Your brain is most capable of storing and rapidly retrieving information during young adulthood and peaks at around the age of 22. After that, brainpower begins to slowly decline but at varying rates. As your brain ages, it processes information more slowly. For example, you might not be able to think of a person’s name or the name of a restaurant you visited as quickly. It’s on the tip of your tongue but you can’t seem to retrieve it. Chances are, to your frustration, the name will come to you hours later.
Most people don’t expect a 70-year old brain to function as well as a 20-year old one. Minor memory disturbances are a part of life. How many times have you forgotten something on your grocery list or not remembered where you left your car keys? More ominous is the possibility of developing serious cognitive and memory issues later in life ranging from mild cognitive impairment to dementia.
Preserving brain health is important for successful aging. It’s no secret that exercise is a brain-healthy activity, and now a new study shows a particular type of exercise, vigorous HIIT training, slows down brain aging and cognitive decline.
Brain Health and High-Intensity Exercise
You’re probably already familiar with high-intensity interval training, or HIIT training. This type of training alternates periods of high-intensity exercise at 90 to 100% of maximal heart rate with rest periods where you partially recover. Then, you repeat the cycle again and again until you’ve completed your workout.
The health benefits of high-intensity interval training are substantial. Some studies show vigorous exercise like HIIT training is more favorable for heart health than moderate-intensity exercise like walking at a brisk pace or cycling at a modest intensity. High-intensity interval training has the advantage of improving aerobic capacity, giving you more endurance during sustained exercise. It also enhances anaerobic capacity, the ability of your body to sustain exercise when oxygen is limited.
When you have a good anaerobic capacity, you can maintain high-intensity exercise for a longer period of time. HIIT training helps improve your anaerobic capacity by training your body to eliminate excess lactic acid more efficiently and buffer the drop in pH that happens as you fatigue. So, high-intensity interval training targets both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems.
HIIT training is also beneficial for metabolic health. Research shows it improves insulin sensitivity, how readily your cells respond to this hormone that stimulates the uptake of nutrients like glucose and amino acids. This means your pancreas doesn’t have to produce as much insulin to get glucose into cells. For health reasons, you don’t want high levels of insulin circulating in your bloodstream since insulin is a hormone that promotes fat storage and also contributes to plaque formation in the walls of your arteries. So, keeping your insulin level down lowers your risk for heart disease. In addition, HIIT training preserves muscle tissue better than moderate-intensity cardio. When you’re trying to lose fat, you want to hang onto as much muscle as you can.
HIIT Training for Brain Health
Now that you know high-intensity interval training is good for your heart and your metabolic health, let’s see what it does for your brain.
HIIT Training and Cognitive Health
Two new analyses of studies looking at brain health and exercise, one published in the journal Neurology and the other in the Journal of the American Heart Association, showed vigorous exercise may slow age-related cognitive decline. As the head of one of the studies, Clinton B. Wright, M.D. from the University of Miami quoted:
“Our results suggest that for older people, getting regular, quite intensive exercise may help them keep their cognitive abilities longer.”
Who can argue with that? It’s not surprising that high-intensity exercise is brain healthy. Just as your heart adapts to high-intensity exercise by becoming stronger and capable of delivering more blood with each heartbeat, the neurons, or nerve cells, that lie in your brain adapt to the stress of exercise. Scientists discovered that when you exercise, your muscle cells pump out a protein called FNDC5. This protein, by fragmenting into a second component called irisin, ramps up production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. It’s BDNF that stimulates the production of new neurons or nerve cells. It actually helps your brain build new architecture. Plus, BDNF protects nerve cells against damage, including damage related to aging. It’s pretty exciting that exercise can actually rebuild your brain.
How much of an impact does vigorous exercise have on your brain? According to the latest study, it can delay cognitive decline by up to a decade. The part of the brain exercise has the most impact on is the hippocampus. This portion of your brain is shaped like a seahorse. In fact, the term hippocampus means seahorse in Latin.
The hippocampus is involved in converting short-term memories to ones that can be stored long term. Unfortunately, the hippocampus shrinks with age and the loss of size corresponds with a decline in cognitive function and dementia – but there’s something you can do to slow this decay in brain power. One study showed elderly adults who had a high level of physical fitness showed less hippocampal shrinkage AND performed better on memory tests and another study showed exercise can boost the size of the hippocampus by 2%. Just as resistance training boosts muscle size, vigorous aerobic size can give a boost to your hippocampus.
Slow Brain Aging through Exercise and Good Nutrition
You might think brain aging is pre-determined based on genetic factors, but research shows otherwise. Although genetics play a role in how your brain ages, lifestyle factors like nutrition, exercise, and how much you challenge your brain, are also important. Like doing crossword puzzles? You may be benefiting your brain. Research also shows learning to speak a second language, either as a child or an adult, is linked with better brain health and less risk of cognitive decline.
Not every aspect of brain function gets worse over time. The ability to process new information goes down after the age of 22, but some brain skills become better with age. For example, your ability to understand and recognize words increases up to the age of 70.
Your brain is a lot like the muscles in your body. If you challenge it with intellectual activities and coerce it into forming new neurons and nerve cell pathways through vigorous exercise, your brain won’t shrink as rapidly, if it does at all.
The take-home message? We all experience “senior moments,” but engaging in vigorous exercise could make those moments far fewer. Keep your mind and body activity as much as you can throughout life.
References:
Peak Fitness. “High-Intensity Interval Training May Help Slow Aging”
Medscape.com. “Intensive Exercise May Delay Cognitive Decline by 10 Years”
Science Magazine. “How Exercise Beefs Up the Brain”
Neuroscience. 2005;133(3):853-61.
Journal of Sport and Health Science. Volume 4, Issue 1, March 2015, Pages 14-23.
Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. Volume 24, Issue 1, pages 1-10, February 2014.
PNAS. February 15, 2011 vol. 108 no. 7.
Hippocampus 19, 1030-1039; 10.1002/hipo.20547 (2009).
Medical Daily. “Bilingualism And Brain Health: Learning A Second Language Boosts Cognitive Function, Even At Old Age”
New Scientist. “The Five Ages of the Brain”
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