If you had to find motivation to get started with household chores or to go weed the garden, here is a significant one: tidying up, cleaning, in short, getting off the sofa to move around the house, would be beneficial for brain health in old people. In a recent study, carried out at the initiative of the Canadian geriatric center Baycrest and published in BMC Geriatricsresearchers have found that seniors who spend more time on household chores have larger brain volumes and better cognition.
This study, conducted among 66 people aged 67 to 75, showed that domestic, but not recreational, tasks were positively associated with measures of brain volume and in particular gray matter volume.
“Scientists already knew that exercise has a positive impact on the brain, but our study is the first to show that the same may be true for household chores,” said Noah Koblinsky, lead author of the study. study. “Lhe association between home physical activity and brain health in older adults is underexplored. Gold, m“Highlighting the benefits associated with household chores can motivate seniors to be more active by introducing them to a more accessible, low-risk form of physical activity.”
Physical activity is also good for memory
In a previous study, published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, researchers from the University of Maryland (United States) had already measured the impact of physical activity on the memory of seniors. For their work on brain plasticity, the scientists offered step counter devices to 29 young adults (aged 18 to 31) and 31 seniors (aged 55 to 82) to measure their daily physical activity. And all of them were then subjected to various tests to measure the quality of their memory and in particular of episodic memory (by associating a name with a face for example). The conclusions of this study had revealed that seniors who move every day have a better memory. “Physical activity is positively associated with episodic memory performance during aging.
Sources:
Household physical activity is positively associated with gray matter volume in older adults, BMC geriatrics, April 2021
Physical Activity and Brain PlasticityJournal of the international neuropsychological society, November 2015
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