People who are physically active appear to be at lower risk for cognitive impairment late in life, and for women, a new study suggests, physical activity during the teenage years may provide the greatest benefit.
The study used data about 9,395 women 65 and older, most of them white, who participated in a multicenter study of osteoporotic fractures. They were asked whether they had been physically active on a regular basis during their teenage years and at ages 30, 50 and later. Their cognitive function was also assessed.
Those who had been active regularly at any age were at lower risk for impairment in later life, but the greatest benefit was for those who had been active in their teens. Only 8.5 per cent of those active during adolescence were cognitively impaired later on, compared with 16.7 per cent of those who had been inactive teenagers. After adjusting for differences between the groups and risk factors like diabetes, researchers concluded that physical activity during the teenage years was associated with a 35 per cent lower risk for cognitive impairment later in life.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
”People often separate the body and mind, and forget that physical activity is actually controlled by the brain,” said Laura E. Middleton, the study‘s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the Heart and Stroke Foundation Center for Stroke Recovery at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto. ”A large portion of the brain is dedicated toward coordinating and controlling movement.”
Added sugar and high blood pressure
A new study suggests that foods high in added sugar may increase the risk of high blood pressure.
Researchers analyzed data for 4,528 adults with no history of hypertension who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2003-06. Those who consumed at least 2.6 ounces a day of fructose in the form of table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup were found to have almost double the risk for systolic blood pressure higher than 160. (The top number of the two, a measure of blood pressure while the heart is beating, it should normally be no higher than 120.)
“Systolic pressure is really what physicians are interested in, because it‘s related to outcomes, and the increase is pretty dramatic,” said Dr. Michel Chonchol, an associate professor of medicine at University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center and the senior author of the paper, which appeared in The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
But Chonchol cautioned that more research was needed to prove that added fructose played a causal role in hypertension. ”This needs to be proven with the next step, which is a randomized controlled trial,” he said.
The American Heart Association recommends limiting food and beverages with added sugars. In a statement last year, the association said an ”emerging but inconclusive body of evidence” suggested “that increased intake of added sugars might raise blood pressure.”
