Aerobic exercise involves continuous, rhythmic activity that strengthens the heart and lungs and improves respiratory endurance. Photo Credit: Sawf NewsApril 17, 2008 (Sawf News) - Aerobic exercise could give older adults a boost in brainpower, according to a recent review of studies from the Netherlands.
“Aerobic physical exercises that improve cardiovascular fitness also help boost cognitive processing speed, motor function and visual and auditory attention in healthy older people,” said lead review author Maaike Angevaren.
Around age 50, even healthy older adults begin to experience mild declines in cognition, such as occasional memory lapses and reduced ability to pay attention. Convincing evidence shows that regular exercise contributes to healthy aging, but could the types of exercise a person does influence his or her cognitive fitness?
Angevaren and her colleagues at the University of Applied Sciences, in Utrecht, evaluated 11 randomized controlled trials in the US, France and Sweden, comprising about 670 adults ages 55 and older, which examined the effects of aerobic exercise on areas of cognition including cognitive processing speed, memory and attention.
Aerobic exercise involves continuous, rhythmic activity that strengthens the heart and lungs and improves respiratory endurance. In the studies included in this review, participants exercised aerobically between two and seven days a week for several weeks — three months on average — and underwent fitness and cognitive function tests.
The review appears in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
Not surprisingly, eight of the 11 included studies found that participation in aerobic exercise programs increased participants’ VO2 max, an indicator of respiratory endurance, by 14 percent.
Improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness coincided with improvements in cognitive function — especially motor function, cognitive speed and auditory and visual attention — when participants were compared to a group of non-exercising adults or adults in a yoga- or strength-based program.
So how does sweating to the oldies affect brain function?
“Improvements in cognition as a result of improvements in cardiovascular fitness are being explained by improvements in cerebral blood flow, leading to increased brain metabolism which, in turn, stimulates the production of neurotransmitters and formation of new synapses,” Angevaren aid.
“At the same time, improved cardiovascular fitness could lead to a decline in cardiovascular disease [which is] proven to negatively affect cognition,” she said.
Based on the individual studies and their overall analysis, the authors have made a clear case in concluding that physical activities benefit cognitive function in older adults, said Sarah Laditka, associate professor in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. She was not affiliated with the review.
However, although relatively few randomized controlled trials exist that investigate the cognitive affects of aerobic activity on cognition, “there are an increasing number of epidemiological studies which indicate very positive benefits of regular physical activity on cognitive health,” Laditka said.
News Copyright © Sawf News. May not be reproduced without explicit written permission