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April 23rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, April 23 (HealthDay News) — Elderly women noticing the
first signs of memory decline might ward off full-blown dementia by
engaging in routine strength training, new research suggests.
But while supervised weight-lifting seemed to boost mental functioning
among those struggling with incipient memory loss, aerobics-based activity
programs did not confer a similar mental health benefit, the study team
found.
“Most studies have looked at aerobic training, but this study compares
both aerobic and strength training,” explained study co-author Teresa
Liu-Ambrose, an assistant professor in the department of physical therapy
at the University of British Columbia. “And among people who don’t yet
have dementia but are already at a high risk in terms of mild memory and
executive function impairment, our study shows that strength training, but
not aerobics training, does have benefits for cognition.”
Liu-Ambrose, also an investigator at the university’s Center for Hip
Health and Mobility and the Brain Research Center, and her colleagues
outlined their findings in the April 23 issue of the Archives of
Internal Medicine.
The authors noted that dementia is a huge public health concern, with a
new case diagnosed somewhere in the world every 7 seconds.
Among the elderly, mild “cognitive,” or mental, impairment is viewed as
an indicator of future full-blown dementia risk, as well as a chance to
perhaps intervene with some form of treatment that might lower that
risk.
Previously, the study team found that a year of twice-weekly resistance
(strength) classes seemed to boost overall cognitive capacity among
mentally healthy elderly women.
This time, the team focused on women between 70 and 80 years old who
had complained of memory difficulties and were deemed to have “probable”
mild cognitive impairment.
For six months, the women engaged in 60-minute classes twice a week.
One-third were randomly assigned to a strength-training program that
included lifting weights; one-third walked outdoors in an aerobics
program; and one-third took basic balance and toning classes.
Seventy-seven women completed the program, which included standard
verbal and visual memory tests, and decision-making and problem-solving
tasks. Almost one-third underwent functional MRI at the start and end of
the study to look for brain activity changes.
After 6 months, compared to those in the balance/tone classes, the
strength-training group was found to have experienced “significant”
cognitive improvement.
The strength-training group also experienced activity changes in three
specific parts of the brain’s cortex associated with cognitive behavior,
the researchers found. These changes were not seen among the balance/tone
group.
As for the aerobics group, while significant physical improvements were
cited relative to the balance/tone group, this group did not appear to
accrue the same mental benefits as the strength-training group.
The findings might even be conservative, the authors said, because many
women skipped classes.
The team cautioned that their findings may not necessarily apply to
women of a different age group, or to men in general.
Catherine Roe, an assistant professor of neurology at the Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis, hailed the effort as a
“worthwhile avenue of exploration” while also expressing some
surprise.
“There is certainly other work that has also suggested that exercise
can be beneficial cognitively,” she noted. “Participation in physical
activity definitely seems to help preserve memory and thinking
skills.”
On the other hand, Roe said, this study “surprises me, because I can’t
think of a mechanism off-hand why one (exercise method) would work and not
the other.”
To that point, Liu-Ambrose said that for now, her team could only
hypothesize.
“It could be that resistance-training requires more learning and
monitoring by its very nature,” she said. “If you’re lifting weights you
have to monitor your sets, your reps, you use weight machines and you have
to adjust the seat, etc. But with walking it’s much more natural for most,
so there’s less cognitive involvement. But at this point we don’t have a
clear idea of what’s going on at the mechanistic level.”
Liu-Ambrose also acknowledged that longer-term benefits remain unknown.
“But I would say that overall physical activity of this sort is a pretty
promising strategy, because it’s one of the few interventions that can be
delivered globally, and it’s pretty inexpensive compared with other
approaches.”
More information
For more on mild cognitive impairment, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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