Studies show that walking 30 minutes a day is not enough, but should be combined with lifting weights.  Strength training triggers the release of a molecule called insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a growth hormone produced in the liver that is known to affect communication between brain cells and promote the growth of new neurons and blood vessels.

Aerobic exercise mainly boosts BDNF (which improves the function and growth of neurons and protects them from stress and cell death — a sort of like fertilizer for the brain.)   Strength training decreases levels of homocysteine, an inflammatory molecule that is increased in the brains of older adults with dementia. By combining aerobic exercise with strength training, you’re getting a more potent neurobiological cocktail, improving associative memory (linking someone’s name to their face), verbal and spatial memory .

However, findings suggest that adults have to keep excercising to maintain the benefits. Lifting weights, even just once a week, resulted in significant improvements in “executive function”, (which I take to mean cooking, washing the dishes and making the bed, Ed.).  Balance and toning excercises have little health effect.(New Scientist, September 2015).

Exercise is good for the health, the mood and for getting things done.  It is therefore Epicurean.  Epicurus, as an old man, probably pottered about in his garden, talking.   Even that is better than being a couch potato.