Evolutionary Fitness

New research suggests that consistent aerobic exercise can help keep your brain biologically younger. Adults who exercised regularly for a year showed brains that appeared nearly a year younger than those who didn’t change their habits. The study focused on midlife, a critical window when prevention may offer long-term benefits. Even small shifts in brain age could add up over decades.

A brief, intense workout may do more than boost fitness—it could help fight cancer. Researchers found that just 10 minutes of hard exercise releases molecules into the bloodstream that switch on DNA repair and shut down cancer growth signals. When these molecules were applied to bowel cancer cells, hundreds of cancer-related genes changed activity. The discovery helps explain how exercise lowers cancer risk and hints at future therapies inspired by movement.

How you walk may matter just as much as how much you walk. A large UK study tracking more than 33,000 low-activity adults found that people who grouped their daily steps into longer, uninterrupted walks had dramatically lower risks of early death and heart disease than those who moved in short, scattered bursts.

Here’s What Happens to Your Brain When You Take Just 3,000 Steps a Day, According to Harvard Research

Our bodies have evolved to need exercise but not want to do it. Why is that, and what can we do about it?

A recent article from NPR, Lost Posture: Why Indigenous Cultures Don’t Have Back Pain, prompted us to see what we could uncover in eHRAF World Cultures that would shed more light on indigenous approaches to posture. The article suggests that bodily ...