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(CNN) --"You're not getting older, you're getting better." New research shows this traditional compliment may be true when it comes to memory, especially for someone who stays in shape.

Recent studies indicate that a simple exercise routine helps put the brakes on memory loss. And one aspect of memory automatically improves with age, according to a new book.

Like body, like mind

What you do to improve your physical health may actually go to your head, according to Dr. Antonio Convit of the New York University School of Medicine.

"We thought that we were born with a brain and that brain degenerated as we aged until we died," he says. "Now we know that there are many triggers that make parts of the brain regenerate themselves."

"Cardiovascular exercise that's done over a longer period of time will tend to reduce the amount of tissue you lose as you age," says Stan Colcombe, a researcher at the University of Illinois-Urbana.

That includes brain tissue, and losing less of it may mean keeping more precious memories.

Colcombe was part of a team of researchers at the University of Illinois who looked at MRI scans of people 55 or older and discovered dramatic differences in their brains. The people who were physically fit had gray matter in better shape.

"[Losing weight] will improve how you regulate your glucose, and we have shown that improved glucose regulation is associated with better memory."

Dealing with blood sugar poorly not only affects one's ability to remember but also the size of one area of the brain.

Convit found that individuals with poor glucose regulation had a smaller hippocampus, the part of the brain dealing with memory.

Bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger may have benefited twice from "total recall," but it doesn't take hours in the gym to improve your memory.

Moderate cardiovascular exercise, such as a brisk 30-minute walk a few times a week, should do the trick, according to the University of Illinois-Urbana study.

Improve with no effort

Problems remembering names or appointments, while unpleasant, means trouble with only a small part of your memory, according to Dr. Barry Gordon of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"A much larger and more important kind of memory is the one that does our thinking for us," said Gordon, author of the book "Intelligent Memory."

"Intelligent memory" works in different parts of the brain from the memory that recalls a spouse's birth date or a friend's name. And intelligent memory grows with age.

Intelligent memory helps people figure things out faster and sparks creativity. It does this by storing memories and skills learned over time.

The brain then uses this knowledge to help it learn automatically by itself. This makes it easier to understand situations and solve problems very quickly -- sometimes even subconsciously.

As you age, intelligent memory increases because it has added a lot of data to a person's memory storage, Gordon says. So, getting older may mean getting wiser.

"It won't guarantee it, but it's the only way to make it happen," says Gordon. "Socrates said there are no boy philosophers. You cannot become wiser without experience."

Unfortunately, intelligent memory doesn't help you remember where you put your keys, says Gordon, but "it will teach you to put your keys in the same place every time."

If you're over the age of 30, there's something you ought to know about your muscles: They're probably shrinking.

Once most adults pass the physical prime of their teens and 20s, they lose an average of 10 ounces of lean body mass a year, mostly in the form of muscle tissue.

It's a process more insidious and crippling than osteoporosis, but few people notice until they realize it's getting difficult to climb the stairs or heft themselves off the sofa. Unchecked, the gradual erosion of muscle strength is the major reason elderly Americans are forced to move into nursing homes.

It wasn't until a few years ago that medical experts put a name to the phenomenon: sarcopenia, derived from the Greek words for vanishing flesh. In the mid-1990s, several labs across the country launched the first major studies of the subject.

Today, a new understanding of age related muscle loss is beginning to emerge, along with some hopeful indications. Far from being as unavoidable as gray hair and wrinkles, sarcopenia can be reversed or slowed significantly by strength-training exercise.

While it's best to start exercising early, several studies show it's never too late to regain some muscle strength.

"It's not an inevitable consequence of aging," said exercise physiologist Michael Hewitt. "It's an inevitable consequence of disuse."

Hewitt is director of health and healing for Canyon Ranch, an exclusive health spa in the Tucson foothills where guests pay upward of $5,000 a week to be pampered and coached in healthy living.

But it doesn't take a trust fund or even a health club membership to learn four simple exercises that can stave off the ravages of sarcopenia, Hewitt said during a recent Seattle conference on aging.

"It only takes five to eight minutes, twice a week," Hewitt said. "No one can say: I don't have time for that.'"

These strength-training exercise, or others like them, should be a part of any fitness regimen, said Hewitt and other exercise experts.

