Can Couch Potatoes End Up With Smaller Brains?

A new study links poor fitness in middle age to smaller brains twenty years later. Published in the journal Neurology, the study included 1,094 participants with an average age of 40, their fitness levels were measured twenty years apart. In the second test, an MRI scan was used to measure brain volume, and it was found that the subjects with the lowest levels of fitness (as determined by measuring their heart rate during exercise) were more likely to have smaller brains at an older age. The study isn't perfect; they didn't measure brain size at the start of the study. But it seems to confirm suspicions that exercise's consequence of increasing blood flow and oxygen to the brain can have an impact on brain aging over the long term.

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Can Couch Potatoes End Up With Smaller Brains?

A new study links poor fitness in middle age to smaller brains twenty years later. 

Published in the journal Neurology, the study included 1,094 participants with an average age of 40 and their fitness levels were measured twenty years apart.  In the second test, an MRI scan was used to measure brain volume, and it was found that the subjects with the lowest levels of fitness (as determined by measuring their heart rate during exercise) were more likely to have smaller brains at an older age. 

The study isn’t perfect; they didn’t measure brain size at the start of the study. But it seems to confirm suspicions that exercise’s consequence of increasing blood flow and oxygen to the brain can have an impact on brain aging over the long term.

Nicholas English
Content Manager of About.com Health
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