The Checkup: Exercise Improves Memory, Study Says

• The New York Times reports on a new study out of Ireland, which found that exercise can improve memory and recall. Researchers showed a group of male subjects pictures of strangers and their names, in rapid-fire sequence. After a break, they tested the volunteers to see how many name/face combinations they could accurately recall. Then, they sent half the subjects to ride stationary bikes to exhaustion; in the meantime, the other half of the group sat quietly for 30 minutes. Guess what? On a retest, the exercising group performed significantly better matching names with faces than they did on the first go-round; the non-exercising group performed about the same as they had on the first test. All that to say: log some gym time today. Your brain will thank you. The Times has more, including the biological explanation for why the exercisers showed better recall.

• E! News host Giuliana Rancic announced on the TODAY Show yesterday that she would be undergoing a double mastectomy to remove breast cancer. She’d undergone a lumpectomy earlier this year but learned afterwards that there were still questions as to whether the surgery was successful in removing all of the cancer cells. She and her husband decided a double mastectomy would be the safest option. Read more about their decision over here.

• Yas, Yazmin and other birth-control drugs are under FDA scrutiny for safety issues. If the FDA finds that recent research on the drugs, which suggests a higher incidence of blood clots in users, checks out, new warning labels could be ordered.

Bonus bullet point: Runner’s World reports that Kate Gosselin ran the Rock n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon on Sunday. I looked up her time in the results (sneeeeeaky) and found that she clocked in at a 4:59:21 finish time. Bonus bonus: She registered her city/state as Beverly Hills, California.