Exercise Can Help Older Adults Retain Their Memories
Published:21 Feb.2022 Source:University of Pittsburgh
“Everyone always asks, ‘How much should I be exercising? What’s the bare minimum to see improvement?’” said lead author Sarah Aghjayan, a Clinical and Biological Health Psychology PhD student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “From our study, it seems like exercising about three times a week for at least four months is how much you need to reap the benefits in episodic memory.”
Episodic memory is the kind that deals with events that happened to you in the past. It's also one of the first to decline with age. “I usually like to talk about the first time you got behind the wheel of a car,” said Aghjayan. “So you might remember where you were, how old you were, who was in the passenger seat explaining things to you, that feeling of excitement.” Exercise that gets the heart pumping has shown promise in increasing brain health, and experiments in mice show that it improves memory -- but studies looking at the same link in humans have come out mixed.