While many people focus their workouts on jogging, stair climbing or other aerobic activities, that doesn't help counter the gradual deterioration of muscle strength, said Larry Woodward, occupational therapist for a YMCA.

"Since we don't work in the fields like we used to, we don't go hunting, we're more sedentary; we need to exercise those muscles," he said.

At the same time muscle begins vanishing from our bodies, fat begins accumulating. Few people actually lose 10 ounces of weight every year. Most adults gain about a pound a year - nearly all in the form of fat, which masks the loss of lean tissue.

"It's such a slight loss yearly that we just don't notice it until 10 or 12 years have gone by," Woodward said. "If you don't do something, it really sneaks up on you."

The higher the proportion of fat in your body, the lower your metabolism, which exacerbates the problem of muscle loss by making it more difficult to be active and shed fat, Hewitt said.

Irwin Rosenberg coined the term "sarcopenia" and leads the Human Nutrition Research Center on aging at Tufts University in Boston, where many of the ongoing studies are centered. In 1997, the National Institutes of Health began a broad-based research program on the phenomenon, which can be devastating to the elderly.

Not only does loss of muscle mass lead to frailty and helplessness, it also contributes significantly to life threatening bone breaks.

"The weakness that results in imbalance that results in falling is a very important element, along with low bone mass, in the high incidence of hip fractures," Rosenberg said.

So far, studies show that even people in their 90s can improve their muscle function through strength training exercise, he said. And for people who begin exercising earlier, the news is even better.

"If you take people that have maintained physical activity from early on, and you compare them to ones that haven't, at the age of 70 or 75 there's a striking difference," Rosenberg said.

"Not only do the ones who have been physically active and have done resistance training have more muscles, but they also have less fat in their muscles."

Often, people in their 30s and 40s are so busy with their careers and families that they neglect their bodies, Woodward said. It's not until they have an injury or get a warning from their physician that they're jolted back into activity.

By then, their muscle loss can be significant. And while they can make up some of the difference, it's harder.

"If you don't get started and stick with it, it only gets tougher on your body," Woodward said.

Age does bring some inevitable, physical losses, Hewitt pointed out. It's entirely possible for a fit 70-year-old to have more muscle mass than she had at the age of 30. But it's not possible for her to develop more muscle in old age than she could have had in her 30s, had she been in tip-top shape.

Still, even a slight increase in muscle strength at any age can significantly improve quality of life-- and stave off the frailty that used to be considered a normal part of getting old.

Enzyme adaptations of human skeletal muscle during bicycle short-sprint
training and detraining.

Linossier MT, Dormois D, Perier C, Frey J, Geyssant A, Denis C.

Laboratoire de Physiologie, Faculte de Medecine Saint-Etienne, France.

The effect of sprint training and detraining on supramaximal
performances was studied in relation to muscle enzyme adaptations in eight students trained four times a week for 9 weeks on a cycle ergometer. The subjects were tested for peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak), maximal aerobic power (MAP) and maximal short-term power output (Wmax) before and after training and after 7 weeks of detraining. During these periods, biopsies were taken from vastus lateralis muscle for the determination of creatine kinase (CK), adenylate kinase (AK), glycogen phosphorylase (PHOS), hexokinase (HK), phosphofructokinase (PFK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and its isozymes, 3-hydroxy-acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (HAD) and citrate synthase (CS) activities. Training induced large improvements in Wmax (28%) with slight increases (3%) in VO2peak (P < 0.10). This was associated with a greater glycolytic potential as shown by higher activities for PHOS (9%), PFK (17%) and LDH (31%) after training, without changes in CK and oxidative markers (CS and HAD). Detraining induced significant decreases in VO2peak (4%), MAP (5%) and oxidative markers (10-16%), while Wmax and the anaerobic potential were maintained at a high level. This suggests a high level in supramaximal power output as a result of a muscle glycogenolytic and glycolytic adaptation. A long interruption in training has negligible effects on short-sprint ability and muscle anaerobic potential. On the other hand, a persistent training stimulus is required to maintain high aerobic capacity and muscle oxidative potential. This may contribute to a rapid return to competitive fitness for sprinters and power athletes.

Publication Types:
a.. Clinical Trial

PMID: 9429650 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Aug. 31, 2000 -- A study by British researchers suggests that exercising beyond the point of fatigue is one way for people who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to build strength and feel better. But this recommendation for exercise has sparked a debate among experts who treat CFS patients.

