The latest study to show that moving your body is good for the long term health of your brain was recently published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia in May 2025, which found that just 11 minutes of vigorous physical activity daily is associated with a lower amyloid burden and protects against brain atrophy.
So my advice is to spend at least 11 minutes moving your body to the point where you get winded every single day. This could be as easy as going up and down a flight of stairs for 11 minutes and ensuring you keep a fast enough pace to get out of breath.
If you don’t like to push yourself to vigorous levels of physical activity, the same benefits were found for folks who had more moderate levels of activity for a bit longer — just 21 minutes a day of moderate levels of movement. This could be as easy as a daily mid-day lunch break walk or an after dinner walk where you keep a fast pace and walk for less than a half hour.
But what if you haven’t been exercising daily, is it worth starting?
Research published March 8, 2019 in JAMA Network Open shows that introducing physical activity later in life, even in your 60s (and as you’ll see in other studies below, in your 70’s and beyond as well) has a similar benefit of increasing lifespan as you would enjoy if you had been exercising since young adulthood.
Researchers looked at over 300,000 patients and found that exercising for an average of 2 hours a week was enough to protect longevity, significantly dropping their risk of dying from heart attack, stroke, cancer, and all causes of death combined.
And here is the interesting part: folks who were inactive but started to exercise in mid-life had every bit the protection to their lifespan as folks who were active from adolescence on. Participants who reported routinely exercising from adolescence had a 33% decreased risk of dying for any reason, and participants who reported being inactive during young adulthood but increasing activity in midlife enjoyed a similar benefit, at a 34% decreased risk of dying for any reason.
This echoes what researchers found in a study published April 2017 in the Journal Of Geriatric Cardiology, where researchers looked at almost 3,000 adults, with an average age of 71, and evaluated their mortality rates in relationship to how much they exercise.
What they found is that adults who exercised routinely dropped their risk of dying from heart attack or stroke by almost 60%. And again, the interesting part is how you are never too old to boost your health with exercise. Because even though the average study participant was in their 70s, if during the study they increased the amount they exercised even more, their risk of dying from a cardiovascular dropped by an additional 25%!
So truly, I mean it, it’s never too late to start exercising routinely, because even if you up your activity level starting when you are in your 70s you are significantly, measurably, protecting your health and prolonging your life.
Then, in another exciting medical study published May 30, 2019 in Neurology Clinical Practice, researchers found that not only does getting active extend your life, it keeps your brain sharper.
After conducting a meta-analysis of 98 different randomized controlled trials looking at older adults (average age of study participants was 73) researchers found that adults who exercised, even with low impact activities such as yoga and tai chi, enjoyed statistically significant improvements to brain function.
And this included adults who already had mild cognitive impairment and even adults who had outright dementia — all were found to improve their mental processing speed, attention span, executive function and global cognition in functional brain studies.
On top of that, medical studies have found that even just one single exercise session improves memory, meaning that exercise literally instantly impacts brain function. Published September 2020 in Scientific Reports, researchers found that one session of exercising (cycling on a stationary bike was the exercise used in this study) significantly improved motor sequence memory — immediately!
This is super encouraging, because it was not looking at just the long term benefits from exercise (which of course has far reaching protective health benefits) but suggests that even if all you can do is one single session of exercise, you will get immediate brain benefits, that very day.
So you can intentionally use exercise as a way to boost your brain function before a mental task. For example:
- walkup and down a flight of stairs quickly before a meeting at work
- doing a few jumping jacks before writing an important email
- Going on a brisk walk before settling down to study for an exam
- encouraging your kids to jump on a trampoline before hopping on the school bus each morning.
- Creating a daily habit of a simple stretch routine when you wake up each day
- Heading upstairs? walk up and down a flight of steps and then back up it again
- Create a nightly habit of before-bed yoga routine
Another study published May 2019 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that replacing just 30 minutes of sitting time a day with even light physical activity decreased mortality rates significantly.
And again, here’s the clincher: the benefit of replacing sedentary time was actually increased even more if you were older than 75 years old. So light activity decreased mortality rates in adults older than 75 years old more than it decreased mortality rates in younger age groups.
In other words, the older you are, the more that activity of any kind increases your lifespan.
So even at 75? You’ve got no excuses not to put off that activity you’ve always kind of been curious about. It’s never too late to lengthen your lifespan through exercise.
Let me say that again: it’s NEVER too late to live longer by being active today.
This study showed that it didn’t matter if you split the amount of time exercising into 5 times a week, 2 times a week, longer sessions, shorter sessions, more strenuous sessions, less strenuous sessions… all that mattered was that in a 6 month period of time, they clocked in at 52 hours or more of total of exercise to see benefit. What I like about this is, it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel any different after a month, or if you take a trip and skip a week of your exercise routine, or get the flu and just can’t make yourself work out vigorously for a week or two… all that mattered wasn’t how many minutes the patients spent each day exercising… it was just that it accumulated to 52 hours or more in a 6 month period of time.
