It turns out that walking is not only good for your heart, it’s also good for your brain.
Two studies published last year are providing evidence that walking or repetitive exercise can improve brain function.
«There’s more and more evidence that exercise staves off memory loss,» says Dr. Daniel Press, neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, commenting on the studies. «It’s comparable to what we find with medication. In some ways, exercise is as good as any intervention we have in terms of helping people with mild memory loss from getting worse.»
In one study, done at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, stroke patients put on a walking program could not only walk better and faster afterwards, but also saw activation of certain areas of their brains as a result. The study appeared in the journal Stroke.
Half of the study subjects who had some movement disability due to stroke were asked to walk on a safety treadmill three times a week for up to 40 minutes, increasing intensity to a moderate level as the study went on. The other half did only stretching exercises.
At the study’s end, those in the walking program increased their speed by 51 percent, compared to the stretching group, who only improved their speed by 11 percent. The walkers’ fitness levels also improved, with aerobic capacity increasing 18 percent. The stretchers saw their aerobic capacity drop slightly.
Interestingly, functional MRI tests showed intensified activity in the subcortical region of the brains of those in the walking group. The stretchers showed no change.
The researchers had expected to see improvement in the cortex, which controls motor skills, but not the subcortex, which has some role in controlling walking.
Researchers believe the repetitive motion of walking may have led to changes in the brain — changes that suggest the brain was either relearning now to walk or reprogram itself to compensate for regions damaged by the stroke.
In a second study, done at the University of Melbourne in Australia, a walking regimen improved cognitive scores in adults who were encouraged to walk for 24 weeks. The subjects did not have dementia but were considered at increased risk due to memory problems. The study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Those in the exercise group showed a small improvement in cognitive scores compared to a control group.
Press says the studies provide further evidence that exercise may stave off memory loss, maybe even the onset of dementia from Alzheimer’s disease.
The reason may be that the brain demands plenty of blood. Even though it makes up just two percent of the body’s total weight, it requires 20 percent of the body’s blood flow, he notes.
«The brain is incredibly energy demanding,» he says. «It has a lot of blood vessels to supply that blood. It may be that exercise increases the blood flow to the brain or improves the function of those blood vessels.»
He notes that animal studies have shown that exercise may increase the development of new brain cells in adulthood, although human studies have not yet shown that.
«The bottom line is that remaining both physically and mentally active is the most powerful intervention we have for staving off memory loss,» he says.
