Could A PERSONALIZED Exercise Program Save Your Brain?

There are a couple of health problems that everyone dreads. A diagnosis of cancer is most unwelcome. Neurological conditions run a close second, though. If a doctor diagnoses Parkinson’s disease or ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease), the patient has a right to be frightened. Equally devastating is a diagnosis of dementia. Could a personalized exercise intervention improve cognitive function and perhaps delay the onset of dementia? In other words, might exercise save your brain? A few studies suggest the answer could be yes, especially when combined with other strategies, such as a healthy diet, cognitive training and socially engaging activities.

Personalized Exercised vs. “Go Exercise”

Most healthcare professionals tell their patients to eat healthy food, don’t smoke and exercise! I am not going to say such advice is worthless, but most people have heard that message for decades. It has not had a major impact on heart disease, diabetes or cognitive function. Why not?

Most of us like to think we are following our doctors’ recommendations. And yet we are often seduced by tasty snacks. We intend to exercise, but if it’s too hot or too cold or too wet, we skip a workout. If we’re too busy working or doing other activities, we skip a workout. If we just don’t feel energized, we skip a workout. There are so many excuses, it’s easy to find a reason not to exercise.

Structured Exercise to Save Your Brain!

What does work? A study published in JAMA (July 28, 2025) reveals the answer! The title of this research is:

“Structured vs Self-Guided Multidomain Lifestyle Interventions for Global Cognitive Function“

OK, that’s a tad technical. Here is how the authors describe the Key Points of their research:

“Question  Can multidomain lifestyle interventions improve or protect cognitive function in older adults at risk of cognitive decline and dementia?

“Meaning  The structured, higher-intensity intervention had a greater benefit on global cognition than the self-guided, low-intensity intervention. Further research is needed to understand clinical significance and longer-term cognitive effects of both interventions.”

Let’s Dig Deeper:

What makes this research so compelling is the methodology. Investigators recruited more than 2,000 volunteers at 5 clinical sites in the United States. They were between 60 and 79 years of age and at higher risk for dementia. That’s because these recruits had a sedentary lifestyle and a suboptimal diet. In addition, they had other risk factors such as a family history of memory impairment or metabolic problems.

Does any of that seem familiar? Do you sit a lot? Watch more than an hour of TV daily? Is your diet less than optimal? Any members of the family ever have memory problems, diabetes, high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol levels? If so, read on!

Half the recruits were randomly assigned to a structured lifestyle intervention program. The other half were on their own in a self-guided program. Those who participated in the structured group received aerobic, resistance, stretching and balance exercise training at a community facility. They were encouraged to follow the MIND diet, which is a combination of a Mediterranean and DASH diet approach.

In addition, the structured lifestyle intervention group got cognitive training on computers and participated in socially-engaging activities and had their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose measured regularly.

Both groups showed improvement in their cognitive scores, but the people who had intensive structured interventions did significantly better over the two years of the study. In other words, when people were encouraged by “intervention navigators and interventionists” they showed up and participated actively in exercise.

Here was the plan:

“The intervention included aerobic (4 days per week, 30-35 minutes per session), resistance (2 days per week, 15-20 minutes per session), and flexibility (2 days per week, 10-15 minutes per session) training, primarily at a community facility (eg, YMCA)”

The People in the “Structured Lifestyle Intervention” Group also got:

“…guidelines for following the MIND diet; weekly web-based cognitive training using BrainHQ (3 times per week, 15-20 minutes per session); and biannual review of abnormal laboratory results (blood pressure, cholesterol, hemoglobin A_1c) with reinforcement of intervention goals. Monthly rebates of up to $10 for purchase of blueberries were offered to participants in the structured lifestyle intervention group.”

What would it take for you to participate in an exercise program to save your brain?

If you need more convincing, here is some additional research.

Review Links Ongoing Physical Activity to Better Cognitive Function:

Several other studies suggest that older people who want to ward off cognitive decline in their later years need to keep moving (JAMA Network Open, Feb.1, 2024). An analysis of 104 controlled trials confirms that continued physical activity can help prevent cognitive impairment, although the effect is modest. More than 300,000 people participated in these studies, which showed improved global cognition, episodic memory and verbal fluency in active individuals.

