Burning Calories through Simple Activities Reduces the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer's risk can be cut by 50 percent by doing regular physical activities like dancing or just a simple gardening. Burning calories increases grey matter that makes the brain healthier, study suggests.

The study was made to about 900 older adults whose brain scans and lifestyle habits were analyzed by the researchers. They found out that any activity that makes them moving regularly helps their brain to increase gray matter. They also suggest that it lowers the risk of getting dementia too, as reported by UPI.

"Any type of physical activity that burns calories, from jogging to gardening to walking to dancing, is associated with more gray matter in the brain," said lead researcher Dr. Cyrus Raji, a postdoctoral researcher in radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The most important thing is that it's regular," he added.

He also stated that more gray matter indicates a healthier brain which reduced the risk of the Alzheimer's disease that affects 5.1 million Americans. The disease has no cure, and the numbers are expected to rise in the next 30 years.

Gray matter holds brain's neuron and its volume reflects neuronal health, Dr. Raji explained. "We also noted that these volumes increased if people became more active over five years leading up to their brain MRI," he added.

According to James T. Becker, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, Pitt School of Medicine, there are many studies that indicate physical activity can keep the brain from cognitive decline. However, people become more inactive to physical activities as they grow old, which is also the time when the risk of acquiring Alzheimer's disease and dementias increase, Science Blog reported.

"Our current treatments for dementia are limited in their effectiveness, so developing approaches to prevent or slow these disorders is crucial," Dr. Becker said. "Our study is one of the largest to examine the relationship between physical activity and cognitive decline, and the results strongly support the notion that staying active maintains brain health."