Save your brain: Hit the treadmill
Posted on April 16th, 2008 – 6:28 AMBy Josephine Marcotty
Here’s a study that offers up another reason to exercise — it just might save you from dementia.
Okay, that’s a broad conclusion for a pretty small study, and one that’s based on the recollections of people who are in their 70s and 80s. But it’s intriguing.
Dr. Yonas Endale Geda, a neuropsychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, is involved in a study of aging underway at the clinic. The researchers recruited 868 elderly people from Olmsted County, and asked them some questions. Some were on exercise: How much did they do when they were between the ages of 50 and 65? How much did they do last year? Then they were tested to see if they had a mental condition called mild cognitive impairment (MCI) which is marked by severe short term memory loss — much worse and more frequent than the standard variety that affects everyone over the age of 50 or so. It’s also a sign of worse to come. People with MCI are 12 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
He found that people who did some moderate exercise one to five times a week between ages 50 and 65 were much less likely to have severe memory loss. Moderate exercise usually includes things like brisk walking, bicycling or gardening. Geda said he thinks that the people who were regular exercisers in their 50s and 60s were probably pretty active for most of their lives. The ones who said they exercised only in the previous year showed no benefit.
He’s going to present these findings today at the American Academy of Neurology conference in Chicago.
Geda said he doesn’t know why exercise might make a difference, but he has some ideas. Exercise may increase a type of brain chemical that protects neurons. Or it may be that people who exercise are just generally healthier.
He also warns that any study based on people’s memory could be flawed. One like this that relies on the memories of people with faulty memories could be perceived as especially problematic, he agreed. But MCI affects mostly short term memory, not long term.
It was enough to convince him.
” After I saw this, it really made me not forget so much to go the gym,” he said. “It is kind of motivating.”
Are you motivated yet?
5 Responses to "Save your brain: Hit the treadmill"
This certainly makes sense and is intuitively true
It is still easy to think of the brain and body as seperate entitities. They are not. Buddhist monks and others have learned to use their brains to control emotions through meditation. It does make sense that there are many more connections between the body and the brain that are yet to be discovered. JM
I like to do a complete triathlon each day, it keeps me trim and fit.
I used to. But my knees gave out on me. Now I have a lot more time. JM
[…] recent report from the Mayo Clinic suggests that individuals who moderately exercised 1-5 times a week between the […]