Most of these studies were of moderate or low quality, however. Higher quality physical activity measurements and higher follow-up rates were linked to better results on cognitive tests. For this outcome, more is better, at least up to about 16 hours of exercise a week. Nonetheless, you don’t need to be a professional athlete to have exercise save your brain.

Aerobic and Resistance Exercise Combined with Computer Training Improve Cognition:

A randomized controlled trial compared combined vigorous aerobic and resistance training to gentle balance exercises (JAMA Network Open, July 20, 2023). In addition, the 175 participants, all with mild cognitive impairment, did computerized cognitive training or sham training on the computer. These volunteers, between 65 and 84, also took either vitamin D or placebo pills. The interventions lasted for five months, and volunteers took standardized tests at six months. In addition, three-fourths of the participants showed up for the assessment after one year.

The group doing exercise plus computerized training performed significantly better on cognitive test scores after six months. The authors note that the average improvement on the cognitive test, called ADAS-Cog-13, was 2.64 points. This is higher than results from most pharmaceutical trials conducted in similar populations. Perhaps because they did not continue the exercise or the cognitive training, the participants did not show significant between-group differences after a year.

All in all, the investigators are quite optimistic about the potential for these interventions to help people. Please excuse the medical jargon below; we thought you’d like to see the entire summary.

The authors conclude:

“The SYNERGIC Trial demonstrated that a multidomain intervention of progressive aerobic-resistance exercises with sequential cognitive training can improve global cognition, including memory, attention, word recognition, and orientation in older adults with MCI, as measured by one of our primary outcomes, the ADAS-Cog-13. The multidomain intervention effect was larger than the improvement from exercise alone. Vitamin D supplementation had no significant benefit. Our findings suggest that this multidomain intervention could induce a clinically meaningful cognitive improvement in individuals with MCI, which may have important implications for their quality of life.”

Lace Up Your Sneakers to Have Exercise Save Your Brain:

SYNERGIC was not the first trial to suggest that exercise can benefit the brain as well as the muscles.  In a study published in the journal Neurology (online Dec. 19, 2018), 160 volunteers with an average age of 65 tested the benefits of aerobic exercise, a DASH diet, a combination of the two, or health education sessions. The participants had cognitive impairments but no dementia when the study began. They completed cognitive tests to assess their executive function–the ability to plan, organize and make judgments.

Those who exercised for 45 minutes three times a week for six months made significant gains in tests of executive function. Adding the vegetable-rich DASH diet to the exercise helped even more. The improvement was the mental equivalent of dropping nine years from their age. That’s pretty impressive.

The volunteers assigned to health education sessions had worse scores on their executive function tests at the end of the six months than when they started. There are no drugs to ward off cognitive decline, but walking, jogging or cycling may be the best medicine for maintaining brain function as we age.

How Much Exercise Do You Need?

This is not the first research to demonstrate how you can use exercise to protect your brain. A study of three dozen healthy adults showed that even ten minutes of moderate physical activity can have measurable benefits for the brain (PNAS, Sept. 24, 2018).

Ten Minutes of Motion to Boost Your Brain:

The scientists used high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at the volunteers’ brain activity before and after short exercise sessions. They found that after the workouts, the subjects’ brains had changed somewhat.

They showed stronger connections between the hippocampal dentate gyrus and parts of the cerebral cortex that are important for processing memory. Consequently, the researchers are excited about this evidence that exercise improves the function of the hippocampus, which is a crucial area for memory.

Fit Kids Have Fit Brains:

Previous research has shown links between physical fitness and cognitive skills in young people. Moderate exercise even helps kids think better for several hours.

Another study showed a link between fitness and brain structure (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Aug. 19, 2014). Brain scans of 24 youngsters nine to ten years old showed that those who were more fit had more white matter integrity, hinting that their brains might have better connectivity. That could, in theory, help them with memory and learning.

The research didn’t actually show whether exercise boosts brainpower or being sedentary saps it. For that, investigators will have to conduct controlled trials of structured physical activity at recess and after school.

Remember Grandma’s admonition in the old days was “Go out and play!” It seems that far too few kids actually get that opportunity these days. This research suggests we should find ways to make it far easier for kids (and their parents and grandparents) to get aerobic exercise. Even a little bit can help.