--- title: Exercise Slows Brain Decline by 10 Years description: Being more active can be an effective way to combat memory and cognitive problems canonical: https://time.com/4269672/exercise-brain-aging/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-23T20:46:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T16:09:41.650Z article:section: Health og:title: Exercise Slows Brain Aging By 10 Years og:description: Being more active can be an effective way to combat memory and cognitive problems og:url: https://time.com/4269672/exercise-brain-aging/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt38c611c931203bb4/69888c392dce012bf59e8535/gettyimages-125744671.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4385 og:image:height: 2467 og:image:alt: 125744671 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Exercise Slows Brain Aging By 10 Years twitter:description: Being more active can be an effective way to combat memory and cognitive problems twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt38c611c931203bb4/69888c392dce012bf59e8535/gettyimages-125744671.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Exercise Slows Brain Aging By 10 Years > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Mar 23, 2016 8:46 PM UTC  Cycling Cycling Science Picture Co—Getty Images/Science Faction  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Mar 23, 2016 8:46 PM UTC We know that exercise is [good for the body and the brain](http://time.com/3956256/brain-exercise-effect/). But actually _being_ physically active, at least on a regular basis, isn’t always easy. For days when you just don’t want to break a sweat, there’s new motivation in the form of scientific evidence: physical activity can slow brain aging by as much as 10 years, reports a new [study published in the journal](http://neurology.org/lookup/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000002582) _Neurology._ It’s among the first studies to actually put a number on how beneficial exercise can be for the brain. The researchers asked a group of 1,228 men and women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds living in Manhattan about their regular exercise habits. They also answered questions that tested their cognitive abilities, including their memory, organization, reasoning and thinking speed. Five years later, they performed the same tests on about half of the study group. **MORE:** [People Who Exercise May Have Bigger Brains](http://time.com/4215695/fitness-brain-size/) People who reported doing more physical activity showed higher scores on cognitive tests—consistent with previous studies linking more exercise to better brain health. But when the researchers adjusted for the effect that factors like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease can have on brain function, the link disappeared. Conditions like these could impair blood flow to the brain and therefore compromise cognitive functions, says Dr. Clinton Wright, associate professor of neurology and public health sciences at University of Miami and senior author of the study. “That suggests that people with low physical activity levels also had a greater burden of those risk factors,” he says. He and his colleagues then focused just on people in the study who didn’t have these blood flow risk factors, and compared their cognitive scores at the beginning and end of the study. They found similar trends showing that people who exercise more had higher cognitive scores, while those who were less physically active tended to have lower scores. This time, even after accounting for the contribution of possible confounding factors, they found that this trend remained strong in two areas in particular: thinking speed and memory of specific past events. They also found that people who exercised less showed sharper declines in their cognitive scores than people who were more active. The drops were equivalent to the declines found during normal aging over about 10 years, they concluded. **MORE:** [Exercise Makes Kids’ Brains More Efficient](http://time.com/3145404/exercise-makes-kids-brains-more-efficient/) The data doesn’t prove that exercise can actually reverse or prevent a slowdown in higher level thinking skills. But it does suggest that physical activity may help people with blood flow issues to the brain, such as stroke patients, maintain their cognitive status. Wright is already studying such a group of patients who will wear activity monitors and be randomly assigned to a physical exercise program or not to see whether there is any difference in their test scores over time. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4269672/exercise-brain-aging/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4269672/exercise-brain-aging/"},"headline":"Exercise Slows Brain Aging By 10 Years","datePublished":"2016-03-23T20:46:09.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T16:09:41.650Z","description":"Being more active can be an effective way to combat memory and cognitive problems","url":"https://time.com/4269672/exercise-brain-aging/","keywords":["Exercise","Brain","memory","brain health","physical activity"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt38c611c931203bb4/69888c392dce012bf59e8535/gettyimages-125744671.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt38c611c931203bb4/69888c392dce012bf59e8535/gettyimages-125744671.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"125744671","caption":"125744671","creditText":"Science Picture Co—Getty Images/Science Faction","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/exercise/","name":"Exercise"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4269672/exercise-brain-aging/","name":"Exercise Slows Brain Aging By 10 Years"}}]}] ```