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Too Old for Exercise?

Too Old for Exercise?

With the limitations on activity during the (continuing) pandemic the following press release from the University of Pittsburgh Exercise Can Help Older Adults Retain Their Memories:  Pooling Data From Dozens of Experiments Let Researchers Show Whose Brains Benefit the Most From Exercise addresses the benefits of exercise to prevent cognitive decline. 

We all know exercise is good for us, but that still leaves plenty of questions. How much exercise? Who benefits the most? And when in our lives? New research led by University of Pittsburgh psychologists pools data from dozens of studies to answer these questions, showing that older adults may be able to prevent declines in a certain kind of memory by sticking to regular exercise.

"Everyone always asks, 'How much should I be exercising? What's the bare minimum to see improvement?' " said lead author Sarah Aghjayan, a Clinical and Biological Health Psychology PhD student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. 

"From our study, it seems like exercising about three times a week for at least four months is how much you need to reap the benefits in episodic memory."

Episodic memory is the kind that deals with events that happened to you in the past. It's also one of the first to decline with age. "I usually like to talk about the first time you got behind the wheel of a car," said Aghjayan. " ."

Seeking clarity in the muddy waters of the scientific literature, the team pored over 1,279 studies, eventually narrowing them down to just 36 that met specific criteria. Then they used specialized software and no small number of Excel spreadsheets to transform the data info a form where the different studies could be directly compared.

That work paid off when they found that pooling together those 36 studies was enough to show that for older adults, exercise can indeed benefit their memory. The team, including Aghjayan's advisor Kirk Erickson in the Department of Psychology and other researchers from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Iowa, published their results in the journal Communications Medicine on Feb. 17.

Past analyses looking at connections between exercise and memory didn't find one, but Aghjayan and her team took several extra steps to give them the best chance of finding a link if one did exist. They limited their search to particular groups and age brackets as well as a specific kind of rigorous experimental setup. Another key was focusing specifically on episodic memory, which is supported by a part of the brain that's known to benefit from exercise.

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