The June 2013 Family Circle had a blurb about the benefits of exercise. I do not usually read Family Circle magazine, but it came in the mailbox free and this
article really caught my attention. It
said that people in midlife, in their 40’s and 50’s, who exercised regularly
had less dementia later in life than those who did not exercise. The article cited the Cooper Institute and so
I went online and found the Cooper Institute website. It is a preventive non-profit
medical clinic founded in the 1970’s in Dallas, Texas. From there, I found the peer reviewed
scholarly article that served as the foundation of the Family Circle article. Here
is the rest of the story:
The primary investigator on the
research study was Dr. Laura DeFina, MD.
She and seven other physicians [and one PhD] looked at medical records
and physical exams of patients at the Cooper Clinic who were patients there at
midlife. They examined 19,500 medical
records from 1971-2009 and then Medicare claims of the same individuals from
1999-2009. Then, they compared their
Medicare claims years later to their midlife fitness levels. The patients, who had physical exams at the
Cooper Clinic, did not fill in the usual “self-report” about whether they
exercised or not: They had treadmill tests that measured their fitness levels!
Here were the findings. Patients who had higher levels of fitness at
midlife had less dementia later in life.
In the U.S., approximately 24% of older adults have dementia. The DeFina et al. (2013) study found that 14.8%
of the high fitness level patients later developed dementia. They found that patients with the highest
levels of fitness in midlife had the lowest incidence of dementia later in
life. Why? Exercise and fitness leads to better brain
flow and larger brains.
Who cares? So what does this mean? First, the DeFina (2013) study has high
validity. They examined thousands of
records, the patients were measured for fitness –vs- self-reports, and they
looked at records over a long period of time.
These findings can be generalized and/or extrapolated. In non-academic lingo, this means it is a
significant and we should pay attention.
Second, this study has public health
implications. Dementia costs U.S.
taxpayers $200 billion now and it is expected to grow to 1.1 trillion by 2050
unless programs are implemented to reduce the development of dementia. Reducing dementia by exercising over the
lifespan, and especially at midlife, is one step in the right direction and is
something we can ALL do.
Resource:
DeFina, L.F., Willis,
B.L., Radford, N.B., Gao, A., Leonard, D., Haskell, W.L., Weiner, M.F., &
Berry, J.D. (2013). The association between mid-life
cardiorespiratory fitness and later-life dementia. Annals of Internal Medicine,158. 162-168.
