Walking not only helps your body, it keeps you mentally fit, as well, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They found that previously sedentary people who started walking rapidly for 45 minutes three days a week got sharper mentally.
The study examined mental agility following an aerobic workout -- walking -- and after anaerobic exercise- toning and stretching exercises in 124 healthy adults between the ages of 60 and 75. Participants in both groups showed improvement doing a repetitive test (pushing a button on cue). However, the walkers were better able to process and ignore irrelevant cues and to successfully complete tasks than were the people who had done only toning exercises.
The study centered not on physical results from exercise, but on the frontal parts of the brain, where extra oxygen taken in during exercise triggered faster reaction times and improved ability to ignore distractions when doing a variety of mental tasks on a computer, explains Arthur F. Kramer, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Processing important information and ignoring distractions is vital in what psychologists call "executive control," which takes in everything from planning to memory, says Kramer. When people drive a car, for example, executive control is what aids them in keeping an eye peeled for other cars while simultaneously watching traffic signals.
Control of these processes lies largely in the frontal and prefrontal parts of the brain (behind your forehead), and they normally decline with aging. But Kramer's study shows that some of this decline may result from poor physical conditioning rather than strictly from age.
Study participants walked 15 minutes per day three days a week at 17.7 minutes per mile. They gradually improved that to 16-minute miles over 45-60 minutes three times a week. The toners and stretchers met three times a week for an hour for six months. Walkers improved their oxygen intake by five percent, which Kramer calls "modest but significant." Apparently, it was enough to improve their executive control, says Kramer.
To learn more on aging and exercise, investigate the American Association of Retired Persons Web site at http://www.aarp.org/programs.
[an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]