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You can’t change your chronological age, but you can turn back the clock on your brain’s age.
First, a little background. Brain clock models are integrative biomarkers of brain health that use multimodal neuroimaging (taking data from a variety of structural, functional, and metabolic brain-mapping techniques) to estimate an individual’s brain age.
Maybe your chronological age and your neuroimaged brain age are the same. Maybe your brain age is “older.” Maybe (hopefully) your brain age is “younger.”
Whatever the result, at that moment… your brain age is your brain age.
But it doesn’t have to stay that age.
According to a study recently published in GeroScience, older adults (62 and over) who lifted weights three times a week for two years lowered their brain age gap — the difference between their chronological age and their neuroimaged age — by an average of two years. For example, if you were 62 and your brain age was 66, two years of resistance training lowered the difference by two years. If I was a chronological 62 and a measured 66, two years later I’m a chronological 64 yet still a measured 66.)
As the researchers write:
Local analyses revealed increased prefrontal functional connectivity following heavy training, while moderate- and heavy-resistance training significantly reduced brain age.
These effects emerged at the whole-brain level, rather than within isolated networks such as the default mode, motor, or cerebellar systems. These findings suggest a hierarchical organization of brain aging, driven by distributed network-level changes and expressed through focal regional patterns.
Resistance exercise training decelerates brain ageing, as indexed by brain clocks, reinforcing its role as a preventive strategy for brain health.
Let’s unpack some of that.
One, the effect on brain age is basically system-wide. Unlike moderate cardio exercise (jogging, fast walking, etc.), which research shows can generate new nerve cells in your hippocampus, weight training basically “de-ages” your entire brain.
Two, you don’t have to be a powerlifter to experience the benefits. The researchers found no difference between moderate weight training (using relatively light weights) and heavy weight training (using relatively heavy weights.) In simple terms, doing twenty reps of dumbbell bench presses with 30 pounds provides the same benefits as doing six reps with 60 pounds.
What matters is the effort. Whatever weight you use, you need to work fairly hard. (If you want to use lighter weights, you need to do more reps.)
In short, you need to push yourself, and do it consistently.
If the consistency part seems difficult to pull off, keep in mind you don’t have to go to the gym. You can do pushups. Air squats. Pull-ups. Planks. There are plenty of bodyweight exercises you can do at home.
As long as you’re pushing yourself — think causing your body to adapt by always trying to a little more — then you’ll reap the physical and brain-age benefits. If you can currently do five sets of 10 pushups, work to be able to do five sets of 11 or 12. Or add a set. Or reduce the length of time you rest between sets.
Regardless of the exercise, if you follow the principle of progression by frequently adding a little more, you’ll slowly but surely get stronger and fitter.
And lower your brain age.
Win-win.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
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