When the leg muscles are strong, the brain ages better, you know?

You probably don't believe there is any relationship between the conditioning of your brain and that of your muscles, but recent research has shown that when a person's leg muscles are strong and resilient, they tend to have better brain aging.

To reach this conclusion, University of London researchers followed 162 women and their twin sisters for 10 years. During this period, the volunteers had their physical activity and lifestyle habits analyzed.

In addition, women have passed memory and learning tests over these 10 years. Scientists also considered genetic factors - which is why they chose women who had twin sisters, since in these cases the genetic information is the same.

In the end, leg muscle strength was the factor most closely related to healthy cognitive aging. Basically, the twin with the strongest leg at the beginning of the study always had the best brain skills after 10 years of research, keeping more gray matter in the brain.

This is the first time scientists have been able to prove that there is a relationship between lower limb muscle quality and healthy brain aging. The good news is that it does not mean that you have to have athlete's shapely legs - in fact, researchers believe that taking more walks or simply spending more time standing helps a lot in this regard.

If you are wondering why the leg muscles had the most impact, it basically has to do with the fact that these are the largest muscles in the human body and, moreover, they are obviously fundamental muscles for doing activities. physical.

According to study author Dr. Claire Steves, observing aging in identical twins is an interesting way to draw conclusions about healthy aging, a matter of general interest. Steves also believes that this kind of research can show people that small changes are enough for a better quality of life.

* Posted on 12/02/2015