Midlife cardiovascular fitness and dementia
A 44-year longitudinal population study in women
Helena Horder, PhD et al.
Neurology® 2018;90:e1298-e1305. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000005290
Objective
To investigate whether greater cardiovascular fitness in midlife is associated with decreased
dementia risk in women followed up for 44 years.
Methods
A population-based sample of 1,462 women 38 to 60 years of age was examined in 1968. Of
these, 191 women completed a maximal cycling test to evaluate cardiovascular fitness. Subsequent examinations of dementia incidence were done in 1974, 1980, 1992, 2000, 2005, and 2009.
Dementia was diagnosed according to DSM-III-R criteria on the basis of information from neuropsychiatric examinations, informant interviews, hospital records, and registry data up to 2012.
Cox regressions were performed with adjustment for socioeconomic, lifestyle, and medical confounders.
Results
Compared with medium fitness, the adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause dementia during the
44-year follow-up was 0.12 among those with high fitness and 1.41 among those with low fitness. High fitness delayed age at dementia onset by 9.5 years compared to low fitness and time to dementia onset by 5 years compared to medium fitness.
Conclusions
Among Swedish women, a high cardiovascular fitness in midlife was associated with a decreased
risk of subsequent dementia. Promotion of a high cardiovascular fitness may be included in
strategies to mitigate or prevent dementia. Findings are not causal, and future research needs to
focus on whether improved fitness could have positive effects on dementia risk and when during
the life course a high cardiovascular fitness is most important.
My comment: Mr Motivator is right! Regular exercise is the best insurance you can ever take out. And you don’t have to run marathons to get fit. Don’t give up on fitness because of your job or because you have had kids. Get active. Spend that pension! Don’t give it away to the nursing home!
Diabetes Diet 
So sad with thess ladies are with dementia.. thanks for sharing this idea Anita
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Thanks for sharing 😊
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One of the reasons I’m pushing my physiotherapy after my patella fracture is to get back to my daily walking. I loved walking 40 minutes every evening.
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I agree Gary, it is so good to relieve stress particularly if you can get outdoors in a natural environment. The other day a heron was kind enough to fly very close to me and my friends.
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