It is well established that exercise improves long-term health in animal studies and correlates with improved health in human studies. Here, researchers show a correlation between sedentary behavior and accelerated brain aging. This is one of many, many similar studies that demonstrate a link between level of exercise and functional outcomes in older individuals. It remains the case that maintaining physical fitness into later life has by far the greatest weight of supporting evidence of all the approaches known to modestly slow aging.
Evidence suggests that midlife physical activity may reduce Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk. In at-risk individuals, we investigated midlife physical activity changes in relation to AD-related pathologies. We included 337 cognitively unimpaired adults with baseline and follow-up physical activity evaluations within 4.07 ± 0.84 years. We performed multiple regressions considering follow-up amyloid-PET burden and MRI-based medial temporal lobe cortical thickness as outcomes.
Remaining sedentary was associated with lower cortical thickness compared to doing limited physical activity, maintaining adherence, or becoming adherent to WHO recommendations on physical activity. Becoming adherent to recommendations was linked to lower amyloid burden compared to becoming non-adherent. Increased activity amounts showed a dose-dependent association with lower amyloid burden.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70007
View the full article at FightAging
