Can Aerobic Fitness Lower Dementia Risk?

'High cardiorespiratory fitness may buffer the impact of genetic risk of all dementia by 35%.'

High cardiorespiratory fitness could help lower the risk of dementia by up to 35 per cent, including in people with a high genetic risk for developing the ageing-related condition, according to a study.

Cardiorespiratory fitness or aerobic fitness is a measure of how well oxygen is delivered to the muscles and organs while performing physical activity.

With age, as one's muscles weaken, the circulatory and respiratory systems' ability to supply oxygen declines.

Cycling, running and aerobic exercises can help improve cardiorespiratory fitness.

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

Further, among these individuals, the onset of dementia was found to be delayed by up to 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 the impact of genetic risk of all dementia by 35 per cent,' the authors wrote in the study published in the 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, they said.

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

The participants took a six-minute exercise test on a stationary bike at the time of enrolling in the UK Biobank study between 2009 and 2010 for developing cardiorespiratory fitness scores.

Cognitive function and a genetic score for developing dementia too were estimated.

The 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.