3 November 2016
Lift weights to make your muscles and your brain stronger. This is true to the extent that even those with mild cognitive impairment experience improved brain function when they weightlift, according to a new study by the University of Sydney.
Healthy muscles are key to strength, weight control, and a defence against type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, but, until now, the link to brain function was not causal.
Lead author Dr Yorgi Mavros from the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Sydney said, "What we found ... is that the improvement in cognitive function was related to their muscle strength gains, stronger people became, the greater the benefit for their brain."
To find this out Mavros, and his team, took 100 adults, aged between 55 and 80, who scored lower on cognitive tests, and divided them into four groups for twice weekly sessions for six months.
The first group's sessions comprised of resistance exercise and cognitive training, the second also did the exercise but placebo cognitive training (they watched nature videos), the third group did brain training exercises but no physical exercise while the fourth did placebo brain and physical training (seated stretching/calisthenics).