Mental and Physical Exercise May Help Reduce Dementia in Elderly

One thing that we all worry about when we start to get a little older is becoming senile or losing our cognitive ability. Alzheimer's disease is a phrase that scares most people to death. Whether it be for yourself or your loved ones. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a way to prevent this?

Well studies are showing some very hopeful results. That mental and physical exercise can really help to protect us against loss of memory associated with mild cognitive impairment. A combining of moderate physical activity and exercise and using the computer late in life may be key.

The mental exercising could include reading books, playing games, doing puzzles, and as mentioned using the computer. Doing these activities in combination seems to be even more beneficial.

"Our study found that engaging in physical exercise at any frequency, once a week or five times a week, and engaging in mental activities, computer use in particular, appear to have a joint effect in protecting against mild cognitive impairment," says Yonas Geda, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

The study was done on 926 individuals aged 70-90 at the Mayo Clinic. The results show that people who engaged in any, a little or a lot, of moderate physical exercise were 36% less likely to have mild cognitive impairment than people who did not exercise.

Also people who used the computer for any length of time or for any reason were 44% less like to have mild cognitive impairment than those who did not use the computer.

The findings do suggest that both activities are more beneficial than only doing one of the activities. But doing either would be a benefit.

The bottom line as far as maintaining your mental skills is to use them or lose them.

Interestingly, the study also showed that educated people seem to have more cognitive reserve. But it would seem that it matters what you do with that education. If a person only graduated from high school but was very cognitively active throughout life they would have a much larger cognitive reserve than someone who graduated college and did nothing with it.

So your protection from dementia and other brain injuries is definitely affected by how active you keep your brain in life.

Source:WebMD.com