Status: 12.01.2024, 15:26 PM
By: Judith Braun
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A healthy lifestyle includes a balanced diet and sufficient exercise. How you can prevent dementia by simply walking.
More and more people are developing dementia in old age. According to estimates by the German Alzheimer Society (DAlzG), around 1.8 million citizens in Germany are affected by the widespread disease – and the trend is rising. In addition to genetic predisposition, which, according to the Alzheimer's Research Initiative, underlies only about one percent of all Alzheimer's diseases, one's own lifestyle plays an important role in the individual risk. Diet and exercise are two factors that can affect dementia risk. The number of steps taken each day can also be decisive, as results of a study show.
Reducing the risk of dementia: How many steps you should take every day
With the help of a pedometer, researchers recorded the participants' cadence for their study. Subsequently, this was compared with the diagnosis of dementia seven years later. © Monkey Business 2/IMAGO
For their study, published in the journal JAMA Neurology, a team of researchers from the UK analyzed data from over 78,000 people between the ages of 40 and 79. The scientists investigated which number of steps was associated with the lowest risk of dementia. For this purpose, the daily number of steps of the participants was recorded with the help of a pedometer and then evaluated. In addition, the researchers compared the steps taken by the individuals with a diagnosis of dementia seven years later. Cadences were divided into three categories for the study: occasional steps (less than 40 steps per minute), targeted steps (more than 40 steps per minute), and peak cadence (participants who ran fastest for 30 minutes a day, not necessarily consecutively).
The results of the study showed that people who walked about 9830,50 steps a day had a 40 percent lower risk of developing dementia within seven years. In addition, people who belonged to the second category of cadences (more than 6320 steps per minute) were able to reduce their risk of dementia by 57 percent with around 3800 steps per day. According to study author Prof. Borja del Pozo Cruz from the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, this is "a brisk walk, more like a power walk". But even a few steps (about 25 per day) at any pace can reduce the risk of dementia by <> percent, according to the study results.
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Healthy Aging Without Dementia: Brisk Walking Can Slow Down the Aging Process
But it's not just the number of steps that plays a decisive role: As the study also showed, speed is also important. For example, those participants who walked for 30 minutes a day at a very brisk pace of 112 steps per minute were able to reduce the risk of dementia by 62 percent, the most. With fast walking, you can not only prevent dementia, but generally slow down your own aging process. This is the result of another study published in the journal Nature. According to the study, people who walk faster stay young longer and can extend their lives by up to 16 years.
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