Attention, retirees: It’s time to dust off those sneakers and sharpen those pencils. Scientists have cooked up a recipe for staying sharp and fit that combines the best of both worlds – and it’s not prune juice and power walking. A groundbreaking new study suggests that combining brain training with physical exercise could be the key to staying fit and mentally sharp as we grow older.
Researchers from the University of Extremadura in Spain and the University of Birmingham in the U.K. have found that a novel training approach called Brain Endurance Training (BET) can significantly enhance both cognitive and physical performance in older adults. Published in the journal Psychology of Sport & Exercise, the study shows that BET not only improves performance when participants are fresh but also helps them maintain high-performance levels even when fatigued.
For the research, the study authors turned to 24 healthy, sedentary women between the ages of 65 and 78. These women were randomly divided into three groups: one group underwent BET, another group did only physical exercise training, and a control group did no training at all.
The BET and exercise-only groups followed the same physical training regimen: three 45-minute sessions per week for eight weeks. Each session included 20 minutes of resistance exercises (like squats and bicep curls) and 25 minutes of walking. The key difference was that the BET group also performed a 20-minute cognitive task before each exercise session.
To test the effectiveness of the training, the researchers assessed participants’ cognitive and physical performance at four points: before training began, halfway through the eight-week program, immediately after the program ended, and four weeks after the program finished.
The cognitive tests included a psychomotor vigilance task, which measures reaction time and alertness, and a Stroop test, which assesses the ability to override automatic responses – a key aspect of cognitive control. Physical tests included a six-minute walk test, a 30-second chair stand test (repeatedly standing up and sitting down), and a 30-second arm curl test.
Importantly, these tests were performed twice during each assessment: once when participants were “fresh” and again after they had completed a mentally fatiguing 30-minute cognitive task. This allowed researchers to evaluate how well the different training approaches helped participants maintain their performance even when mentally tired.
The results revealed that both the BET and exercise-only groups experienced improvements in cognitive and physical performance compared to the control group. However, the BET group consistently outperformed the exercise-only group, especially when participants were in a fatigued state.
For instance, from the beginning to the end of the study, the BET group improved their performance on the chair stand test by a whopping 59.4% when fatigued, compared to a 47.5% improvement in the exercise-only group. In cognitive tasks, the BET group showed a 12.1% improvement in accuracy on the Stroop test when fatigued, while the exercise-only group improved by 6.9%.
“We have shown that BET could be an effective intervention to improve cognitive and physical performance in older adults, even when fatigued,” says corresponding author Chris Ring from the University of Birmingham in a statement. “This could have significant implications for improving healthspan in this population, including reducing the risk of falls and accidents.”
Source: https://studyfinds.org/training-turning-back-the-clock/