Doing this exact amount of exercise may help prevent Alzheimer’s

You might be aware that exercise is generally good for staving off Alzheimer’s disease, but this new study from South Korea unveils the exact amount of physical activity that one needs to start seeing an improvement in cognitive health – and it’s not as much as you’d think.

This is how much exercise you need

Exercise has long been a focus of doctors, wellness practitioners, and those looking to modify their lifestyles to maintain and elongate their healthy years. But you’ve probably heard this song before, and society’s fixation on the benefits of exercise can result in feeling scolded or reprimanded for not working out enough.

However, this new study on Alzheimer’s suggests that even 10 minutes of light to moderate exercise as little as three times a week can help your strength, cognition, and more. So don’t think of it as going out of your way to exercise – you could very well be doing these activities already, and you may not even realize it.

Conducted at the Yonsei University College of Medicine, this study measured 250,000 patients who reported having mild cognitive impairments (MCI), which results in symptoms such as forgetting things like appointments or events, losing your train of thought, feeling overwhelmed by understanding things, increased impulsivity, or inability to navigate new environments. These patients were sampled because those with MCI are over 10 times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Of this sample, there were six groups, including those who never engaged in physical activity, those who didn’t engage in physical activity until their MCI diagnosis, those who engaged in physical activity before their MCI diagnosis and then stopped when they got the diagnosis, and those who engaged in exercise both before and after their diagnosis. There were also groups that performed exercise regularly and those who exercised irregularly.

What kind of exercise should you do?

Regular exercise was defined as either moderate physical activity at least five times per week or vigorous physical activity at least three times per week. Vigorous activities involved tasks like carrying or lifting heavy objects, cycling, running, or other cardio.

The moderate exercise involved walking at a greater-than-leisurely pace, light biking, carrying lighter items like groceries or backpacks, and doubles tennis. Just 10 minutes a day of activity would count towards regular or irregular exercise.

Of those groups, the sample who never exercised had an 18% higher incidence of contracting Alzheimer’s than the group who exercised both before and after their diagnosis of MCI. Those who just started exercising upon their diagnosis had a reduced likelihood of contracting the disease at rates of up to 11%.

As both this study and many others will indicate, lower rates of Alzheimer’s (and dementia) in active older populations are a result of an increase in brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that regenerates neurons in the brain. Exercise also has other benefits for populations with MCI, such as increased cerebral blood flow, blood sugar regulation, and vascular stimulation.

So, what does this mean for someone who has recently been diagnosed with MCI, or fears that they may have it? The answer is obviously that you should be exercising, but it doesn’t have to be as often as you’d think, and it certainly doesn’t have to be too strenuous of a workout.

Remember that even just 10 minutes of moderate exercise as little as three times per week could decrease your incidence of your MCI developing into Alzheimer’s disease by 11%, even if you’ve never exercised in your life before.