Did you know having a regular fitness routine is one of the best things that you can do to reduce your risk of developing dementia? It’s true. Physical exercise helps improve memory, thinking skills and motor skills.
How it works is, moving your body and being physically active may help slow dementia by improving brain blood flow and oxygen to the brain. Just 20-30 minutes a day will have a huge positive impact on decreasing the risk of dementia as you age.
Physical activity can consist of things like daily walking, getting your heart rate up, moderate to heavy gardening, riding your bike and swimming. This type of activity also helps you to control the level of sugars in your blood and reduce your risk of diabetes, which is a risk factor for dementia.
We always need to have a flow of blood to the critical areas of the brain responsible for memory, along with other thinking abilities. Exercise helps clear out the pipes, and helps reduce the buildup of cholesterol.
Healthy blood vessels also strengthen the brain’s ability to fight or tolerate disease. Typically, you should have physical activity daily and do strength training activities at least two or more days each week to be impactful.
Strength-Building Activities for the Older Community:
- Heavy gardening (such as digging and shoveling)
- Lifting weights or similar objects in the home, like cans or heavy books
- Working with resistance bands
- Exercises that use your body weight, such as push-ups and sit-ups
- Swimming
- Yoga or Pilates
- Wheeling a Wheelchair
A lack of physical exercise is one of the main factors where the evidence is strong enough to show that it increases a person’s risk of developing dementia. Folks already with dementia are less physically active than those who don’t have it, due to their psychological and physiological parts.
Dementia patients tend to be more dependent on other people to take part in activities. Reasons for this is dementia patients tend to view being active as challenging, there’s a lack of motivation and are generally dependent on their caregivers to go out.
Although physical activity has not been shown to slow down or prevent dementia from progressing once a person has the condition, going from being inactive to doing some amount of exercise will still have a big impact on your health.
The BEST thing about fitness is it’s never too late to start improving your health. Fitness has no age limit, fitness meets you where you are—and you build from there.
Ashley LaMorte is a nationally certified fitness instructor and has been in the fitness industry close to a decade. Over the years, she has gotten the opportunity to instruct group X boot camps at gyms and train private clients from all walks of life, all over the Bay Area. She now has her own mobile fitness business LaMorte Lift. Learn more at LaMorteLift.com.
