{"id":375025,"date":"2026-04-11T21:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T21:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375025\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T21:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T21:03:07","slug":"research-shows-women-who-focus-on-this-one-kind-of-fitness-have-a-much-lower-dementia-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/375025\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Shows Women Who Focus On This One Kind Of Fitness Have A Much Lower Dementia Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever watched a parent or grandparent slowly lose themselves to dementia,<\/a> you already know there’s no preparing for it. It’s one of those diseases that quietly reshapes the lives of everyone around them. And the hardest part is that there’s still no cure.<\/p>\n

Dementia is a scary thing to experience. For those who aren\u2019t familiar with this disease, it\u2019s a group of symptoms caused by disorders that affect the brain and its ability to function properly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alzheimer\u2019s disease is the most common type of dementia, and currently 50 million people worldwide suffer from it<\/a>, 5 million of whom are in the U.S. It’s also the sixth leading cause of death among U.S. adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you have personally witnessed the symptoms and signs of dementia with a loved one, you’ve probably asked yourself this question numerous times: \u00a0What can we do to give ourselves the best chance of avoiding this horrible disease?<\/p>\n

Research shows women who focus on cardiovascular fitness have a much lower risk of dementia<\/p>\n

\"young Mina Rad \/ Unsplash<\/p>\n

Learning how to get in shape and adopting a healthier lifestyle can certainly help lower your risk of dementia, and needless to say, living healthier reduces our likelihood of suffering from any disease.<\/p>\n

When living healthier, you think of working out, eating fruits and vegetables, and denying yourself sugar. And for women in particular, you wouldn\u2019t be wrong. In a study published in The Medical Journal of Neurology<\/a>, researchers found a link between women\u2019s cardiovascular fitness and their likelihood of getting dementia.<\/p>\n

The study was performed on 191 women in Sweden between 1968 and 2012, who were between the ages of 38 and 60 and completed an ergometer cycling test to assess their fitness levels. Throughout the test, each woman\u2019s workload was examined to see how long they could go before they became fatigued.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Can You Prevent Dementia? Brain Health Expert Says These 5 Things Quietly Damage Memory<\/a><\/p>\n

To distinguish between workload, there was a \u201clow fitness\u201d group (which consisted of 59 participants), a \u201cmedium fitness\u201d group (which consisted of 92 participants), and a \u201chigh fitness\u201d group (which consisted of 40 participants).<\/p>\n

The researchers found that among all 191 women, 44 of them (23 percent) developed dementia. Yet, among those who interrupted their workout due to reaching their submaximal workload, that number jumped to 45 percent.<\/p>\n

The women who didn\u2019t push themselves beyond the point of being tired were more susceptible to developing dementia<\/p>\n

“The level that you are so exhausted that you have to interrupt the test is a measure, in watts, of your work capacity,\u201d said Helena H\u00f6rder, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry<\/a> at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. \u201cCardiovascular fitness or endurance can also be tested in a submaximal test where you don\u2019t push the person to maximal capacity.”<\/p>\n

Researchers also found<\/a> that the average age at the start of dementia was 11 years later in the \u201chigh fitness\u201d group than in the \u201cmedium fitness\u201d group. Overall, \u201chigh fitness\u201d compared to \u201cmedium fitness\u201d decreased the risk of dementia by 88 percent!<\/p>\n

Granted, no study is perfect. Correlation does not equal causation. There could be other factors influencing results, such as genetics, lack of diversity within sample size, social life, and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Having an active social life is also important because there have been links between loneliness and dementia in the past<\/p>\n

No single habit is going to guarantee anything. However, researchers continue to come<\/a> to the conclusion that the way you treat your heart in midlife has a lot to say about what happens to your brain decades later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This could mean finally committing to that workout class you keep putting off, taking more brisk walks, or just making it a point to break a sweat a few times a week. Your future self might thank you for it.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Research Says This 2-Minute Daily Habit Could Help Protect Your Brain From Alzheimer\u2019s \u2014 And Almost No One Does It<\/a><\/p>\n

Eric Webb is a national award-winning pop culture critic, arts & entertainment journalist, editor, and film programmer.<\/p>\n

Related Stories From YourTango:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you’ve ever watched a parent or grandparent slowly lose themselves to dementia, you already know there’s no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[799,3248,565,134,111,139,69,5100],"class_list":{"0":"post-375025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-dementia","9":"tag-exercise","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-self"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}