I can honestly say that some of the most together and articulate senior citizens I know are those I’ve met through my health club.  You name the cliché – “with it,” “on the ball,” “sharp as a tack,” you name it – their mental prowess is something special.

It’s no coincidence that this is the case, for the brain actually increases in size and ability depending on that person’s physical fitness.

This is according to researchers from the Universities of Chicago and Pittsburgh, who performed brain scans on the hippocampus region of senior citizen participants.  The motley crew of participants (ages ranged between 59 and 81, so many of them did not meet the standard definition of senior citizen) also went through a slew of physical fitness tests that gauged just HOW fit they were. 

Here’s what they found:  the fittest of the flock had the largest brains, purely from a physical standpoint.  But it wasn’t just that their brains were bigger – their brains functioned better.  Specifically, they were better at spatial reasoning.  Spatial reasoning is a high falutin’ phrase doctors use that in layman’s terms refers to one’s ability to recognize repeating patterns, similarities and differences between two or more things, objects or people.  The part of the brain where spatial reasoning takes place is in the hippocampus, which also happens to be the portion of the brain that’s most adversely affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-related issues.

This is a truly amazing discovery that ought to embolden each and every one of us to strive to continue exercising throughout our lives.  Rarely do we consider how often we use spacial reasoning skills, but we use them all the time, hundreds if not thousands of times a day:  from deciphering what food is what, what face belongs to what name, and where we left our set of keys or pair of reading glasses (and which ones are ours).  Through exercise, we can maintain our spacial reasoning skills for the balance of our lives. 

Art Kramer, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois and co-author of the study, made the following observation about his study that really struck a chord with me:  “Here is yet more evidence that becoming fit has implications for how well you’re going to live your life.”

It’s not a profound statement by any means, but a statement that sort of summarizes the whole point to why exercise every day is so important:  it determines how WELL our lives will be lived today, tomorrow, and years down the road.  Keep that in mind on those days when you’ve hit a wall in your enthusiasm for exercise.  Those days happen; all of us tend to get burnt down by monotonous tasks (and let’s be honest, exercise can get monotonous, even when you change your routine).  The trick is to fight through that wall, and recognize that what you’re doing has virtually no downside.  Exercise is all upside:  an upside that adds years to your physical vivacity and mental longevity. 

Source:
Science Daily