Watching TV all day probably won't rot a your brain, as parents have claimed for generations, but it might shrink it.
A new study suggests that those who don't exercise in middle age have smaller brains 20 years later than those who are physically active.
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"We found a direct correlation in our study between poor fitness and brain volume decades later, which indicates accelerated brain aging," said study author Dr. Nicole Spartano of the Boston University School of Medicine.
The study, published Wednesday in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, was based on 1,583 people (average age of 40) who took a treadmill test two decades ago that measured their "exercise capacity," which is based on the amount of exercise they could do before their heart rate reached a certain level.
Twenty years later, the participants in the study underwent an MRI, which revealed that those who had higher exercise capacities typically had larger brains.
The authors are not touting the study as proof of causation, however. For now, it's merely evidence of a strong association between two characteristics.
"While not yet studied on a large scale, these results suggest that fitness in middle age may be particularly important for the many millions of people around the world who already have evidence of heart disease," said Spartano.
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