Dementia is a health condition that causes you to lose your cognitive abilities, like your memory or the ability to make decisions. Dementia can range from mild symptoms that start to impair function to severe symptoms that cause you to depend on others to live.
Dementia is more common as people age, but it is not considered a normal part of aging. About a third of all people age 85 and older have some form of dementia.
Part of the reason why easy preventive measures are so important is that there’s still no way to treat dementia.
“The treatment for dementia is still limited so far,” study co-author Huan Song, MD, PhD, research professor at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, told Verywell. “Therefore, we consider it important to know if some easy changes, such as adopting a healthier lifestyle, can be effective interventions for the primary prevention of dementia.”
Song’s study, which was published in the journal Neurology, analyzed data from 501,376 people from the UK Biobank with an average age of 56. None of the participants had dementia at the start of the study.
Participants were asked to fill out questionnaires at the start of the study on physical activities they did, including climbing a flight of stairs, walking, and doing more intense sports, along with how often they did household chores and visited with friends.
During a follow-up of about 10.5 years, 5,185 people were diagnosed with dementia. The researchers discovered that certain activities seemed to be linked to a lowered risk of dementia. Those included:
Exercising regularly (35% lower risk)Doing household chores (21% lower risk)Visiting with family and friends daily (15% lower risk)
One limitation of the study is that the UK Biobank is not a very ethnically diverse sample. Additionally, participants’ activity levels and mental activities were self-reported—so researchers had to take them at face value.
The study focused on older adults with a higher risk of dementia. Song said it’s difficult to know if exercise and activity in younger people may help prevent dementia down the road.
Why Being Active May Stave off Dementia
While the latest study didn’t explore why activities like light exercise and chores could reduce your risk of dementia, it’s not the first to make the association.
One study published in JAMA Network Open last year analyzed data from 43,896 people, focusing on how much daily physical activity they got and their risk of developing dementia. The researchers discovered that those who were more physically active had a lowered risk of developing dementia.
Another 2021 study analyzed data from 62,286 participants in Korea and found that an increased physical activity level, including a low amount of light-intensity activity, was linked to a reduced risk of dementia in older adults.
Dementia happens when healthy neurons in the brain start to die at a faster pace than normal. As Song explained, activity can help improve the health and amount of neurons in the brain.
“Several possible explanations for the link have been proposed, including the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factors [which allow neurons to proliferate and grow], the improvement of cerebral blood flow, and antioxidant effects in physical activity,” she said. “Further, physical activity can indirectly influence other modifiable factors for cognitive function, including obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, depression, and cardiovascular fitness.”
Amit Sachdev, MD, associate chief medical officer in the Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology at Michigan State University, agreed.
“A healthy body leads to a healthy brain. Better overall health is best,” he told Verywell.
Song said her team’s findings suggest that regular activity in any form can be helpful for dementia risk, even if exercise is the most helpful.
“Both actual exercise and regular activity—like household chores—help reduce the risk of dementia, but the benefits from exercise in leisure time might be more prominent,” she said.