"This study suggests that those with chronic fatigue syndrome remain disabled because they don't get off the couch," says Richard Bruno, MD, who has conducted other research involving CFS. "The more fundamental question is: What caused their muscles to become so weak that they were forced to stay on the couch in the first place? Our research in polio survivors and CFS patients suggests that there is a central cause of fatigue in all chronic fatigue syndromes: damage to the nerves that activate the brain and allow the brain to activate the muscles."

The researchers in this new study compared 66 people with CFS, a disorder characterized by general lethargy and the inability to perform basic physical activities without feeling tired, to those without CFS but who did not exercise regularly. They found that people with the disorder had weaker leg muscles and more difficulty exercising than did those without CFS. The study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry.

The researchers suggest, however, that the muscle weakness in these CFS patients is due more to changes in the brain than in the muscles themselves.

But Bruno doesn't agree with this logic. "That's like having [a shrunken] muscle in a leg that's been in a cast for several weeks and saying that the reason it's harder to walk is because your brain has changed, not the muscle," he tells WebMD. Bruno is director of the Post-Polio Institute in Englewood, N.J., a facility that treats patients with CFS.

The study authors suggest that something called "graded exercise therapy" would help reverse the weakness and difficulty exercising that CFS patients experience.

But Ellen Goudsmit, PhD, editor of a London CFS publication for physicians, is critical of these exercise recommendations. Although she agrees that patients should attempt to do some type of activity, she tells WebMD that the question is, "How much and when to stop? With graded activity, you don't stop when you're fatigued. What is better is to do what you can, then stop. I'm recommending that CFS patients implement a pace-and-switch regimen -- that is, do what you can with one muscle group, then do something that requires different muscles."

Those who develop CFS, she adds, are more often than not "activity-prone people who go and go and crash and recover, then start feeling better, then crash again. We try to get them to rest before they are fatigued."

In an editorial on the subject that is published in the same medical journal, Russell Lane, MD, of the Imperial College School of Medicine in London, writes that inactivity may be an important factor in CFS. However, the findings of this study raise the possibility that some patients with CFS have a form of metabolic problem with their muscles.

"Whatever the mechanisms underlying fatigue," he notes, "exercise therapy is likely to become ... increasingly important ... particularly in the management of chronic fatigue syndromes."

May 18, 2006 The NYT
Balancing Painful Swelling With a Desire to Exercise

FOR almost 20 years, the prevailing wisdom among most doctors has been that breast cancer survivors at risk of contracting lymphedema — a debilitating, irreversible swelling of one or both arms — should avoid most upper-body exercise or lifting anything heavier than five pounds. For many women, the stern warnings meant they could not shop for groceries or even carry their children. Running and walking were safe, but anything that taxed the arms was considered dangerous.

Women living with lymphedema received the same advice because of the concern that stressing their upper bodies would exacerbate their swelling, pain and stiffness.

But a study at the University of Minnesota that was released this week contradicts decades of restrictions. It found that slow, progressive weight training did not increase the onset of lymphedema in breast cancer survivors who had had lymph nodes removed, nor did it worsen the symptoms of longtime sufferers.

"While current clinical guidelines say that this type of exercise may be harmful, our research indicates that it is indeed safe," said Kathryn Schmitz, an author of the study and an assistant professor in epidemiology at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "More research is needed to know whether exercise prevents lymphedema, but there are physiologic reasons to believe that it might."

The study, the largest and longest randomized one to date to examine how upper-body exercise affects breast cancer survivors at risk of contracting lymphedema, was published online Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The exercise group only increased how much they hoisted with their arms in the smallest increments possible. After six months of twice-weekly workouts, the 23 weight lifters found no difference in arm circumference and reported fewer symptoms than the 22 women in the control group.

"Doctors aren't telling women not to lift anything because they want to hold women back," Dr. Schmitz said. "It is because lymphedema is one of the most poorly understood, hated and feared side effects of breast cancer treatment and they don't want to see women suffer. There is a need for caution, but we have thrown the baby out with the bath water."

For more than a decade, many breast cancer survivors who feared lymphedema limited themselves to five-pound weights. Others stopped lifting weights, choosing peace of mind over its potential benefits, such as preventing osteoporosis.

