How Exercise Can Help Slow Alzheimer’s

In April this year a study was published showing that brain size is linked to mental decline – the smaller the brain, the greater the decline. When measured by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) the brains of healthy older people were about 10% larger by volume than those of Alzheimer’s patients. And earlier this month the journal Brain posted an online report that the ventricles of the brain (the spaces filled with liquid in the central mass of the brain) are enlarged in Alzheimer patients. Taken together, these two findings suggest that there is thinning of the brain tissue in Alzheimer’s (my over-simplified explanation!).

Now there’s a report that provides information that can have an immediate practical use. A report in the journal Neurology shows that aerobic exercise can slow the atrophy (or wasting) of the brain in Alzheimer’s. Sixty-four older subjects without dementia and 57 with early-stage Alzheimer’s had MRIs of the brain and their cardiorespiratory fitness measured by treadmill testing. Cardiorespiratory fitness, expressed as VO2 max, was slightly reduced in the Alzheimer’s patients when compared with that of the healthy subjects. And in the patients with Alzheimer’s there was a clear correlation between VO2max and both whole brain volume and white matter volume. The investigators conclude that increased cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with reduced brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease. So here’s another good reason to get on the treadmill, elliptical, bike, or hiking trail.

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[Robert Griffith]

Update: There's another study, just published in JAMA, reporting how physical activity imporves mental functioning in older adults with subjective memory impairment: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/300/9/1027?etoc
Bob Griffith