Could Resistance Training Benefit Your Brain Health?

• Exercise preserved brain regions that are most vulnerable to Alzheimer’s — The researchers focused on two brain areas often damaged in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease — the hippocampus, which is key for forming new memories, and the precuneus, which plays a role in attention, visual processing, and sense of self.

After six months, the group that exercised saw no volume loss in the right side of either region, unlike the control group, which experienced significant shrinkage in both. This suggests weight training can help physically preserve brain tissue in areas most vulnerable to Alzheimer’s.

• White matter and nerve fiber health also improved — Beyond just preserving brain volume, weight training also improved the quality of the brain’s white matter, which serves as the communication network between different brain regions. The study also found an increase in fractional anisotropy, an indicator of healthier, more organized nerve fibers, in the training group.

In contrast, the control group saw a decrease in the same metric, showing a steady decline. The training group also saw a decrease in axial diffusivity, which indicates less damage along nerve fibers, while the control group’s white matter degraded.

• Some participants improved enough to no longer qualify as cognitively impaired — Participants in the resistance training group scored higher on tests of verbal episodic memory, which is the ability to recall words or stories from recent conversations or events.

Remarkably, by the end of the study, five of 22 participants in the training group had improved so much that they no longer met the clinical criteria for mild cognitive impairment. Meanwhile, memory declined further in the non-exercising group.⁵

• Long-term resistance training could offer more dramatic improvements — Although the study spanned just six months, the researchers believe that longer-term strength training could yield even greater benefits, reversing early cognitive decline rather than merely slowing it. Isadora Ribeiro, the lead author of the study, noted:

“All the individuals in the bodybuilding group showed improvements in memory and brain anatomy … This leads us to imagine that longer training sessions, lasting three years, for example, could reverse this diagnosis or delay any kind of dementia progression. It’s certainly something to be hopeful about and something that needs to be studied in the future.”⁶

• Exercise may work by reducing inflammation and boosting brain-healing proteins — These findings point to two likely reasons why resistance training helped. First, it stimulates the release of brain-protective molecules like brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and irisin, both of which support nerve growth and repair.

Second, it lowers overall inflammation in the body, including the brain, which is known to accelerate cognitive decline. High levels of inflammation are linked to the buildup of abnormal proteins that damage neurons, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Exercise works by shifting the immune response toward anti-inflammatory signals, giving the brain a better chance to heal and adapt.⁷

• Resistance training is a low-cost intervention with high impact — Dr. Marcio Balthazar, one of the lead researchers of the study, highlighted:

“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 USD 30,000 a year. That’s a very high cost. 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.”⁸

• Exercise cuts Alzheimer’s risk — Research consistently showed that people who exercised were up to 45% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s and had a 28% lower risk of dementia overall. Even those with mild memory problems benefited.

The strongest effects came from aerobic training, resistance training, or a combination of the two. Exercises like Tai chi and yoga were also found to be effective, especially in enhancing executive function, attention, and processing speed.

• Exercise activates four powerful brain-protective pathways — The review highlights four key biological mechanisms that explain how exercise protects the brain. First, it boosts levels of growth factors like BDNF and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which help brain cells grow, repair, and communicate more efficiently.

Exercise also helps regulate the immune system by lowering chronic inflammation, which contributes to cognitive decline. Moreover, it improves blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain by strengthening the heart and blood vessels. Finally, it helps stabilize the body’s stress system, particularly the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which becomes overactive with age and damages brain tissue.

• Different exercises benefit your biological systems in unique ways — Aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking or cycling, was more likely to raise BDNF levels, especially in older adults over 65. In contrast, resistance training had a stronger effect on IGF-1. Interestingly, the more complex the movement, such as dancing or Tai chi, the stronger the improvements in brain flexibility and multitasking skills.

• Exercise lowers inflammation, a major driver of brain aging — Inflammation also plays a major role in brain aging, and exercise directly combats it. In one review of 13 trials, older adults who exercised showed significant reductions in interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), two inflammatory markers linked to memory loss.

The researchers also observed that those with lower inflammation had larger hippocampal volumes and better performance on attention and memory tests. It’s believed that muscle contractions during exercise release anti-inflammatory molecules that help shield brain cells from damage.

• Cognitive gains occur even without improvements in cardiovascular fitness — While heart and blood vessel health are clearly important, not all brain benefits from exercise are tied to improvements in cardiovascular fitness. Some studies found that even when aerobic capacity didn’t improve, cognitive function still did.

In one trial, older adults who exercised for 12 weeks had increased blood flow in the brain’s decision-making regions and performed better on memory tasks despite no change in physical endurance. This suggests that exercise influences brain function through multiple pathways, not just by getting the heart pumping.

• Mind-body exercises like yoga improve stress regulation and memory — The review emphasized the importance of stress reduction. As we age, our ability to recover from stress weakens, and high cortisol levels are linked to faster cognitive decline. Exercise helps regulate the body’s stress response and even restores balance to the nervous system.

Yoga and Tai chi, for instance, have been shown to lower cortisol and anxiety while improving mental clarity. In one study, an eight-week yoga program not only reduced cortisol but directly improved test scores in memory and decision-making tasks. This underscores the role of mind-body exercise in supporting emotional and cognitive resilience.

• Longevity benefits peak at 40 to 60 minutes of lifting per week — In my interview with cardiologist James O’Keefe, he discussed findings from his research,¹⁰ wherein he observed that vigorous exercise backfires, especially when done in high volumes.

As shown in the graph below, strength training has a J-shaped dose-response with all-cause mortality. Its benefits max out at around 40 to 60 minutes per week. Beyond that, the benefits plateau and eventually reverse.

• How excessive exercise reduces your lifespan — Prolonged intense physical activity places chronic stress on the body, leading to issues like cardiac overuse injury and an increased risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Overtraining also impairs recovery, causing fatigue, reduced performance and a weakened immune system.

• Training over two hours weekly negates the advantage — When you’re doing strength training for a total of 130 to 140 minutes per week, the longevity benefits of exercise go down to the point as if you’re not exercising at all. In short, if you train for three to four hours a week, your long-term survival is worse than people who don’t do strength training at all.

• Excessive lifting leaves you worse off than being sedentary — Again, when you’re doing intense vigorous exercise in excess, you’re still better off than people who are sedentary. But for some (yet undetermined) reason, excessive strength training leaves you worse off than being sedentary.

• Aim for 20 minutes twice a week, not more — The lesson here is to keep strength training to 20 minutes twice a week on non-consecutive days, or 40 minutes once a week. Moreover, it’s just an add-on to your exercise regimen — don’t center your entire exercise sessions around it. Moderate-intensity exercise such as walking gives you far greater benefits.

• Even short weekly sessions protect against aging — Interestingly, this moderate amount of strength training aligns with findings from the Brigham Young University study,¹¹ which showed that even small doses of resistance training — around 10 to 50 minutes weekly — result in measurable benefits to telomere length, slowing biological aging without the risks associated with overtraining.