Around the age of 40? Aerobic exercises on daily basis may boost your memory up: Study

Are you around the age of 40? Is memorising phone numbers and other important details getting a bit difficult now? Exercising daily may help you to cope up with such ageing-related issues. 

Yes! A latest study led by a group of researchers from the Western Sydney University in Australia has claimed that aerobic exercises on a daily basis may help you to deal this kind of problems.

The study, published in the journal Neuroimage shows that the brain health decreases with age, with the average brain shrinking by approximately five percent after the age of 40. Aerobic exercises may improve your memory functioning in a certain region of the brain, called the hippocampus.

It may also prevent ageing-related neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and dementia, the researcher added.

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"When you exercise, you produce a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which may help to prevent age-related decline by reducing the deterioration of the brain," Joseph Firth, one of the authors was quoted while talking about their findings.

The year-long study was conducted on 737 people aged between 24 to 76 years and went through 14 clinical trials after which the researchers came to the conclusion.The participants, aged between 24 to 76 years, included a mix of healthy adults, people with mild cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer’s and people with a clinical diagnosis of mental illness including depression and schizophrenia.

Researchers concluded that though exercise has no effect on total hippocampal volume, it did significantly increase the size of the left region of the hippocampus in humans. This is how exercise benefits your brain.

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