As time goes by, more and more people are concerned about cognitive decline as they age. There are many supplements, brain-boosting foods, and mind-exercising games recommended to keep your brain active and healthy. However, a study done in January 2025 is showing something that helps your body can help keep your brain healthier, too: lifting weights.
The results of research at State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in São Paulo, Brazil found that weight training and resistance exercise not only strengthens and builds up muscles in the body but prevents parts of the brain from atrophying, too. The scientists gathered 44 participants with mild cognitive impairment, a condition that indicates a higher risk of developing dementia and is a sign of possible Alzheimer’s disease in the future. After six months of weight training twice per week, the participants not only showed improvement in their memories and recall, but also showed protection against atrophy in the hippocampus and precuneus, the parts of the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
“We already knew that there would be a physical improvement. Cognitive improvement was also imagined, but we wanted to see the effect of weight training on the brains of older people with mild cognitive impairment,” said Isadora Ribeiro, the first author of the study, to SciTechDaily. “The study showed that, fortunately, weight training is a strong ally against dementia, even for people who are already at high risk of developing it.”
Along with neurological tests, the participants in the study were given MRI tests to see if their brains showed any physical changes. The participants that were given the twice-weekly weight training regiment saw their hippocampuses remain the same size or even grow, along with showing significant neuron growth. The control participants that didn’t train with weights had worse brain parameters than when the experiment started six months prior. This confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis: weight training stimulates the production of neurons and reduces inflammation in the body.
Big Brain GIF by Jay SprogellGiphy
“Any physical exercise, whether weight training or aerobic activity, is known to increase levels of a chemical involved in brain cell growth. It can also mobilize anti-inflammatory T-cells. This is key,” said Marcio Balthazar, the study supervisor. “After all, the more pro-inflammatory protein that is released in the body, the greater the chance of developing dementia, accelerating the neurodegenerative process and forming dysfunctional proteins that eventually kill neurons.”
The result of this study shows a possible inexpensive treatment plan for older adults that have mild cognitive decline compared to other options.
“For example, the new anti-amyloid drugs approved in the United States indicated for the treatment of dementia and for people with mild cognitive impairment, cost around $30,000 a year. That’s a very high cost,” said Balthazar. “These non-pharmacological measures, as we’ve shown is the case with weight training, are effective, not only in preventing dementia but also in improving mild cognitive impairment.”
Weight lifting not only provides a brain boost, as this study shows, but is highly recommended for people to commit to as they age. Resistance training helps keep muscles from atrophying as we get older, helps maintain bone density, and offers other benefits to seniors. It could be the key for some older people to continue to live independently.
So it appears that weight training is not just good for your body, but your brain’s health as well. But there are some people who either cannot afford a membership to their local gym or cannot make the time to dedicate to making a trip there. Fortunately, there are plenty of options to get decent resistance training at home.
There are plenty of exercises a person can do at home or during breaks at the office while standing in place or seated in a chair with dumbbells or resistance bands that you can find on YouTube. If you cannot find or afford proper weights or resistance bands, many of these exercises can be done with soup cans, filled water bottles, and other handheld items.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
So the next time you struggle to get out of bed to workout, know that it’s not just for your body, your heart, and your waistline but for your brain, too.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.