Regular physical exercise, such as resistance training, can prevent or delay the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has found.
The research, done by researchers in Brazil affiliated with the Federal University of São Paulo and the University of São Paulo, is at least the second study to be published this week highlighting the benefits of regular physical exercise for older adults — along with a study completed by researchers at the University of Cambridge that found older adults who remain active are more likely to have a better quality of life.
The first study, published in Frontiers in Neuroscience Monday, found that resistance training is the best way to combat Alzheimer’s disease. Resistance training — a form of exercise that helps increase muscle mass, strength and bone density — can be performed using free weights, weight machines, body weight and more, and it is a good option to train balance, improve posture and prevent falls, according to the World Health Organization.
The researchers tested resistance training on several mice with a genetic mutation that impaired their synaptic connections and damaged their neurons — both of which are features of Alzheimer’s disease. The mice then were subjected to resistance training that mimicked the kind undertaken by humans at fitness centers and compared with mice in a control group.
The mice that partook in the resistance training had lower amounts of beta-amyloid plaques (the protein that causes the Alzheimer’s symptoms), which researchers cited as evidence of the exercise’s effectiveness.
“Resistance exercise is increasingly proving an effective strategy to avoid the appearance of symptoms of sporadic Alzheimer’s [not directly caused by a single inherited genetic mutation], which is multifactorial and may be associated with aging, or to delay their emergence in familial Alzheimer’s. The main possible reason for this effectiveness is the anti-inflammatory action of resistance exercise,” said Beatriz Monteiro Longo, a researcher in the study and professor of neurophysiology at UNIFESP.
The second study, published Tuesday in Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, found a correlation between regular exercise and higher quality of life. Cambridge researchers examined the activity levels of 1,433 participants aged 60 or more years using accelerometers.
Six years after the initial assessment, researchers found that the participants were doing 24 minutes less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day, on average, and spending more than 30 minutes more being sedentary.
The participants were given quality of life scores between 0 (worst quality of life) and 1 (best) based on their responses to a questionnaire. Individuals who did more moderate to vigorous physical activity recorded higher scores, with the study finding that an hour a day spent being more active resulted in a 0.02 higher quality of life score.
“Keeping yourself active and limiting – and where you can, breaking up – the amount of time you spend sitting down is really important whatever stage of life you’re at. This seems to be particularly important in later life, when it can lead to potentially significant improvements to your quality of life and your physical and mental wellbeing,” said Dharani Yerrakalva, MBBS MPhil MRCGP BSc PGCME, from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge.
MAX BACHMANN