The health benefits of exercise are well documented, helping with weight control, balance and strength, blood pressure, cholesterol, inflammation reduction, sleep, mood, stress and so on… but now new research is suggesting that people genetically predisposed to dementia can reduce their risk by 35 per cent through increasing their fitness.
Carried out by experts from the Karolinska Institute, an ageing research centre in Stockholm, the study analysed data from 61,214 dementia-free people aged between 39 and 70 from the UK Biobank database.
It was found that high levels of fitness were also associated with better cognitive ability. As we get older, skeletal muscle is inevitably lost as our cardiorespiratory fitness (which is our body’s ability to deliver oxygen to our muscles) starts to decline.
As the research explains, fitness levels drop by between three and six per cent per decade during our 20s and 30s, but this increases to over 20 per cent per decade once we’re in our 70s.
As such, prioritising health and fitness as early on as possible is perhaps advisable so you can build life-long healthy habits that will stand you in excellent stead as you get older.
Weili Xu, professor of geriatric epidemiology and lead author of the study, commented: “Our study shows that higher fitness is linked to better cognitive function and reduced dementia risk. In addition, high fitness could attenuate the effect of genetic risk for all dementias by up to 35 per cent.”
This follows previous research published in July, which revealed that approximately 45 per cent of dementia cases were potentially preventable by addressing 14 modifiable risk factors at different stages of life, including physical inactivity, obesity, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, hearing loss and hypertension.
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