{"id":1730,"date":"2017-08-18T05:51:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T05:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2025-09-29T17:22:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T17:22:34","slug":"ny-times-walking-as-aid-or-those-with-early-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1730","title":{"rendered":"NY Times: Walking as aid for those with early Alzheimer’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here's yesterday's posting I did on exercise and the brain. NY Times: 1st of a few I'll post on exercise & your brain<\/a><\/p>\n

And here's another – some benefits for people with early Alzheimer's –<\/p>\n

\"Brain<\/a><\/p>\n

Frequent, Brisk Walks May Aid Those With Early Alzheimer\u2019s<\/a><\/p>\n

For some people with early-stage Alzheimer\u2019s disease, frequent, brisk walks may help to bolster physical abilities and slow memory loss, according to one of the first studies of physical activity as an experimental treatment for dementia.<\/p>\n

But the study\u2019s results, while encouraging, showed that improvements were modest and not universal, raising questions about just how and why exercise helps some people with dementia and not others.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

…for the new study, published in February in PLoS One<\/a>, researchers at the University of Kansas decided to work directly with people who had previously been given a diagnosis of Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Because the disease can affect coordination as it progresses, the researchers focused on men and women in its early stages, who were still living at home and could safely walk by themselves or perform other types of light exercise.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

One (group) began a supervised walking program that was supposed to raise their physical fitness. They walked progressively longer and faster over the course of several weeks, until they were briskly walking for at least 150 minutes each week. In earlier experiments, the Kansas scientists had found that this routine significantly improved aerobic endurance and memory performance among older people without Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The second group, serving as a control, began stretching and toning classes. These sessions were designed to be light exercise that would not increase aerobic endurance but would mimic the time commitment and social interactions of the walkers.<\/p>\n

Both groups continued their regimens for six months and then returned to the lab for repeat testing. … most had tolerated the exercise well.<\/p>\n

Encouragingly, many also now showed gains in physical functioning, particularly among the walkers. Almost all of them had significantly improved their scores on the tests of everyday physical skills.<\/p>\n

But the effects of the experiment on thinking and memory were more mixed.<\/p>\n

Most of those in the control group were now slightly less able to think clearly and remember than they had been six months before, new tests showed. The toning had not slowed the progression of their disease much, if at all.<\/p>\n

Similarly, many of the walkers performed no better and some scored worse on the cognitive tests than at the start.<\/p>\n

But some of the walkers were thinking and remembering much better now, according to their cognitive tests. These volunteers also generally showed slight increases in the size of their brain\u2019s hippocampus, an area of the brain affected early in the course of Alzheimer\u2019s disease, whereas the other participants did not.<\/p>\n

Trying to determine why some of the walkers showed benefits and others did not, the researchers delved more deeply into their data and found that the walkers who had increased their aerobic fitness had also improved their ability to remember and think and bulked up the volume of their brains.<\/p>\n

What surprised the scientists was how few of the walkers with Alzheimer\u2019s had actually gained endurance. The same exercise program that previously had increased the aerobic capacity of almost every healthy, older participant now had benefits for the bodies of only a few of the walkers with Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

This finding suggests that \u201cthere may be physiological differences between people with and without Alzheimer\u2019s that reach to the cellular level,\u201d says Jill Morris, a senior scientist at the University of Kansas Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Center, who led the study.<\/p>\n

In effect, the bodies as well as the brains of people with Alzheimer\u2019s disease may be unusual compared to those of healthy older people and may respond differently, if at all, to exercise, she says.<\/p>\n

The study concludes – more study is needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here's yesterday's posting I did on exercise and the brain. NY Times: 1st of a few I'll post on exercise & your brain And here's another – some benefits for people with early Alzheimer's – Frequent, Brisk Walks May Aid Those With Early Alzheimer\u2019s For some people with early-stage Alzheimer\u2019s disease, frequent, brisk walks may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-lymphoma-and-related-medical-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7862,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/7862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}