Scientists from the University of Florida (USA) and Shanghai Fudan University (China) have shown that adults who practice Tai Chi three times a week have greater brain volume and better results in memory and reasoning tests . The results are published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease . The group of people who did not practice this exercise for the same period of time (8 months) suffered a slight reduction in brain size, which is related to aging, cognitive decline and dementia.
Researchers argue that aerobic exercise is associated with the production of growth factors in the brain. After the results obtained, it remains for them to confirm whether activities such as Tai Chi, which include a component of mental exercise, can have similar or even superior effects to other forms of physical exercise, helping us to stay both physically and intellectually active as we age. "Our findings suggest that the reason that various epidemiological studies show that subjects who exercise more or are more socially active have a lower risk of suffering from Alzheimer's is that these activities grow critical regions of the human brain, " says James Mortimer, professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida School of Public Health and co-author of the study.
