Exercise To Prevent Alzheimer's

Swedish scientists found that people who engaged in "leisure time physical activity" at least twice a week as they passed through middle age had a 50 percent lower chance of developing dementia, and a 60 percent lower chance of developing Alzheimer’s, when compared with their more sedentary colleagues, says a study published in October, 2005, in Lancet Neurology.

And Exercise Creates New Brain Cells!

Yes, really. Through a special MRI imaging technique, researchers at Columbia University were able to watch “neurogenesis,” that is, the growth of neurons or nerve cells, within a living person’s brain. And it happened right after exercise.

So exercise doesn’t just “clear the brain.” It adds to the brain while preventing Alzheimer’s.

Exercise Is A Prime Way To Avoid Alzheimer's

Plain, old-fashioned exercise is emerging as one of the best ways to avoid Alzheimer’s.

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!