To Your Health
November, 2024 (Vol. 18, Issue 11) |
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Training Your Brain
By Editorial Staff
The quest for eternal youth – everyone starts to focus on anti-aging as they get older, and brain health is taking front-and-center position in that emphasis. Training your brain to stay young is a real thing, and according to new research, a key element is "brain endurance training." Let's see what this type of training entails and how you can use it to promote healthy aging.
Researchers assigned senior women ages 65-78 to one of three training groups for comparison. One group participated in brain endurance training, the second in exercise training, and the third in no training. All women were healthy, but sedentary (inactive) at the start of the study.
The first two groups completed three exercise sessions weekly for eight weeks, with each session lasting 45 minutes and including 20 minutes of resistance training and 25 minutes of endurance training. The brain endurance training group completed an additional 20-minute cognitive task prior to exercising. All three groups completed a series of cognitive and physical tests at the start and end of the study to assess improvements.
The brain endurance training group experienced a 7.8% increase in cognitive performance following exercise – much more than that exercise-only group (4.5% increase). Physical performance also improved more in the brain endurance training group (29.9% vs. 22.4%).
Healthy aging should be what aging is all about. Talk to your doctor about these study findings (published in the research journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise) and ask for help outlining a healthy aging protocol – regardless of your age. It's never too soon to start training your brain (and body) to age well.
