- As of 2020 there were more than 55 million people globally living with dementia, with that number expected to hit 78 million by 2030.
- Past research shows there are a number of healthy lifestyle choices that can possibly lower a person’s dementia risk, such as getting enough exercise.
- A new study found that people who have higher levels of physical activity in midlife and late-life may lower their risk for all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Now, a study recently published in the journal
The study found that people who have higher levels of physical activity in midlife and late-life may have a lower risk of all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
For this study, researchers decided to focus on findings from the Framingham Heart Study, which originally started in 1948.
This study included medical data from about 4,300 study participants of the Framingham Heart Study Offspring (General 2) cohort, which ran from 1971 to 1975 with about 5,100 participants between the ages of 5 and 70 years.
During the Offspring study, participants had health exams every 4 to 8 years.
Study participants’ data was taken from three different life stages:
- 1,526 ages 26 to 44, considered early adult life
- 1,943 ages 45 to 64, considered midlife
- 855 ages 65 to 88, considered late life
“There is greater recognition of using a life course approach to studying risk and protective factors for dementia, and so we wanted to investigate whether the impact of physical activity on dementia risk differed or stayed consistent across the adult life course,” Phillip H. Hwang, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health and lead author of this study, told Medical News Today.
“We used this approach in order to better understand at what times or points in a person’s life could physical activity have the most impact on reducing the risk of developing dementia, which may ultimately inform more precise and effective strategies to prevent dementia,” Hwang explained.
At the study’s conclusion, researchers found that study participants who had higher levels of physical activity in midlife and late-life had similar reductions in all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease risk.
“One implication of this finding is that physical activity may have multiple or pleiotropic effects on neurodegenerative pathways that lead to dementia,” Hwang explained. “It could also mean that physical activity works through shared pathways for multiple causes of dementia — e.g., non-Alzheimer’s disease vs. Alzheimer’s disease-specific pathways.”
“Another implication is that it may not be too late to be more physically active in late-life and have benefits on potentially reducing dementia risk,” he continued.
“While conventionally it would be assumed that being more physically active earlier in life would reap greater benefits, these results indicate that being physically active in late life may be just as important as being physically active in midlife.”
– Phillip H. Hwang, PhD, MPH
Conversely, Hwang and his team discovered that there was no association between early adult-life physical activity and dementia risk.
“One reason for this could have been the lack of statistical power — due to the small number of incident dementia cases that developed over the study follow-up period) to observe a significant association,” Hwang said.
“It is also possible that physical activity in early adult life does not impact dementia risk later in life. More research is needed to provide further clarity to this question about the relationship between early adult life physical activity and dementia risk,” he added.
Does that mean there is no brain health benefit to exercising early in life? That is not the case, said Clifford Segil, DO, neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, who was not involved in this study.
“Though this study looked at exercise in mid-life and later life, the benefits of exercising earlier in life are what will allow you to get old,” Segil explained to MNT.
“A sedentary life as a young adult causes more health issues than memory loss as we age. Only the lucky patients who survive midlife without fatal strokes, heart attacks, cancers, and accidents earn memory loss as they age. Starting healthy habits early will allow you to live long enough to worry about getting memory loss when you are old. Start now and continue as you age!”
– Clifford Segil, DO
Segil said that he was excited to see a study that has data to support being active in midlife and late life with decreased memory loss or dementia as we age.
“It is important for researchers to continue to examine how certain lifestyle factors can cause memory loss as we age,” he noted. “Anything that can delay or decrease memory loss as a population should be done. Our medications to treat memory loss remain with limited noticeable clinical benefits.”
“I like to share with my patients that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment,” Segil added. “We remain without good prevention strategies for memory loss as we age, and even our now amyloid-targeted therapies are not providing any noticeable improvements when being used in elderly patients with memory loss.”
MNT also spoke with Raphael Wald, PsyD, a neuropsychologist at Marcus Neuroscience Institute, a part of Baptist Health South Florida, who agreed and said this study underlines the need for physical activity in our lives.
“Many of us lead very sedentary lifestyles and should try to find ways to move more over the course of the day,” Wald, who was not involved in the recent research, explained. “With every decade that people age, their risk for Alzheimer’s increases significantly. We need to do everything we can as we get older to reduce our risk of developing this disease.”
“While there may not be a direct link, exercise at all ages helps us develop healthy habits for our hearts,” Wald added. “Cardiovascular disease and diabetes are major risk factors for dementia, which makes exercise a priority at any age.”