United States: The revelations of recently held extensive research suggest that physical activity brings multiple benefits, apart from weight management, such as decreasing the risk of heart disease. It has also been found to reduce the risk of developing dementia.
Furthermore, another research topic that may be of interest is the impact of physical activity once dementia has already developed.
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Maintaining physical activity or exercising before and after the diagnosis embraced the lowest mortality risk, according to the researchers.
Moreover, long-term vigorous-intensity physical activity, as well as moderate and walking-intensity physical activity, were linked to lower mortality risk, medicalnewstoday.com reported.
The researchers also identified starting physical activity after a dementia diagnosis as capable of decreasing the mortality risk by 20 percent or more. The results imply that exercise should be greatly promoted among people with dementia.
According to the authors of the studied material, Alzheimer’s disease is on the list of ten leading causes of death, and the number of dementia patients keeps growing.
The purpose of this investigation was to examine the prospective influence of physical activity prior to and after dementia diagnosis on mortality outcomes, assessing the intensity and volume of such activity.
How was the outcome concluded?
The study was a population-based cohort study from a whole country. The mentioned data were obtained from the national health insurance system database in Korea. The participants were more than 60,000 persons diagnosed with dementia and aged 40 and above from 2010 to 2016.
All participants had reported to have received physical examination within two years before and after confirmation of dementia.
The researchers included those who took anti-dementia medications and had specific scores measuring dementia, medicalnewstoday.com reported.
The researchers were then able to subdivide the physical activity levels after a dementia diagnosis into vigorous, moderate & light physical activity and the number of sets of exercises per week.
Moderate PA was described as vigorous physical activity for more than twenty minutes at least three times per week or moderate physical activity for more than thirty minutes at least five times per week.
Decrement in mortality
The authors noted that those individuals who continued exercising at the same level before and after the diagnosis of dementia have the lowest mortality rate; the difference was revealed to be 29 percent.
The mortality risk was reduced for participants who raised their physical activity level to at least 1,000 metabolic equivalents of tasks or METs-minutes a week compared to those who experienced a reduced mortality risk.
Energy expenditure on physical activities or movements, which is a subject of METs, is concerned with the amount of energy needed to perform various activities.
The researchers also identified a 3 percent relative risk reduction in mortality for every 100 METs-minutes per week that people elevated their activity post-diagnosis.
Mortality risk for participants with all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease slightly decreased when they stopped engaging in regular physical activity post-diagnosis.