Can Aerobic Fitness Lower Your Chances Of Dementia By 35%?

High cardiorespiratory fitness can reduce risk of dementia, a general term used to describe dip in cognitive abilities, up to 35 per cent, including in indiviuals with high genetic risk for developing ageing-related condition, as per study.

Cardiorespiratory fitness or or aerobic fitness is a measure of how well oxygen is delivered to muscles and organs while performing physical activity. With age, as muscles weaken, capacity of circulatory and respiratory systems to supply oxygen declines. Cycling, running and aerobic exercises can help improve cardiorespiratory fitness.

Key findings linked to dementia 

Researchers from Tianjin Medical University, China, and Karolinska Institute, Sweden, found that people having high scores in cardiorespiratory fitness h a higher cognitive function and a lower risk of dementia.

Furr, among se individuals, onset of dementia was found to be delayed by up to 1.5 years, or 18 months.

”Our study shows that higher cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with better cognitive function and decreased dementia risk. Moreover, high cardiorespiratory fitness may buffer impact of genetic risk of all dementia by 35 per cent,” authors wrote in study published in British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Maintaining favourable levels of aerobic fitness could be a strategy to prevent dementia, even among people genetically inclined towards developing it, y said.

For study, researchers divided a group of over 61,000 people aged 39-70 years and not having dementia into three equal sub-groups according to ir cardiorespiratory fitness scores. Over a follow-up period of up to 12 years, 553 people were diagnosed with dementia.

participants took a six-minute exercise test on a stationary bike at time of enrolling in UK Biobank study between 2009 and 2010 for developing cardiorespiratory fitness scores. Cognitive function and a genetic score for developing dementia too were estimated.

Onset of dementia was found to be delayed by about a year and a half among those with high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, compared to those having low aerobic fitness scores.

(With PTI Inputs)