Cardio May Boost Memory & Brain Health, New Mayo Clinic Report Finds

While the winter weather may not be motivating you to hit the gym or go for a jog, a new report published in this month's edition of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings says it may be worth it for your brain health.

In this study, they considered the impact of higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, aka cardio or aerobic exercise, on the gray matter of the brain, the volume of which is linked to many cognitive abilities.

In assessing fitness level, the researchers looked at peak oxygen intake. Increases in these indicators were correlated with increased gray matter and, therefore, stronger cognitive function. Gray matter is simply one of the forms of brain tissue, and the study found that in cases where the participant had a higher status of cardiorespiratory fitness, they also had an overall higher brain volume.

One of the key regions where more gray matter was found was the hippocampus, a portion of the brain associated with both memory and stress regulation. In addition to these functions in a healthy brain, decline in this region is associated with Alzheimer's, depression, and schizophrenia.

With the global population aging and rates of diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's increasing, any knowledge of the relationships between lifestyle and brain health is helpful in working to find more efficient treatments, and possibly cures, for these diseases.

"There is good evidence for the value of exercise in midlife," said Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist, "but it is encouraging that there can be positive effects on the brain in later life as well."

Previous studies have found that even beginning to work out later in life can as much as halve dementia risk. However, this study found that increasing your body's oxygen uptake may be critical to brain health, which more firmly links cardio workouts that increase lung capacity to brain health than previous studies.

In order to substantiate the link further, long-term human studies are needed. However, such studies are complicated to arrange and expensive to plan.

This study, while it presents important links, is not firmly able to establish cause as there may have been other lifestyle choices and factors at play. Future studies will need to be designed to avoid these factors.