Of the roughly two million breast cancer survivors in the United States, 30 percent have lymphedema, estimated Dr. Joseph Feldman, the medical director of the Lymphedema Treatment Center at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Evanston, Ill.

Research has only begun to confirm why some women develop the condition. Though it hasn't been proven, most experts agree that women who are overweight or who have had radiation treatments are more at risk. They also suspect that infection or an arm injury might cause lymphedema, as might cabin pressure during air travel.

Cheryl Hogle, a teacher's aide from Minneapolis, felt discomfort in her right arm after a flight. The swelling got so bad that her fine motor skills were affected and eventually she struggled to open twist-cap bottles.

"People don't understand that it is chronic, painful," Ms. Hogle, 55, said. "And you can't hide a swollen arm." That didn't stop her from trying. She wore long-sleeve shirts when she jogged, unless it was too hot.

After participating in Dr. Schmitz's study, Ms. Hogle regained full use of her arm. And now that she has worked up to 60-pound lateral pull downs, she carries groceries that she would never have dared to lift before.

The study also validates what a handful of experts have practiced for years. Dr. Anne Rosenberg, a breast surgeon at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, said that she has found that patients who vigorously exercise their upper bodies do not necessarily have adverse effects. "You have to do it cautiously," she said. "But you can do it."

Some women living with lymphedema have managed to do repetitive upper-body exercise in a way that doesn't aggravate their symptoms. Two years after her right arm became painfully swollen, Tracy Novak, a conference manager at West Virginia University in Morgantown, began to swim again with the approval of her physical therapist. Monitoring her arm for swelling, Ms. Novak started by doing the breaststroke for 12 laps and is now swimming 40 laps. Having bolstered her upper body, she is again able to help care for her boyfriend's daughter, who has severe cerebral palsy.

In the last decade, Linda Miller, the director of the Breast Cancer Physical Therapy Center in Philadelphia, has found that patients who strengthen their arms controlled their lymphedema symptoms better than those who didn't lift weights. "For years, I was spitting in the wind," said Ms. Miller, a physical therapist. "This study is going to rock the lymphedema world."

Some experts remain unconvinced. Although the Minnesota study was well-designed, Dr. Feldman of the Lymphedema Treatment Center cautioned that it only tracked women for six months. (Dr. Schmitz recently began a yearlong weight lifting study with 288 breast cancer survivors, half of whom have lymphedema.)

Dr. Feldman said he would not start advising his patients to use weights heavier than five pounds until a study spanning several years was done. Exercisers should also always use a compression sleeve and have a lymphedema expert take their baseline measurements, Dr. Feldman said. "Better to err on the side of caution."

On the other hand, advocates of progressive weight training have begun to suggest that exercise may even protect breast cancer survivors against lymphedema, which is a buildup of lymphatic fluid under the skin. When lymph nodes are removed during surgery to gauge the spread of cancer, there are fewer nodes to drain the protein-rich fluid, and swelling can occur. But given that exercise enhances the flow of lymphatic fluid and improves protein reabsorption, Dr. Schmitz hypothesized in her study that it may help "prevent lymphedema."

Dr. Carolyn Kaelin, a surgeon and the founding director of the Comprehensive Breast Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, offered this theory. Slow, progressive upper-body weight training places a gentle stress on the channels that lymphatic fluid flows through, causing them to dilate slightly. She theorizes that the circumference of the channel may actually enlarge over time to accommodate extra fluid when there is an injury or stress.

Because acute injury often triggers lymphedema, experts remain adamant that it is possible to overdo exercise. A doctor mistakenly told Elizabeth Warren, a personal trainer in Chicago who had had nodes removed, that she was so fit that she need not worry about straining her body. But in 1995 she experienced a burning sensation as well as swelling in her left arm after catching a 135-pound weight that a client dropped.

The ordeal left Ms. Warren, 55, so devastated that she stopped lifting even the lightest weights. Her weakened upper body eventually became a problem. "Because I lost muscle tone," she said, "I kept hurting my arm." She now practices slow, progressive weight lifting, but she laments not being advised to do so earlier*. If she had, Ms. Warren said, she might have avoided lymphedema or at least better managed her symptoms.

Age, exercise may boost memory

Like body, like mind

Improve with no effort