Walking up to 5,000 steps everyday may help delay cognitive decline by three years on average while 7,500 steps daily may delay it by seven years, a study in around 300 individuals has found.Sedentary individuals were seen to have a significantly faster buildup of tau proteins in the brain- contributes to neuron death and is considered a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and more rapid declines in cognition and daily functioning.
“Lifestyle factors appear to impact the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that lifestyle changes may slow the emergence of cognitive symptoms if we act early,” senior author Jasmeer Chhatwal from the Mass General Brigham, a US-based health care system, said.
“(The study) sheds light on why some people who appear to be on an Alzheimer’s disease trajectory don’t decline as quickly as others,” Chhatwal said.
The analysis, published in the journal Nature Medicine, looked at data from 296 participants aged 50-90 years old in the ‘Harvard Aging Brain Study’, all cognitively unimpaired at the study’s start.
Positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans were used to measure amyloid-beta in plaques and tau in tangles – both refer to accumulation of proteins in brain and are symptoms of Alzheimer’s and assessed the participants’ physical activity using waistband pedometers. The participants were followed-up for up to 14 years.
“Higher physical activity was associated with slower amyloid-related inferior temporal tau accumulation, which significantly mediated the association with slower cognitive decline,” the authors wrote.