Exercise Staves Off Mental Decline

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  If exercise could be packaged into a pill, it would be the most widely prescribed medicine in the world.

Two new studies show that exercise appears to help prevent and improve mild cognitive impairment.

Researchers found that people who did moderate physical activity in midlife or later had a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment and that six months of high-intensity aerobic exercise improved cognitive function in people with mild cognitive impairment.

Mild cognitive impairment is an in-between state between the normal changes in thinking, learning and memory changes that come with age and dementia, one of the studies explained. Up to 15 percent of people with mild cognitive impairment develop dementia each year, compared with 1 percent or 2 percent of the general population.

Those who said they did moderate exercise -- such as swimming, brisk walking, yoga, aerobics or strength training -- during midlife were 39 percent less likely to have mild cognitive impairment, while those who did moderate exercise later in life were 32 percent less likely to have the condition.

The Mayo team said exercise may guard against mild cognitive impairment through production of nerve-protecting compounds, increased blood flow to the brain, improved development and survival of neurons, and decreased risk of heart and blood vessel diseases.

The second study was smaller with people either doing aerobic exercises or stretching. 

After six months, the patients who did high-intensity aerobic exercise had improved cognitive function compared to those in the control group. The beneficial effects were more pronounced in women than in men, possibly because the body's use of and production of insulin, glucose and the stress hormone cortisol differed in women and men.

However you look at it, exercise is a very cost-effective way of improving health across the board.