Increased Cardiovascular Fitness Increases IQ
We know that regular exercise can improve our physical health and prevent diseases, but new research suggests it can also improve your intelligence. Exercise has been previously shown to have positive effect on the processing of thought (cognition), in humans. Physical activity during midlife has been suggested to protect against dementia and marathon running has been shown to improve your unconscious memory.
This new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), focused on young adults and revealed that those who are physically fit, have a higher IQ and are more likely to go to university.
The researched studied 1.2 million Swedish men born between 1950-1976, who were enlisted for military service at 18. Physical fitness and intelligence performance data was collected during conscription examinations and linked with other national databases for information on school achievement, socioeconomic status and sibship.
After adjusting for relevant confounders there was a positive association with intelligence with cardiovascular fitness as measured by ergometer cycling.
Good physical fitness provided the strongest association with logical thinking and also verbal comprehension. Only cardiovascular fitness was found to play a role in the results of the IQ test, in contrast strength was not linked with cognitive performance.
“Being fit means that you also have good heart and lung capacity and that your brain gets plenty of oxygen,” says Michael Nilsson, professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy and chief physician at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital. “This may be one of the reasons why we can see a clear link with fitness, but not with muscular strength.”
Relationships between cardiovascular fitness and intelligence at age 18 were also evaluated and compared between twins and other siblings
Analysis between siblings suggested less than 15% was due to heritable factors and >80% of the cardiovascular intelligence association was due to environmental factors rather than genes to explain the link between fitness and a higher IQ.
The study also showed that cardiovascular fitness changes between ages 15-18 predict cognitive performance at 18. The researchers suggest that physical education is a subject that has an important place in schools and is an absolute must if we want to do well in maths and other theoretical subjects. This is interesting as certainly in my experience, I got to opt out of school physical exercise at age 15 by choosing to go 10 pin bowling or ice skating. I certainly did do anything that would improve my cardiovascular fitness at school.
Cardiovascular fitness at age 18 was also found to predict educational achievements later in life. The researchers compared the socioeconomic status of the men later in life and found that those who were fit at 18 were more likely to go into higher education and secured more qualified jobs.
Author Maria A. I. Åberg concluded that physical exercise could be an important instrument for public health initiatives to optimize educational achievements, cognitive performance, as well as disease prevention at the society level.
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December 13th, 2009
I love this article! Thank you so much for writing it . . .and submitting it to the Edge of Education carnival. Great stuff. No wonder my wife is smarter than me. She runs marathons. I’ve been thinking about joining her. This article may have pushed me over the edge (pun not intended).
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