A brisk walk may not just keep your body in shape, it will help keep your mind sharp, too.
According to two new studies, older adults who keep active reduce their odds of losing their mental abilities. But it's not just biking or hiking or high-intensity sports that will do the trick, think low-intensity activities, too.
Although it's not a new discovery that physical activity helps prevent cognitive impairment or dementia later in life, this new research does cover up some gaps found in previous studies, says Laura Middleton, lead researcher of one of the studies from the Heart and Stroke Foundation Center for Stroke Recovery at the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto.
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"Self-reports are pretty good at capturing intentional physical activity like jogging, swimming and tennis but are poor at capturing low-intensity activity such as walking around the house or climbing stairs, cooking or grocery shopping," Middleton says.
Middleton's research found compared with more sedentary individuals, the people who expended the most energy over the two week period had 90 percent lower odds of developing cognitive decline over the five- to seven-year follow-up period.
Middleton's team collected data on nearly 200 men and women; on average, participants were 74 when they started the study and had no cognitive difficulties.
To determine the effects of activity on mental ability, researchers measured the total amount of energy the participants used. To do this, they used a method called "doubly labeled water," which shows how much water a person loses, which is an objective measure of a person's metabolic activity.
Over two to five years of follow-up, Middleton's group found that those with the highest levels of physical activity had the lowest odds of developing any cognitive impairment, compared with those who had the least amount of physical activity.
The second study looked at 2,809 women over the age of 65 who had a history of heart disease or stroke, or had three or more risk factors for the disease. That's noteworthy because most previous studies on cognitive health focused on healthy people, researchers say.
Led by Marie-Noel Vercambre from the Foundation of Public Health, Mutuelle Generale de l'Education Nationale in Paris, the group determined the physical activity among the women at the start of the study and every two years thereafter over the next 5.4 years. Phone interviews including tests of mental ability and memory were also conducted.
Women who were most physically active had the lowest rate of developing cognitive decline, researchers found. Those who took a brisk 30-minute walk every day, or its equivalent, had a lower risk of cognitive impairment. According to the researchers, that difference amounted to being five to seven years younger, cognitively speaking.
The take home message? "Exercise to reduce your risk of cognitive impairment but not being still might also be important," Middleton says. "Move during the day, get up and walk even for short bouts—all this counts towards reducing your risk of cognitive impairment in later life."
Both reports were published online in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
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