Even moderate exercise can reduce the risk of dementia, says study

Team L&M

All the people out there, start taking a short walk around your home each day, go to your neighbourhood store to buy groceries and instead of ordering veggies and fruits online go get it from the nearby haat. Additionally, thoughtfully add more steps into your everyday activities, any which way you can.

Why?

Because all this would definitely reduce your risk of dementia. These findings have come out of a study by JAMA Network Open, a medical journal published by the American Medical Association covering all aspects of the biomedical sciences.

The study involved over 62,000 participants of age 65 or more and with no signs of dementia. All had health check-up data in a Korean national insurance database between January 2009 and December 2012.

Based on their self-reported activity, researchers divided them into four categories based on how close each person came to meeting the recommended activity range of 150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity.

The categories were:

♦ Inactive – no physical activity

♦ Insufficiently active – did less than the recommended activity range

♦ Active – met the recommended activity range

♦ Highly Active – exceeded the recommended activity range

The researchers then followed the participants for about three-and-a-half years. During which 3,757 of them were diagnosed with dementia.

Exercise appeared to be linked with individual risk. The more exercise someone got, the less likely that person was to develop dementia. But it wasn’t only the active or highly active participants who saw a reduction in dementia risk. Even people in the insufficiently active category still had a lower risk for dementia than the people who were inactive.

The findings are good news if you feel like you aren’t getting as much exercise as you should. The study amply shows that a light-intensity physical activity can reduce the risk of dementia, though their risk reduction is not as great as those who exercise more