from American Heart Association
Many people don’t start worrying about brain health until later in life, but a new study suggests certain things we do in midlife may have consequences later. A long-term study presented to the American Heart Association shows people with low fitness levels or greater increase in diastolic blood pressure several minutes into a treadmill test had smaller brain volume later in life. These same people tended to perform more poorly on tests for decision-making later in life. The researchers say promotion of midlife physical fitness may be an important step towards ensuring healthy aging of the brain. Since this study is ongoing, they say it will be interesting to find out in another ten years how many participants develop dementia and if that is related to fitness and exercise heart rate in midlife. The message seems to be why wait to become fit?