How does exercise improve your health?
With scientific advances and multiple groundbreaking researches, it has been recently concluded that exercise not only helps with your physical well-being but can, in fact, play a great role in keeping you mentally young, alert and active too.
It comes as no surprise that people who exercise regularly and lead an active lifestyle are comparatively stronger, healthier and lead a longer life. However, the role of exercise in improving cognitive function of humans has been recently revealed too, by University of Sydney in Australia.
The research was published in Journal of American Geriatrics, and specifically linked weightlifting, i.e. physical training, with improvement in mild cognitive decline. They observed 100 older adults with mild cognitive decline while giving them timed sessions of weightlifting twice every week for 6 months, and saw the change. They kept the peak strength at 80 while slowly increasing the weights every week.
The results showed that more than half of the participants improved their symptoms of cognitive decline after 6 months, especially excelling at selective attention, planning and organization.
The research, along with many others, steps into right direction by making it more evident that exercise must be a crucial part of everyone’s life. It slows, if not stops, various degenerative changes occurring in our bodies with increasing age – leading to dementia, premature wrinkles and even stroke.
It is also being highly investigated that exercise may as well improve cognition on its own, 
helping the person groom multitasking, management and memory skills. The benefits of exercise also span the fact that physical activity, like weight training, aids in keeping our metabolism active and helping physiological processes run well, leading to a good cardiovascular health and BMI (body mass index).
The fact that exercise supports cognition serves as great news for mankind. Disorders of dementia, like Alzheimer’s disease, are not only a lifelong suffering for patient, but also leave a huge financial burden on world economy. With lifestyle changes, such as by incorporating more physical activity or partaking in weight training and high-intensity interval training, the risk of cognitive decline can be now decreased, if not totally avoided.
Johanna Oosterwijk, N.D.
