Age Gracefully With Physical Exercise - Boosting Cognitive Performance

Introduction:

Physical activity is known as voluntary body movement produced by skeletal muscles as they require energy expenditure. Physical activities encompass activities that are intense, performed during the day and night, and including activities during leisure times like walking, wheeling, sports, active recreation, play, and sports. This helps in preventing and managing noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and many cancers. This also helps in preventing hypertension, maintaining a healthy body weight, and improving mental health and well-being.

Physical activity has always been a strategy to promote health in elderly individuals. This encourages maintenance of functional capacity and acts as prevention and control of the disease. Great benefits from physical activity have been noted in the preservation or even improvement of cognitive performance in the elderly without cognitive impairment and in individuals with some degree of cognitive impairment or dementia.

How Does Physical Activity Affect Cognitive Function in Elderly Individuals?

As individuals age and cognitive function declines, physical exercise has emerged as a promising way to reduce cognitive decline and occurrence related to conditions like dementia. To assess the impact of exercise on cognitive function, factors like duration of exercise, exercise type, frequency, and alternative forms of exercise are used in the determination. Physical activity helps older individuals maintain their health as well as their functional capacity. It also helps prevent and control a range of diseases like

• Cardiovascular events.

• Arterial hypertension.

• Osteoporosis (a condition that causes bones to become brittle and weak).

• Obesity.

• Osteoarthritis (it is a most common form of arthritis)

• Diabetes mellitus.

• Depression.

Physical exercise has great neurobiological effects and involves a wide range of interrelated effects on brain structure, cognition, and brain function. Regular physical exercise induces improvements in certain cognitive functions, healthy gene alterations of the brain, and beneficial forms of neuroplasticity and behavioral plasticity. Long-term effects of physical exercise effects include:

• Increased neurological activity.

• Improved stress coping.

• Increased neuron growth.

• Improved declarative.

• Spatial.

• Enhanced cognitive control of behavior.

• Working memory.

• Structural and function, improvement in brain structures.

• Pathways associated with cognitive memory and control.

• Improving adult productivity.

• Preserving cognitive function in old age.

• Preventing and treating certain neurological disorders.

• Improving the overall quality of life.

How Does Physical Exercise Affect Neuroplasticity in the Elderly?

Neuroplasticity is a process where the neurons adapt to a disturbance over time and often in response to repeated exposure to stimuli. Physical and aerobic exercises increase the production of neurotrophic factors that mediate and improve cognitive function and various memory-promoting blood vessel formation and adult neurogenesis.

• Regular physical exercise induces significant improvements in executive functions and increased gray matter volume in all brain regions.

• Exercise-induced neurogenesis in the hippocampus is associated with measurable improvements in spatial memory.

• Long-term physical activity has persistent beneficial epigenetic changes that result in improved cognitive function, stress coping, and increased neuronal activity.

How Does Physical Exercise Affect the Structural Growth of the Brain in the Elderly?

Exercise increases the brain's gray matter and increases cognitive control, motor function, memory processing, and reward. The most prominent gains in the gray matter are in the caudate nucleus, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex, which support cognitive control and memory processing. Other regions that signify fewer gains in gray matter volume are neuroimaging, including the parietal cortex, cerebellum and nucleus accumbens, and anterior cingulate cortex. Regular exercise counters hippocampus shrinkage, and memory impairment naturally occurring in late adulthood. Individuals who exercise, moreover, given periods, have greater hippocampal volumes and better memory function.

Aerobic and physical exercise induce growth in white matter tracts in the anterior corpus callosum that usually shrinks with age. The other functions of brain structures that show an exercise-induced increase in gray matter are:

• Cerebellum: This part is responsible for motor learning and motor coordination.

• Hippocampus: This part is responsible for the consolidation and storage of spatial memory and declarative memory.

• Nucleus Accumbens: This part is responsible for incentive salience and positive reinforcement in cases of addiction.

• Caudate Nucleus: This part of the brain is responsible for inhibitory control and stimulus-response learning implicated in ADHD and Parkinson’s disease.

• Parietal Cortex: This is responsible for working memory, attention, and sensory perception.

• Prefrontal and Anterior Cingulate Cortices: This part plays a role in cognitive control of behavior, particularly attention control, cognitive flexibility, social cognition, working memory, and inhibitory behavior control.

What Physical Activities Can Be Performed by the Elderly to Boost Cognitive Function?

The elderly need at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity. Moderate intense activity can be divided into 30 minutes per day for five days a week. Adults around 65 and older need balanced activities about three days a week. The following activities help elders to improve cognitive function:

• Dance: Turning and twisting can be fun and the best way to be a physically active.

• Take Active Breaks: Sedentary time breaking by physical activity. Mild exercise in between other activities and changing positions to improve balance.

• Adding Physical Activity to Daily Routine: Walking inside the perimeter and using stairs instead of elevators can be added to the daily routine. If a walking routine is added, start carrying hand weights with the treks.

• Walk With the Pet: Dogs are great walking companions, and this can help the elderly to have an active lifestyle. Dog owners averagely can walk up to 22 mins every day more than others who do not own a dog.

• Household Chores: Some activities are better than none. Doing some regular household chores like bagging leaves, gardening, lawn mowing, and vacuuming help stay active.

Conclusion

Physical exercises effectively improve cognitive performance in elderly individuals with attention deficit disorder. This may indicate potential value of physical exercise by improving cognitive performances and preventing progression to severe dementia in individuals with attention deficit syndrome. Differences in methodological type, frequency, quality, and duration of exercise are considered for the positive effects of the intervention and should be interpreted with caution. Various protocols and rigorous designs are considered for future research. Physical activities also lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s in the elderly to a greater extent.