London - Adults who are unfit are more forgetful, new research warned.
Those out of shape have poorer long-term memory, a study of university students found.
Previous research into memory has been conducted in children as their brains are still developing or the elderly whose memories are declining.
The study by Michigan State University is the first to test young, supposedly healthy adults.
It followed 75 students over two days and found those who were less fit had a harder time retaining information.
Assistant professor of psychology Kimberly Fenn said: “The findings show that lower-fit individuals lose more memory across time.”
Participants studied related word pairs such as “camp” and “trail.”
The next day, they were tested on the word pairs to evaluate long-term memory retention.
Long-term memory is anything remembered more than about 30 seconds ago.
Aerobic fitness was gauged by oxygen consumption derived from a treadmill test and factored with the participants' weight, BMI, age and sex.
Prof Fenn said a “surprising number of the college students in the study were significantly out of shape and did much worse at retaining information than those who were extremely fit.”
The study was published online in the journal Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience. - Daily Mail