Spare 5 minutes a day to slash your dementia risk: Study explains how

If you plan to take a trip down memory lane when you're older, start by setting aside at least 5 minutes a day now! Yes, that’s right. Even exercising 5 minutes a day is linked with multiple health benefits, including the reduction of dementia risk. Small amounts of moderate to vigorous physical activity are associated with big reductions in dementia risk, as per a study.
A study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, suggests that even frail older adults may benefit from a little exercise. Exercise can help prevent dementia. The researchers found that moderate to vigorous physical activity as little as 35 minutes per week for four years is associated with a 41% lower risk of developing dementia over an average compared to zero exercise. Even for unwell older adults exercise can lower dementia risks.
Dementia risk decreased with an increase in physical activity. The researchers analyzed data from 90,000 adults living in the U.K. who wore smart-watch-type activity trackers. The study revealed that dementia risks were 60% lower in participants in the 35 to 69.9 minutes of physical activity/week category. In people who incorporated 70 to 139.9 minutes/week, the risk goes down to 63%. Those who engage in 140 or more minutes of physical activity per week have a 69% lower risk.

“Our findings suggest that increasing physical activity, even as little as five minutes per day, can reduce dementia risk in older adults,” Amal Wanigatunga, PhD, MPH, lead author assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology. Wanigatunga is also a core faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health and has a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said in a statement. “This adds to a growing body of evidence that some exercise is better than nothing, especially with regard to an aging-related disorder that affects the brain that currently has no cure.”
Dementia, from Alzheimer’s disease, is a common condition in old age, and it affects about seven million people in the U.S., including about one-third of those aged 85 and older. The risk increases with age, and recent studies suggest that dementia is somewhat preventable, within a normal lifespan, by lifestyle changes such as better control of cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar, and being more active.

Though the minimum amount of activity to reduce dementia risk is unknown, in many older adults, especially frail ones, the high amounts of exercise recommended in official guidelines are unattainable and may discourage any exercise at all. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.K. National Health System recommend adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, an average of 20 minutes per day.

For their study, Wanigatunga analyzed data from the UK Biobank project, a large ongoing study that has approximately 500,000 individuals. The dataset used in this research included 89,667 British adults, mostly aged 50 and older, who wore wrist accelerometers to track their physical activity for a week between February 2013 and December 2015. Their health was monitored for an average of 4.4 years, until November 2021, during which 735 participants were diagnosed with dementia.

The link between higher activity and lower dementia risk was striking. Participants in the lowest activity category, engaged in one to 34.9 minutes of physical activity per week, and they had an apparent risk reduction of about 41%.
“This suggests that even frail or nearly frail older adults might be able to reduce their dementia risk through low-dose exercise,” Wanigatunga adds.
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