Fitness

Staying fit as you age isn't just about exercise. Experts say to prioritize these 4 habits

Published

2 years ago

September 1, 2024

Staying fit as you age isn't just about exercise. Experts say to prioritize these 4 habits

Dr. Bill Dorfman, a 64-year-old cosmetic dentist in Southern California, prides himself on looking years younger, a characteristic he attributes to good genes and a daily workout regimen.

Three days a week he focuses on abs and cardio; the other days are for lifting light weights at high reps.

Dorfman says he got serious about exercise following a lull during dental school when he found himself frequently in pain. That’s when he realized his fitness had taken a back seat following years as a high school swimmer and gymnast. “What I found was the more I exercised, the better I felt,” he says.

Outside of the gym, he credits his daily Words With Friends habit with keeping his mind sharp. He also makes nightly dinner plans with various friends to stay connected.

Dorfman’s wellness habits underscore that one key to a longer life is a fitness regimen—but one that incorporates mental and emotional fitness as well.

“We really need to look at the life of an older adult with a holistic lens—if they’re really happy, healthy and whole,” says Dor Skuler, cofounder and CEO of Intuition Robotics and an expert on loneliness in aging adults.

Here’s are four ways to focus on whole-body fitness as you age.

1. Exercise for the body and brain

Staying physically active can prevent injuries and help the body heal faster when they happen, plus it’s also strongly linked to good mental health and brain function.

Kirk Erickson, Ph.D., director of Translational Neurosciences at AdventHealth Central Florida, where he studies the plasticity and modifiability of the brain systems, has found physical activity to be one of the best ways to keep the brain healthy throughout its life span.

Erickson’s research shows that as we age, the brain shrinks, specifically the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory formation. Exercise can help maintain this portion of the brain and, in some cases, increase the size. There’s much to be learned about how and why this is, but Erickson says the effects are better the longer you engage in these habits, so it’s good to start young.

Of course you can still reap the benefits if you start later in life, he says. You might find that with time, you can recall memories and information more easily and have better executive function and a longer attention span when your brain is at its best, he says.

He recommends moderate exercise, like walking, five days a week for 30 minutes.

Aside from walking, Dr. Gary Small, chair of psychiatry at Hackensack Meridian Health, says strength training helps combat age-related muscle loss and can lead to a longer life span. Additionally, balance exercises can help prevent slips and falls—the leading cause of injuries in adults ages 65 and older.

Jasmine Marcus, a physical therapist at Cayuga Medical Center at Ithaca, where she works with patients of all ages and physical activity levels, recommends tiptoeing into exercise if you’re new to it. She suggests starting with some kind of group fitness class like Zumba—anything that elevates your heart rate. It helps, too, if you have a partner to hold you accountable, she says.

2. Strive for mental fitness

Small also recommends doing activities that keep the brain in shape. One study showed the simple act of reading articles online and searching topics on Google offered valuable mental stimulation. Doing crossword puzzles, reading books, playing games, practicing hobbies, and daydreaming all contribute to mental sharpness.

Stress management is also a critical part of maintaining mental fitness. Just 10 minutes of meditation a day can improve mood and cognitive agility, says Small, rewiring the brain and strengthening neural circuits.

“You don’t have to go to a retreat in Nepal or India to meditate, but you can learn the skills,” he says.

3. Stay social

The U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory last year warning of the nation’s loneliness epidemic, which negatively impacts health. One study equated lack of social connection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Other studies show social connection reduces the risk of premature death. It’s clear that social and emotional fitness is key to aging well.

Skuler, whose company makes A.I.-powered social companions for aging adults aimed at keeping them active and engaged, says major life changes, such as the death of a spouse, often trigger loneliness.

“That is by far a watershed moment,” he says. Suddenly no one is asking how you slept or what you have planned for the day. A similar problem happens with asynchronous aging, where one spouse has a decline with dementia, for example. Other events such as retiring or sending the kids off to college might have similar impacts on social well-being, Skuler says.

ElliQ, the robot companions Skuler’s company makes, is one way to help aging adults stay connected, but he encourages all people to maintain friendships and relationships with family members. Volunteering, he says, can also add purpose and connection to your life.

4. Develop good sleep hygiene

There’s a myth that seniors need less sleep as they age, but Jamie Zeitzer, Ph.D., advisor and scientific reviewer at Rise Science, says the reality is sleep becomes more difficult with age. The result is that many seniors find themselves going to bed later and rising earlier.

“Humans are programmed to stay awake 16 [hours] and sleep eight hours,” he says. “An older person’s ability to do that diminishes, so they have to work a little harder at it.”

The causes for poor sleep can be both social and physical. We become more sensitive to sounds and temperatures as we age, says Zeitzer. So the garbage truck that never woke you on its weekly route might now rouse you at 6 a.m., he says. Similarly, a bedroom that’s too hot or cold might make it difficult to sleep.

As we age we also become more sensitive to caffeine. So if you used to be able to drink a cup of coffee in the evening, you could find you now have trouble falling asleep hours later.

There’s also a major shift that happens once we retire, when the social constraints around sleep are suddenly lifted. Seniors who don’t have social obligations early in the morning might find they’re less inclined to sleep at typical hours. A nap during the day, for example, may “cannibalize their sleep at night,” Zeitzer says.

Older adults might find that sleeping too little or having a fragmented night of sleep can lead to acute problems with cognition the following day, Zeitzer adds. Poor sleep over the long term is linked to health conditions including depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.

