High Intensity Exercise and Brain Health

Physical fitness has been linked to brain health and is an important strategy to prevent dementia.  In fact, compelling evidence shows that physical exercise helps build a brain that not only resists shrinkage but increases cognitive abilities and creativity.

We also know that exercise promotes your brain’s ability to adapt and grow more cells. Exercise also promotes brain health by controlling insulin resistance and boosting hormones and neurotransmitters associated with mood control, including endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, glutamate and GABA. 

A Canadian Study showed that high-intensity workouts helped boost memory by improving hippocampal function — a finding that may prove to be an important prevention strategy against Alzheimer’s disease.

High-Intensity Exercise Improves Memory

In the Canadian study, 95 healthy young adults were put into one of three groups: One group completed six weeks of HIIT plus cognitive training; the other treatment group did HIIT only, while the control group remained inactive and got no cognitive training. Both HIIT groups experienced significant improvements in high-interference memory.

Interference memory is when information a person has already memorized interferes with their ability to learn and memorize new information.  It is directly linked  to the ability to learn and retain information.

Improvement in Fitness Level seems to be linked with Brain Benefits

Those who achieve the greatest improvements in fitness also have more significant increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor aka (BDNF). BDNF is a protein that has rejuvenating effects on both your muscles and your brain. High BDNF levels have also been correlated to a dramatic reduction in Alzheimer's risk, as it helps you grow new brain cells and protect old ones from deterioration.

As one would expect, those who participated in both HIIT and cognitive training saw the greatest improvements in memory in this study, and “high responders to exercise,” meaning those who gained the greatest fitness improvements, gained the greatest memory improvements of all.

Exercise Also Increases Mitochondrial Health in Your Brain

Other research has shown that exercise also increases the levels of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator (PGC-1α), which increases mitochondrial biogenesis (the production of new mitochondira within cells). The PGC-1α pathway regulates both mitochondrial activity and mitochondrial replication. This is very significant for the brain as it is the most mitochondrially-dense organ in your body.  Mitochondria are the key energy producing organelle’s in the cells, and one of the primary causes of aging and cellular dysfunction is defective mitochondia.   Without enough health mitochondia cells cannot function properly.

Exercise Triggers the Growth of New Neurons

As noted by psychiatrist Dr. John J. Ratey in his book “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” there’s overwhelming evidence showing that exercise produces large cognitive gains and helps fight dementia.

There are several studies showing that exercise boosts gray matter in the hippocampal region of the brain. A 2013 study found the total minutes of weekly exercise correlated with volume of the right hippocampus, meaning the more exercise people got, the larger their right hippocampus — the area associated with nonverbal memory functions and spatial relationship memories.

Exercise also preserves gray and white matter in your frontal, temporal and parietal cortexes, thereby preventing cognitive deterioration. In a 2012 study, those who exercised the most had the least amount of brain shrinkage over a follow-up period of three years.