If you have ever questioned the healing benefits of physical exercise on your precious mind—doubt no more! Your brain is capable of adapting and rewiring itself and it can grow new neurons—even in old age. And new research is showing that not only does regular exercise help prevent age-related mental decline, but it can also help reverse it.

Art Kramer, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist from the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, indicated in a Health Day News report that active lifestyles including moderate aerobic exercise—such as walking—will likely improve brain functions such as memory, task coordination and planning.

Because aging causes a decaying of gray and white matter in some areas of the brain, the result can be a lessening of your cognitive abilities. Published research shows that moderate exercise producing a breathless feeling causes the thought processes to increase in both sharpness and speed, the volume of brain tissue to expand and the way the brain functions to improve.

In another study, a six-month aerobic exercise regimen helped reverse mental decline due to aging, and allowed the brains of older adults to retain the ability to grow and develop. Recent research even showed that the more physically fit the adults were, the less decay found in the gray matter of the brain—the area involved in thinking.

Plus, the results of two separate studies involving mice further illustrated the “fountain of youth” possibilities that moderate exercise can have for the brain.

In findings from Yale University neuroscientists using young, middle-aged and older mice, the spatial memory of all ages was significantly improved by physical exercise. In findings from Yale University neuroscientists using young, middle-aged and older mice, the spatial memory of all ages was greatly improved by physical exercise. Spatial memory is the part of your memory that records information about your surroundings and where you are located in those surroundings so you can find your way around. And since spatial memory is found in an area of the brain that’s one of the first to be affected by aging, this is a good test of the health of that part of the brain.

And according to results published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, exercising daily helps keep your mind young. As you age, your brain’s ability to create new brain cells slows down, causing memory and learning problems. But in this study, the mice who worked out every day grew 2.5 times more new brain cells than the ones with lazier lifestyles.

So isn’t your brain worth letting go of the “couch potato” way of life? Exercising regularly will help protect your mind and strengthen your body.