Could exercise help seniors stay sharp?

The President's HealthierUS initiative is encouraging Americans to get active for at least half an hour a day, and the benefits of exercise are well known. Staying active keeps you fit, keeps your heart healthy and can have a positive effect on your mood.

Doctors have also been wondering whether exercise can help keep our minds sharp as we get older. Research has suggested that people who exercise might be less likely to get Alzheimer's disease or dementia. However, there's a problem with most of the studies. They've mostly looked at the amount of activity people were already doing. So, we can't tell whether exercise helps, or whether people in the early stages of Alzheimer's simply find it harder to get out and exercise.

A new study gets round this problem. Researchers in Australia took 170 people and split them into two groups. People in the first group were asked to do 50-minutes of exercise, three times a week. The second group just got some general health advice, for comparison. It's a bit like drug trials, where people are given either the drug being tested or a pretend treatment (placebo).

The average age of the people in the study was 68. They were all starting to get memory problems, but no-one had full-blown dementia. In the exercise group, almost everyone chose walking as their activity, but a few people included some strength work in a gym.

After six months, the people who'd been doing exercise did slightly better in memory tests than people who hadn't. Tests included things like trying to remember a short list of words after a break of a few minutes.

The study only looked at whether people's memories improved. It didn't follow them for long enough to see whether they went on to get dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

What you need to know. Exercise has lots of health benefits, and could possibly help older adults stay mentally alert. You should aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise, most days. Moderate exercise means it's enough to make your heart beat faster, but you're not so out of breath that you can't talk comfortably.

—Philip Wilson, Patient editor, BMJ Group

ConsumerReportsHealth.org has partnered with The BMJ Group to monitor the latest medical research and assess the evidence to help you decide which news you should use.

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