New research about the aging brain with a pretty compelling headline and how walking can help.

Hi, I'm Dave. Welcome to Walking is Fitness. A daily 10-minute podcast designed to provide you with a little added motivation to get out the door, take the walk,

and even more importantly, to build a consistent, life-changing habit. Today's 10-minute walk starts

right after this. The article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal two days before Christmas.

I saw it for the first time Christmas Eve, read through, thought, this is interesting.

And then saw it again this morning and my reaction was not only this is still interesting, but

I need to talk about this instead of what I was going to talk about during today's 10-minute

walk.

So here's the headline.

Your brain ages in five distinct stages, new research shows.

Now, the research was conducted by the University of Cambridge, published last month in the journal

Nature Communications. Essentially, the researchers studied brain scans of 4,000 people

in the United States and UK.

And these 4,000 brain scans ranged from newborns to people in their 90s.

The researchers then created an average brain for each year of life and then drilled down on those years with significant change.

And from that, they have concluded that the average brain, the brain, goes through five distinct changes.

And they have ages when these changes happen.

Now again, these are averages.

This is not a locked in stone when you hit this age, this is what's going to happen.

But based on the 4,000 brain scans, these are the average ages when there are distinct,

noticeable changes in the brain.

Stage one.

...