Highly fit women win the cognitive race
Long-term study shows benefits of exercise in middle age
14th March 2018
Very fit middle-aged women are nearly 90% less likely to develop dementia than moderately fit women of the same age, a 41-year study suggests.
And if these highly fit women do develop dementia, they tend to develop it more than 10 years later than moderately fit women (aged 90 instead of 79, on average).
The findings suggest that improving cardiovascular fitness in middle age could delay or even prevent dementia, say the Swedish authors.
For the study, 191 women with an average age of 50 were categorised into