Study Finds Active Elderly People Have Better Brain Health
A recent study published by the University of California in the January 7 issue of Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, has discovered that staying active can help elderly people’s brains function better.
There are both positive and negative proteins that can impact how our brains function. The researchers discovered that a beneficial class of proteins that enhance the connections between neurons were abundant in elderly people who were more active.
Previous research in mice has shown that physical activity boosts cognition, but this is the first study to prove the same in humans.
Lead author Kaitlin Casaletto, PhD and William Honer, MD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia worked with data gathered from the Memory and Aging Project at Rush University in Chicago.
Where elderly volunteers were tracked and offered their brains for analysis when they died.
Interestingly, it was not just the memory centre of the brain that contained these proteins. Other areas of the brain were also involved.
“It may be that physical activity exerts a global sustaining effect, supporting and stimulating the healthy function of proteins that facilitate synaptic transmission throughout the brain,”
Honer said. Toxic proteins amyloid and tau are found in the brains of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Yet higher levels of the beneficial proteins were found to protect against the effects of these toxic proteins.
Casaletto concluded,
“Taken together, these two studies show the potential importance of maintaining synaptic health to support the brain against Alzheimer’s disease.”
