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Did you know themost popular New Year’s resolutionyear after year is to exercise more? While that’s a valiant goal, more is not always better—especially if you set such a lofty goal that you can’t stick with it … and subsequently feel like a failure and quit trying.
This echoes the findings of a study released earlier this year that foundwalking just three times per week could reduce dementia riskand builds on 2019 research that suggested 10 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per day could protect against cognitive decline. So, what exactly does light physical activity look like? According to this study, it’s as light as walking at a slow or leisurely pace.
There’s no cure (yet) for dementia and its most common type,Alzheimer’s disease. So doctors are hustling to determine which lifestyle habits may reduce the risk or at least delay the onset of dementia.
For this study, a team of Korean researchers tapped into medical records in theKorean National Health Insurance Service databasefor 62,286 participants who were 65 or older and who had not yet received a dementia diagnosis. The individuals were about 60% women and 40% men, with an average age of 73. Each person recorded his or her physical activity including frequency, intensity and duration of exercise via a self-reported questionnaire. After 3½ years, on average, the researchers followed up and found that 6% of the participants had developed dementia.
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Using these reports, the researchers split the group into levels: inactive, insufficiently active, active and highly active. In terms of dementia risk, after accounting for age, sex and other diseases, they found:
That means even a little bit can go a long way in terms of exercise’s bang for your brain buck. (Btw, those activity levels are based on onerecommendation for ideal physical activity level: 500 to 999 metabolic equivalent task minutes (or MET minutes) per week. For more on what MET minutes are, check out our piece aboutwhether it’s better to sleep in or exercise when you’re tired.)
That said, this study cannot prove any causal link. In other words, are people who are likely to develop dementia naturally less active because they’re already experiencing some mild symptoms? Or could other factors be at play and the exercise rates just be a coincidence—or misreported, since these were questionnaires that could be fibbed on?
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Physical activity could trigger metabolism changes, improve overallchronic disease risk factors, slow cell aging and promote brain plasticity, though, so it’s possible this could be a causal relationship. More research is needed, though.
“All these arguments apart, the balance of risk is that exercise is good for you, and a little goes a long way,” Gallacher adds.
Health experts believe that more than 1 in 3 dementia cases can be prevented through lifestyle modifications and, in the future, researchers hope to dedicate time to longer-range studies with more breakouts in terms of exercise styles, time and beyond.
For now, it’s still wise to lace up those shoes and sneak in a walk, bike ride, dance session or yoga routine with a goal of working up to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week, perWorld Health Organization guidelines.
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