The Nurses’ Health Study, which interviewed 18,766 US women aged 70 to 81 years, found that those who walked at least 1.5 miles a week had the least thinking impairment. The researchers have been following the health and physical activity of these women since 1986 and have tested their thinking abilities over the years. And women who were more physically active had significantly less decline in their thinking abilities as they aged.
Two Miles A Day Did It For These Men
The Honolulu-Asia Aging Study had similar findings. They interviewed 2,257 men between 71 and 93 years of age. They found that men who walked two miles per day had half the risk of dementia, compared to those who walked less than a quarter mile per day. And Alzheimer’s is, of course, simply one form of dementia.
So exercise doesn’t only appear to “blow the cobwebs out” of our brains, as the saying goes. In the case of these research subjects it cut their risk of dementia in half!