Which exercise will help me drink from the fountain of youth?

Q I am finally going to commit to exercise. What is the one exercise that will make me feel, and hopefully look, younger?

A Yet another question asking about the fountain of youth. The way we see it, no matter the motivation, committing to exercise should be applauded. [Imagine inserting a clapping emoji.]

The author included the emoji reference to show off how young and relevant he is, despite his being old enough to have received his first jab, but young enough not to have had the second. Neither here nor there, but everywhere in between, the author is confident enough to give a stab at an iteration of one of the oldest questions known to humankind: which exercise will help me drink from the fountain of youth? Previously, we have written that mobility and movement hold the keys to a young, healthy body, and by extension, mind. And we stand by that.

However, Tatjana Schoenmaker’s goosebump performance at the Olympics sent the Water Cooler on a reading binge about swimming and we found an interesting article that suggests the secret to staying young may well be found not in drinking from the fountain of youth, but in swimming in it.

An article called “Swimming gives your brain a boost — but scientists don’t know yet why it’s better than other aerobic activities”, published in The Conversation, is written by Seena Mathew, assistant professor of biology at the University of Mary HardinBaylor. “It’s no secret that aerobic exercise can help stave off some of the ravages of ageing. But a growing body of research suggests that swimming might provide a unique boost to brain health.

“Regular swimming has been shown to improve memory, cognitive function, immune response and mood. Swimming may also help repair damage from stress and forge new neural connections in the brain.”

Mathew’s article is packed with hyperlinks to the studies being referenced. (To the Baby Boomers and older Gen Xs reading the article — a hyperlink is an underlined section that magically takes you to another web page to provide proof of, or credibility for, the content you are reading. Correct, you’ve never seen a hyperlink in The Water Cooler.)

The long and short of it is there are a host of studies where poor mice — again — are thrown in the deep end and made to swim for large portions of their lives. The swimmers learn faster and remember more easily. There are disclaimers that one cannot make leaps of logic from mice to men, but that the findings are promising.

Another study looked at fish. We think that’s unfair. Why would you study the effects of swimming on fish?

We were delighted to learn of another study, this time on children, that pitted colouringin, swimming and CrossFit against each other. The children were taught new words and sent to partake in one of the three activities. The miniCrossFitters were no better off than the colourers. We have been saying this for years! Swimmers, on the other hand, performed the best. However, the study didn’t compare swimming to, say, running.

Perhaps the most interesting findings referenced in the professor’s article related to a study in actual grown-up humans. The author references a study looking at how swimming affects mental acuity in the elderly. The researchers found that swimmers had better mental speed and attention than non-swimmers. The weakness is that the participants were not randomised.

“Another study compared cognition between land-based athletes and swimmers in the young adult age range. While water immersion itself did not make a difference, the researchers found that 20 minutes of moderate-intensity breaststroke swimming improved cognitive function in both groups,” writes the author.

So, is swimming sport’s elixir? We have no idea. We do know that if you can’t swim and find the nearest body of water to jump into, it may well be the last exercise you ever do.

We recommend moving, working on your mobility, and if you can, swim. Include it because it is a highly effective full-body workout. And let’s do it to celebrate Schoenmaker.