“Sustaining an exercise routine for a fulll year can strengthen your body and your mind, according to new research.  The study has implications for reducing the risk of dementia.

A team of researchers from several U.S. universities have found that moderate physical exercise can increase the size of the brain’s hippocampus in older adults .  (The hippocampus is involved in all facets of memory formation.)  The scientists recruited 120 sedentary adults with no signs of dementia and placed them in two groups of equal size.  One group began walking for 40 minutes a day, three times a week.  The second group limited its exercise to a stretching and ongoing routine.  The walking group showed improved memory function, which was associated with an increase in the size of the hippocampus, a region of the brain that generally shrinks as we age.

Measurement of the left and right hippocampus showed increases of about 2 percent in the walking group.  The stretching group saw a small reduction in the size of the hippocampus.”

– source:  “Exercise Training Increases Size of Hippocampus and Improves Memory” by K. I Erickson, et. al.  PNAS. 1/31/11

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My mother died of Multi-infract Dementia at age 83 having been slowly incapacitated for the previous 10 years.  She neither exercised at all nor consistently took her high blood pressure medicine.  My father died at 89 1/2 years old from complications of Diabetes.