High intensity weight training wards off dementia
High intensity weight training is important for brains not just brawn and could be prescribed in the fight against dementia according to new research published in the Journal of Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
The study reveals that resistance training improves the mental abilities of older people with mild cognitive impairment—a common precursor to dementia. Professor Maria Fiatarone Singh, a geriatrician from the University of Sydney and the study’s chief investigator, said the research demonstrates the potential of exercise to reduce dementia risk.
“We know weight training stimulates hormones that make muscles grow and it’s possible these hormones are also having similar benefits for brain function,” said Fiatarone Singh.
Participants in the study who did six months of weight training showed significant improvements in overall cognitive function, in particular with abilities related to planning, organizing and devising strategies, and visual memory.
These improvements were still present twelve months after supervised training stopped. “The next step is to see how long this lasts and who benefits most from such exercise,” Fiatarone Singh said. T
he researchers will follow the group for up to five years to see if they were able to delay or even prevent the onset of dementia. “The number of participants in the weight lifting group scoring in the normal range doubled in six months, but surprisingly those benefits didn’t carry over to the combined exercise and brain training group who fared much worse,” said Fiatarone Singh. “High levels of stress hormones are known to compromise brain health, so it could be that the combined physical and mental training program was too stressful physically or mentally.” Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at:
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