A good routine can solve some sleep problems. To start, avoid caffeine later in the day. And be mindful that you adjust the temperature in your sleep environment to encourage rest.

And he recommends finding a way to wind down before bed. While some experts warn against the use of electronics before you grab some shut-eye, Zeitzer says watching a TV show can be helpful if it means you feel more relaxed and ready for bed afterward.

“It’s always good to aspire to closing your eyes and falling asleep, but other people need more kinds of wind-down routines,” he says.

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Fitness

Exercise Boosts Brain ‘Ripples’ Tied to Learning and Memory

Published

6 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Exercise Boosts Brain ‘Ripples’ Tied to Learning and Memory

Each time you go for a jog, ride your bike, or get active in other ways, you’re giving your brain a boost. A small new study has for the first time directly documented this phenomenon, which the researchers call “ripples” — brief bursts of electrical activity in a part of the brain called the hippocampus.

While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.

The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.

20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples

To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 14 participants between ages 17 and 50 with drug-resistant epilepsy. The subjects had already been fitted with intracranial electrodes as part of their preparation for surgical epilepsy treatment.

The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.

The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.

“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.

“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.

Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.

What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning

“We know that exercise is the number-one thing we can do to enhance our memory and learning,” says Catherine Franssen, PhD, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “Exercise will enhance both our ability to learn new things and our ability to remember previously learned things.”

Movement helps pump oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood to the brain, says Dr. Franssen, who was not involved with the new study: “We’re able to activate those brain cells more effectively and energize them.”

The increased blood flow stimulates the growth of new neurons and enhances the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a molecule that strengthens connections between brain cells and supports learning, says the neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, who was not involved with the latest study.

Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.

Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.

“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.

The Research Has Limitations

Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”

The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.

“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.

Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”

Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.

Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving

It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.

People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”

Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.

“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”

Fitness

Higher Fitness Levels Amplify Brain Benefits After Exercise, Study Finds

Published

18 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Higher Fitness Levels Amplify Brain Benefits After Exercise, Study Finds

Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.

The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.

Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.

The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.

BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.

By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).

Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.

Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.

Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”

Notes to editors:

For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]

The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,

About UCL (University College London)

UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.

Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.

We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.

We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.

For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.

We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.

www.ucl.ac.uk | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Follow UCL News on Bluesky and LinkedIn

Journal

Brain Research

DOI

10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise

Article Publication Date

4-Mar-2026

Media Contact

Tom Cramp

University College London

[email protected]

Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253

Journal

Brain Research

DOI

10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise

Article Publication Date

4-Mar-2026

Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise

bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
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Keywords

Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation

Fitness

Exercise Bikes With Zero Monthly Subscriptions: Home Fitness Range Announced

Published

1 day ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Exercise Bikes With Zero Monthly Subscriptions: Home Fitness Range Announced

SOLE Fitness announces new additions to its home exercise bike range, with models including built-in screens, resistance systems, and notably, zero monthly subscription fees.

Salt Lake City, United States, March 9, 2026 — SOLE Fitness has announced a new range of home exercise bikes aligning with its policy against mandatory monthly subscription fees – addressing a growing concern among cost-conscious fitness enthusiasts.

For more information, visit: https://www.soletreadmills.com/collections/bikes

The announcement comes as subscription fatigue intensifies across the home fitness market – where hidden costs of ongoing memberships have become a significant pain point for buyers. Many consumers now actively seek alternatives that deliver premium features without the financial burden of perpetual fees – and SOLE Fitness offers its range in direct response.

Technical capabilities across the range support the no-subscription experience through innovative design and robust hardware. For instance, SOLE Fitness cites the SB1200 exercise bike as a suitable option for its 10-inch touchscreen – including preloaded entertainment applications.

SOLE’s team notes that this particular model also incorporates 100 levels of adjustable magnetic resistance, offering a broad spectrum of intensity for diverse workout preferences. A 35-pound flywheel contributes to smooth, consistent pedaling motion, while the durable steel frame supports users up to 300 pounds.

Elsewhere in the range, SOLE Fitness offers options across recumbent, upright, and indoor cycling styles to accommodate different fitness goals and space constraints.

The LCR Recumbent Bike is an example of a comfortable seated design with back support, ideal for low-impact cardio sessions, coming with 40 levels of magnetic resistance. The B94 Upright Bike, meanwhile, delivers a traditional bike posture with 20 levels of resistance, suited for users seeking straightforward training without advanced touchscreen features.

Central to the value proposition is the SOLE+ App, which provides zero-cost online fitness classes to customers who own SOLE equipment. The app offers hundreds of home gym video tutorials ranging from basic to advanced routines – standing in contrast to platforms that charge separately for similar content.

As explained by SOLE Fitness, its overall range is engineered for smooth, silent rides through magnetic resistance systems, sturdy steel frames, and precision components that deliver a premium indoor cycling experience. Magnetic resistance eliminates the wear and noise associated with friction pads, while the structural integrity of the frames ensures stability during high-intensity intervals.

“Each treadmill is crafted to provide an unparalleled exercise experience, featuring robust motors, intuitive controls, and cushioned running surfaces for maximum impact absorption,” says a company representative.

Moreover, since the company’s product portfolio is designed to offer entry points at various price levels, customers have readily available access to select models that align with their own budget and training preferences.

Interested parties can browse the full selection at: https://www.soletreadmills.com/

Contact Info:
Name: Inquiries
Email: Send Email
Organization: SOLE Fitness
Address: 56 Exchange Pl., Salt Lake City, UT 84111, United States
Website: https://www.soletreadmills.com/

Release ID: 89185487

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