A new study suggests that taking a pleasant walk every day may help slow the protein buildup and cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
After carefully studying the lifestyle habits, medical data, and brain scans of hundreds of elderly volunteers, a team led by Mass General Brigham in the United States found that even a moderate level of physical activity may be enough to curb the progression of the disease.
The results suggest that a sedentary lifestyle may play an important role in reducing Alzheimer’s disease. However, this also makes them easy targets for intervention.
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Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive degenerative disease characterized by persistent decline in short-term memory. It is also widespread. 1 in 3 people over 85 I live with Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists haven’t found a cure yet, but understanding how it works could at least help develop treatment strategies.
frameborder=”0″allow=”Accelerometer; autoplay; Write clipboard; encrypted media; gyroscope; picture within picture; Web sharing”referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin”allowfullscreen>To investigate the impact of exercise on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, a team led by neurologist Wai-Ying Wendy Yau studied 296 participants in the Harvard Aging Brain Study.harve).
The participants, aged between 50 and 90 years old, had no cognitive impairment at the start of the study. The study followed them for up to 14 years, monitoring, among other things, indicators of Alzheimer’s disease.
This included scans for amyloid and tau, two proteins linked to the disease, and ongoing cognitive testing. Participants’ physical activity was also quantified using a wearable pedometer.
The results showed no association between physical activity and amyloid accumulation, but a clear association with tau accumulation and cognitive decline. People who engaged in moderate physical activity of 5,000 to 7,500 steps per day had significantly slower rates of tau accumulation and cognitive decline.
But this is where the effectiveness plateaus. Walking more than 7,500 steps a day will have the same effect.
On the other hand, even moderate activity of 3,000 to 5,000 steps per day slowed the same markers of Alzheimer’s disease, albeit to a lesser extent.
Although people classified as moderate exercisers are likely to engage in other activities that may explain their results, this trend suggests that physical activity may be an accessible treatment target for Alzheimer’s prevention. The authors point out that wearable activity trackers could provide a simple way to monitor and encourage these benefits.
“Taken together,” researchers write“Our findings support targeting physical activity as a strategy in future randomized clinical trials to modify tau and cognitive trajectories in preclinical AD and potentially provide easily understood and achievable physical activity goals to sedentary older adults at high risk for cognitive decline.”
The paper was published in: natural medicine.
