If you are keen to reduce your risk of developing dementia then new research suggests it could be time to focus more on your fitness levels.
It turns out that middled aged women who are physically fit could be a massive 90% less likely to develop the dreaded cognitive condition decades later compared to those who are moderately fit.
And, even when women with high levels of physical fitness do go on to develop dementia, diagnosis appears to happen an average of 11 years later than the less fit participants, report scientists from Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.
For the study, which began back in 1968, a group of 191 women with an average age of 50 were asked to do a cycling test until they felt physically exhausted in order to measure their peak cardiovascular capacity.
Around 40 of the women were judged to have high fitness levels, while the majority were placed in the medium category and 52 women were considered to have low fitness levels.
Over the next 44 years, the women were then tested for dementia a total of six times, with 44 of them going on to develop the condition.
While 32% of the women with low fitness levels and 25% of the moderately fit women went on to develop dementia, the disease affected just five per cent of the fittest women, the team reports in the journal Neurology.
In other words, the fittest women were a staggering 88% less likely to develop dementia than those who were just moderately fit.
‘These findings are exciting because it’s possible that improving people’s cardiovascular fitness in middle age could delay or even prevent them from developing dementia,’ said study author Helena Hörder in a release.
‘However, this study does not show cause and effect between cardiovascular fitness and dementia, it only shows an association.
‘More research is needed to see if improved fitness could have a positive effect on the risk of dementia and also to look at when during a lifetime a high fitness level is most important.’
