Is Exercise A Dynamic And Progressive Process?

A study conducted by Harvard Medical School regarding on how could exercise help your brain and what kind of exercise will help your brain to have a better result. In this article, we learn that exercises can help your brain and can also help your memory. The researchers examined different people to try to understand what exercises could help your brain using 30 minutes section. In this study, the researchers randomly evaluate people doing exercises like cardio and compared their memory and their productivity with those that didn’t any type of exercises.

Participation in physical activity has been shown to have many health benefits for older adults; this study does not provide strong support that it protects against cognitive decline. Reports have been made that physical activity may help guard against stroke and coronary heart disease, both of which may be associated with the development of dementia. Some studies were either limited in their scope or had short follow-up times. In all they find that for older adults, physical activity alone may not protect against cognitive decline. (By Charnicia E. Huggins: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/exerciseforseniors.html)

One of the most prominent and perhaps most feared condition associated with aging is dementia. The family of disorders can cause individuals to lose their mind, reducing one from being a complex, thinking, feeling human being to being confused and vegetative, unable to recognize their loved ones. Serious dementia affects nearly 37 million people globally, but predictions of how those numbers will change over the next few decades are conflicting (textbook). Although we know dementia as to do with damage to nerve cells in the brain, there are ongoing studies looking at correlations between other health issues and these types of diseases.

Research has proven that physical activity improves cognitive function and can also improve brain function throughout a lifespan. Moreover, staying physically active has so many benefits as well. For example, doing exercise and fitness activities help build cells and natural pathways to help reduce changes in memory loss or dementia. Also, it has so many health benefits including long-term improvements to the cognitive function as the young adult reaching mid

From birth, the body and mind go through physical and cognitive changes that human beings will have to adapt to throughout life. Some individuals lose mental and physical abilities age they age that allow them to live a normal lifestyle. The most common age-related physical changes include hearing impairment, weakening vision, and the increasing probability of multiple chronic conditions such as arthritis, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis (Abeles, 1998). The most common cognitive changes associated with normal aging are short-term, or primary, memory loss, long-term, or secondary, memory loss, and the overall levels of performance in sustained attention. Other issues relative to aging and cognitive memory impairments are anxiety disorder, panic disorder, chronic pain, and mood disorders. This issue may cause several social, medical and family problems as individual

Smith et al. (2013) took a less studied approach to improving cognitive decline by testing the effects of aerobic exercise on adults (60-88 years old) already suffering from cognitive impairment. After 12 weeks of moderate exercise there was an improvement of memory and neural efficiency across all subjects.

This paper will discuss the relationship between the aging process and key diseases associated with aging. Examples of aging-associated diseases include cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative diseases (López-Otín, Blasco, Partridge, Serrano, & Kroemer, 2013, p. 1194). Of these, we will discuss in-depth recent studies that have linked aging with Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. These diseases affect a significant proportion of the population over the age of 65 and place a considerable burden on the American health care system. Therefore, a better understanding of how they are related to aging and each other can result in the adoption of innovative treatments and declined risk for older adults.

As the person gets older, variations occur in all part of the body, including the brain: people began to experience certain parts of their brain are declining, especially the prefrontal cortex. When I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth L. Glisky, we discussed the importance of prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. She was impressed by my intense knowledge on the subject and the neuroanatomy. Interviewing Dr. Elizabeth L. Glisky and doing research with Dr.Hildebrand lead me finally to pursue a study in neuroscience and cognitive

Cognitive aging is commonly labeled strictly as memory and only found in “some people”. However, this is not true. The knowledge of cognitive aging has grown immensely, but there is still much to be learned. The surface has only been scratched with many more questions to be answered. Cognitive aging is worthy of study and effects everyone, but there is also much more is still to be learned.

There are various advantages and disadvantages of different study designs when investigating cognitive and neural ageing using neuroimaging. Several theories of cognitive ageing have been based on cross-sectional designs where there is a common understanding that multifarious age studies can lead to a better understanding of the propinquity among age-related processes (Hofer, Sliwinski and Flaherty, 2002). This method is proven to be cost effective, renders quick results, and is the best way to determine prevalence and identifying associations within a group (Mann, 2003). However, Salthouse (2009) pointed out that comparisons of people of different ages at a particular time does not necessarily express changes that will arise within an individual as he ages. He explained that confounding factors, such as maturation, which refers to the person growing older and undergoing different experiences and influences, must be determined in each participant to know how each one has been effected. Raz and Kennedy (2009) also identified in a review that cross-sectional studies have often only focused on specific parts of the brain in imaging studies, such as the prefrontal cortex, but many longitudinal studies present larger age-related structural changes in the inferior parietal cortex, the hippocampus, and the cerebellum.

Why does the human brain age? Brain aging is a part of human life and a big part of society as the awareness for brain aging increases. Over time memory tends to become less efficient as we age and the neurons in the brain decreases (Bendheim, P.E. (2009). By 2050 in the US, 20 percent of the population will be 65 years or older. And as the elderly population increases, so will the incidence of age-related neurological disorders (Perlmutter, David. (2004). Therefor it is important to understand the aging brain, and how to keep the brain functioning as one ages.

In David et al.’s (2015) study, they examined the effects of Progressive Resistance Exercise in older individuals with Parkinson disease. Participants in this study gradually increased the amount of weight and the exercises included all major muscle groups. Volunteers worked with a personal trainer biweekly for the first six months but continued to do the exercises by themselves for twenty-four months. Unfortunately, around 78% of people with Parkinson disease will develop dementia (David et al., 2015). While the benefits of resistance exercise in people with dementia is well recognized in the preliminary research, more long-term randomized controlled trials are still needed before they can create a solid conclusion (David et al., 2015). According

Although this article focused more on older people, it is still contained some important informations that is applicable to all. The article explored some ways resistance exercises can help adults fight the battle of strength and muscle loss that comes with age. Through progressive resistance training can help you maintain flexibility and balance, which can help you remain independent as you age.Adults can improve their ability to stand up out of a chair walk across the floor, climb a flight of stairs -- anything that requires manipulating their own body mass through a full range of motions. Last but not least, This kind of training may help reduce or prevent cognitive decline in older people. For those above the age of 50, it recommends

Healthy aging has become an important field of research of the 21st century. Today, people aged 85 and older are the fastest growing demographics in the United States (Lock & Belza, 2017). Aging has been associated with decline in cognitive performance such as executive functioning, episodic memory, and attention (Memel, Bourassa, Woolverton, and Sbarra, 2016) as well decline in volume of such brain structures as grey and white matters (Sowell, Peterson, Thompson, Welcome, Henkenius & Toga, 2003). Therefore, it is important to understand mechanisms and processes that influence decline in cognitive abilities and brain structures with age to reduce its occurrence or at least to reduce the speed of its decline (Ska et al., 2009). It is hypothesized that bilingualism promotes healthy cognitive aging by enhancing the executive control functions, preserving grey matter volume, and contributing to the cognitive reserve that can delay the onset of dementia in older age.

The articles by Erikson et al., Gatz, Korol et al., and Draganski et al. explore the concept of increased physical activity and/or mental activity having effects on the cognitive function and development or deterioration of the brain as we age. Although I agree that physical exercise is critical in increasing cognitive function because of the health benefits it provides, as well as the increased blood flow and circulation throughout the body, I ultimately believe that a healthy brain is not achieved solely by physical exercise or mental exercise, but both. I think there is a link between physical and mental exercise, and that the combination of these two activities creates higher cognitive functioning of the mind as well as the body. The mind and body come together and meet to make an overall healthy individual.