A Clear Link Between Physical And Mental Fitness

New research shows an important link between physical fitness and mental fitness. A study reported yesterday suggests that, for college students, daily intense exercise can lead to improved grades. The findings were presented by researchers from Saginaw State University at a conference of the American College of Sport Medicine this week. Their findings suggest new reasons for college students–and all of us–to increase our level and quantity of exercise.

The research was conducted on students of traditional college age (18-22). The level of exercise that the research focused on was “vigorous” exercise, which means working hard enough to sweat or increase heart rate. The students who were considered to work out regularly engaged in at least twenty minutes of this vigorous level of exercise daily.

The researchers, led by Dr. Joshua Ode, found that regular exercisers had grade point averages almost half a letter grade higher than students who did not exercise. And to make sure that it wasn’t the higher grades causing students to exercise instead of the other way around, the researchers chose their study participants very carefully, mixing students in different majors, of different sexes, races, and progress in college. Even after controlling for all those variables, the study still found that regular exercisers performed significantly better in college.

The conclusion for college students is obvious: If you didn’t already have good enough reason to exercise regularly, here’s another. For those of us who have long left school behind, though, we should not conclude that this latest piece of information about exercise and the brain is irrelevant.

Connections between exercise and grades have been studied before, but usually in younger children, especially middle school. This is one of the first studies to show that exercise can have serious benefits for older students, too. Combined with studies in recent years that have linked regular moderate exercise with reduced rates of dementia in older adults, the research suggests that the connection between moving your body and keeping your mind sharp may be deeper and more important than we previously knew.