Mixed
Resistance exercise yields clinically meaningful cognitive improvements in older adults at significantly lower doses (78–679 METs-min/week) compared to aerobic or mixed modalities.
If you are over 50 and want to protect your memory, prioritize resistance training (bands or weights). You do not need to do high volumes of exercise; even low doses (e.g., 15-20 minutes of resistance work a few times a week) can yield significant cognitive benefits, potentially more so than equivalent amounts of aerobic exercise.
Remarkably, lower doses of resistance exercises were necessary to elicit clinically meaningful changes in cognition compared with aerobic activities... resistance bands had the highest probability of producing the greatest results on cognition
Why this rating
Systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis of 44 RCTs, rated as moderate quality by GRADE.
Source
Optimal dose and type of exercise to improve cognitive function in older adults: A systematic review and bayesian model-based network meta-analysis of RCTs
Daniel Gallardo‐Gómez et al. · Ageing Research Reviews · 2022
DOI 10.1016/j.arr.2022.101591
More from this paper
- There is no minimal threshold for cognitive benefit from exercise; any amount of physical activity is better than none, though clinically meaningful changes require ~724 METs-min/week.Good
- Obesity moderates the dose-response relationship for cognitive benefits, with overweight/obese older adults reaching maximal cognitive benefits at lower exercise doses (~600 METs-min/week) than those with healthy BMI.Good
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