Therefore, no matter how long you’ve been sedentary or how old you are, it’s not too late to say that you are going to get moving today so that 6 months from now, your brain is working better and your lifespan is protected and increased.
So whether you want to think about just getting 11 minutes of vigorous activity each day, as our first study suggested, or you want to think about taking care to get 52 hours of physical activity in a 6 month period (that’s roughly 17 minutes a day) bottom line is, multiple studies are showing it is a goal that most of us are able to reach if we prioritize it.
4 Holistic Ways To Protect Your Brain:
1. Get better sleep:
Turns out, it’s not actually the length of time spent in bed that matters as much as how deep and restorative the sleep is, in terms of brain aging. In other words, it’s the quality of your sleep that seems related to dementia. Poor quality sleep = increased risk of Alzheimer dementia progression.
Published March 2013 in JAMA Neurology, researchers found that participants with the worst sleep quality had the highest percentage of amyloid deposition in the brain (the classic hallmark lesion of Alzheimers disease.). Participants with the worst sleep quality also had a 5 TIMES greater chance of developing Alzheimers Disease then those who slept soundly.
So the bottom line is that the it’s not how long you lay in bed… it’s how deep the sleep is. In fact, participants who spent longer in bed and/or napped 3 or more times a week were the ones typically with poorer sleep quality and greater amyloid deposition in the brain. Fix your sleep. It’s as simple as that. Here are my tips on deepening your sleep.
2. Move intensely for 11 min a day:
This is what we already talked about above, in the first medical study I shared with you today. Try to get winded every single day, and aim for 11 minutes for brain protection in both brain volume as well as less amyloid deposits.
3. Take brain supportive supplements:
…and make sure they include Vit E and Omega 3 fatty acids.
Published in 2014 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) researchers found that Vitamin E supplements were an all natural way to prevent or slow brain decline with age, and worked as well as a prescription mediation. This study was a large study of 613 patients, and they put Vit E head to head with a Rx Alzheimer med, Memantine. Memantine is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in moderate to severe AD.
What they found is that Vit E alone worked better than the placebo, the Rx drug, and the Rx + Vit E combined. Vitamin E supplementation not only significantly clinically slowed progression of dementia in Alzheimers, it also significantly impacted and improved caregiver burden, which means study participants were able to be more independent for longer than those taking the Rx or a placebo.
How much? 2000 IU of vitamin E daily was shown to slow functional decline and reduces caregiver burden with Alzheimer’s disease.
You can find my favorite brain protective Vit E in my Brain Protective Protocol in my online pharmacy here:
This protocol also includes omega 3 supplementation, and here is why. In a study of more than 1000 postmenopausal women (using both blood samples and MRI imaging) researchers found that higher Omega 3 intake was associated with a higher total normal brain and hippocampus volume. Published in Neurology in Jan 2014, they found that total brain volume was significantly smaller in the women with the lowest quartile of omega-3 index (when compared with those in the highest quartile.). Also, the hippocampus (the area of the brain specifically related to cognitive function) followed suit as well… found to be significantly smaller in the lowest vs the highest quartile of omega-3 levels, even after controlling for age, lipid levels, glucose, blood pressure, education, and hormone therapy.
How much? Researchers found this protective effect would be achieved by taking about 1,000 mg of EPA + DHA or by eating a small portion of salmon or sardines every day. Again, you can find both of these supplements along with other crucial brain protective nutrients in my Brain Protective Protocol right here:
4. Eat organic whenever you can:
Try to eliminate your exposure to pesticides by eating organic food — so that you know you are consuming foods grown without pesticide exposure.
Published on January 27, 2014 in JAMA Neurology, a new study shows that high levels of DDE (a pesticide metabolite of DDT) in the body was found to cause a 4-fold increase in Alzheimers Disease risk. Researchers found that having measurable levels of pesticide metabolites in the blood increased the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease by 400%. Even though DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, we are now seeing the effects of pesticide use in the generation that grew up exposed to this chemical. Unfortunately, DDT was found in over 75% of blood samples, partly because of DDT’s long half life and partly because we are continuing to be exposed to DDT from food grown in countries where DDT is still used,
This information calls us to honestly face the effects of introducing chemicals into our food supply and shows us that long term effects can no longer be ignored. It asks us to be brave, to take a stand, and to be mindful of what be put into our body.
Want more longevity tips to keep your brain sharp and your body healthy?
Hop over here to watch my video on my top 9 longevity tips to boost your stem cell reserve!
As these studies show, it’s literally never too late to make a dramatic difference in your own longevity by getting more active.
Middle age or older age and beyond… it’s never too late to introduce activity in order to increase your lifespan. To a long beautiful life wearing your precious amazing resilient human body…
xoxox,
Laura Koniver MD
