Question: Obviously diseases like alzheimers have serious effect on not only the person involved but the family around them. By keeping the body active and healthy, Would this slow down the process of deseases like Alzheimers? Or prevent it from occuring altogether? From doggymadkitty & bombompow!

Sally Barber answered on 15 Jun 2010:

This is a great question. I don’t know, Scientists have only recently started to look at the effects of lifestyle such as eating healthily and exercising regularly upon Alzheimer’s disease. In fact its only really in the last 2 years people have started to look at answering the questions that you are asking – you should both become exercise scientists with such great questions!

At the moment evidence suggests that being active in middle age and prevent the decline of brain function in later life. Also if someones brain function is beginning to decline there are 2 studies which show that starting to exercise can slow down the development of Alzheimers disease. It is unlikely that exercise will be able to prevent the disease all together because there are genetic factors which mean that people get the disease. Exercise can not change these genetic factors. When some one already has Alzheimer’s disease exercise has been shown to have no affect on improving symptoms, but there are only two studies which have looked at this and neither had very many participants.

You also bring up another interesting point about family members of people with Alzheimer’s disease. It is not only important to see if exercise can effect the progression of the disease but also see whether it effects the behaviour of people with the disease. If it improves behaviour an exercise progamme will not only benefit the person with the disease but also their family aswell.