group.

Their memory and fitness were tested before the intervention, again after six months, and for a last time after a year. Magnetic resonance images of their brains were taken at the same times in order to quantify the impact on the hippocampal volume.

The study showed that overall the walkers had a 2 percent increase in the volume of the hippocampus, compared with an average loss of about 1.4% in the control participants.

The researchers also found, improvements in fitness, measured by exercise testing on a treadmill, were significantly associated with increases in the volume of the hippocampus.

On the other hand, the study fell short of demonstrating a group effect on memory - both groups showed significant improvements both in accuracy and speed on a standard test.

Analyses showed that that higher aerobic fitness levels at baseline and after the one-year intervention were associated with better spatial memory performance, the researchers reported.