Anti Aging Discoveries - How exercise can combat Alzheimer's

One of the latest anti aging discoveries is how regular exercise affects Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is a degenerative and terminal brain disease that most often affects individuals over the age of 65. The most common symptoms of Alzheimer's in its earliest stages are loss of balance and memory. As the disease advances, symptoms such as confusion, anger, mood swings, language breakdown and long-term memory loss become apparent. In its most advanced form, major and minor bodily functions break down, resulting in death. The mean life expectancy of a patient diagnosed with Alzheimer's is 7 years.

Exercise keeps your brain YOUNG

While there is no cure for Alzheimer's, scientists have found that regular exercise can help slow down age related brain cell death in healthy older adults. In particular, regular exercise positively affects the hippocampus region of the brain, which controls memory and balance.

Robyn A. Honea, a lead investigator with the Kansas Medical Center, had this to say:

"This is the first study to get an inside look into specifically where these changes occur in the brain - we're able to locate the changes associated with fitness to the actual memory region, the hippocampus, which is a key area for Alzheimer's-related atrophy. This suggests that maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness may positively modify Alzheimer's-related brain atrophy."

When it comes to Alzheimer's, it sounds to me like an ounce of preventive exercise may well be worth a pound of (at this time, non-existant) cure.

Maintain your sense of Balance

Another point that I want to stress is that, Alzheimer's or not, regular exercise helps older individuals maintain their sense of balance. In another report on anti aging discoveries, Megan J. Wraith of Western Medicine noted:

"Falls have a negative impact on a person's quality of life, often resulting in nursing home placement, increased mortality and significant costs to the community. Targeting this high risk group may be a relatively cost effective way of having a significant impact on the overall rate of falling in the elderly."

One of the great advantages of natural, body weight workouts such as those on this website is that they all force you to maintain and work your sense of balance. Exercise machines in a gym restrict your movements to the point that your balance is not worked at all. This is another reason simple, animal like movements are so far superior to modern gyms.

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