Exercise can boost your memory — and a new study says the short-term cognitive benefits can last for 24 hours

Decades of research has found that exercise is helpful for overall health and fitness, doing everything from lowering your risk of heart disease to helping you sleep better. According to a new study, working out could also help boost your memory — and the results may stick around for up to a day after your sweat session.

The small study, published today in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, analyzed data from 76 people aged 50 to 83 who wore activity trackers for eight days and took cognitive tests daily. The researchers discovered that people who did more moderate to vigorous physical activity than usual on any given day ended up performing better in memory tests the next day.

Being active in general also seemed to help. People who spent less time than usual sitting and logged six hours more of sleep also had better scores on memory tests.

The findings could have big implications for everyone, including older adults “where it’s very important to understand factors that could maintain daily cognitive function,” Mikaela Bloomberg, lead study author and senior research fellow at University College London, tells Yahoo Life.

But what’s behind this link, and how much exercise do you need to do to get the benefits? Doctors explain.

Why might exercise boost your brain?

It’s important to point out that this isn’t the first study to link exercise with better memory. Previous research has found that people performed better on memory tests in the hours after they exercised, but many studies haven’t pinned down how long those perks last.

Doctors say there are a few different things that could be behind the memory boost from exercise. “Exercise leads to increased blood flow and stimulation of neurotransmitters thought to contribute to improvements in cognitive function,” Bloomberg says. (Neurotransmitters help to move messages from one nerve cell to the next and help with memory and thinking.)

Exercise can also prompt the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus, which is an area of the brain that’s essential for memory and learning, Dr. Vernon Williams, sports neurologist and founding director of the Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, tells Yahoo Life. “Exercise also promotes neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections and reorganize itself,” he says.

Exercise can even help lower inflammation in the brain, which is linked to cognitive decline, Williams says.

How much exercise do you need to do?

The researchers didn’t find a hard number for how much exercise is needed to get the brain benefits. “We just looked at when people did more physical activity than their usual,” Bloomberg says. “Regardless of their current level of physical activity, doing more was better.” So if you regularly work out for 30 minutes, tacking on an additional five minutes of exercise may help you feel mentally sharp over the next 24 hours.

In the study, doing more moderate or vigorous physical activity than usual was linked to better working memory and memory of events the next day. Also worth noting: Spending time being more sedentary than usual was linked to worse working memory the next day.

Why it matters

Bloomberg stresses that her study was small, which makes it difficult to take too much away from the findings without more research. But she also says that there could be real-world ways to use the results to your advantage.

For older adults, having a workout routine may help to boost memory and keep people sharp as they age. And if you have an upcoming test or big presentation, making sure to exercise at some point the day before “couldn’t hurt” when it comes to enhancing your memory, Bloomberg says.

While this particular study found that working out more than usual had an impact, Williams says it’s important to have a consistent exercise routine for brain health and memory too. “There is also likely some cognitive stimulation associated with regular physical activity that may also play a beneficial role,” he says.

What’s the best form of exercise for memory?

This study found that you don’t need to do anything extreme to get a memory boost from exercise. Bloomberg says that exercises that fall into the “moderate intensity” or higher category, such as brisk walking, cycling or jogging, helped to boost memory.

However, other research has found more intense exercises can also help. A study recently published in the journal Communications Psychology, for example, determined that cycling and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) were most likely to help boost memory, attention, executive function, information processing and other cognitive functions.

Overall, Bloomberg says research makes a case for staying active as you get older. “There are many health reasons why older adults should integrate physical activity into their daily lives, and there is certainly evidence to suggest that doing so might contribute to maintenance of cognitive function as we age,” she says.