A Japanese study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that exercise is the key to fighting Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia in people over the age of 65, and it results in the loss of cognitive faculty. Lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise appear to play a role in its development with high-fat diets as a particular risk.
Researcher Ayae Kinoshita at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine compared the effects of diet control, voluntary exercise, and diet control plus exercise in mice with Alzheimer's disease. The results showed that exercise was more beneficial than diet in reducing the beta-amyloid formations in the brain. Exercise also restored memory loss caused by a high-fat diet. In addition, Kinoshita found that the combination of diet and exercise didn't cause much improvement over exercise alone.
"Based on the results in this research," Kinoshita suggests, "exercise should be given priority to prevent Alzheimer's disease."
According to the Alzheimer's Association, 1 in 8 older Americans suffers from Alzheimer's disease.