Mid-life Exercise Can Save Your Brain

Try to remember this: exercise in mid-life appears to stave off Alzheimer’s in later years. The New York Times reports that research conducted at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute indicates that people who engaged in leisure time physical activity at least twice a
week as they passed through middle age had a 50 percent lower chance
of developing dementia and a 60 percent lower chance of developing
Alzheimer’s disease compared with more sedentary colleagues. The study, published last week by the journal Lancet Neurology, involved 1,500 patients 65 and older whose exercise habits have been monitored for nearly 35 years. The Times reports that other research has had similar findings, and that one recent study concluded that people older than 60 who were forced to exercise regularly for six
months showed improved mental function, changes on brain scans and
growth in the white matter parts of their brains, the area that deals
with higher thought processes. Read more.