Your Walking Speed Could Indicate Dementia
Aslower walk as you age has always been a warning sign of increasing frailty that could lead to falls and other disabilities, experts say. Emerging research in small groups of elderly subjects has also found that a slower gait from year to year may be an early sign of cognitive decline.
That may be due to shrinking in the right hippocampus, which is the part of the brain associated with memory, according to studies.
But not all signs of cognitive decline predict later dementia -- only 10 per cent to 20 per cent of people age 65 or older with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) develop dementia over the next year, according to the National Institute on Aging.
“In many cases, the symptoms of MCI may stay the same or even improve,” the institute states.
Now, a large, new study of nearly 17,000 adults over age 65 finds people who walk about 5 per cent slower or more each year while also exhibiting signs of slower mental processing were most likely to develop dementia. The study was published on Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
“These results highlight the importance of gait in dementia risk assessment,” wrote corresponding author Taya Collyer, a research fellow at Peninsula Clinical School at Monash University in Victoria, Australia.
‘Dual decliners’ at highest risk
The new study followed a group of Americans over 65 and Australians over 70 for seven years. Every other year, people in the study were asked to take cognitive tests that measured overall cognitive decline, memory, processing speed and verbal fluency.
Twice every other year, subjects were also asked to walk 3 metres, or about 10 feet. The two results were then averaged to determine the person’s typical gait.
At the end of the study, researchers found the highest risk of dementia was for “dual decliners,” or people who not only walked more sluggishly but also showed some signs of cognitive decline, said Dr Joe Verghese, a professor of geriatrics and neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, who was not involved in the study.
Exercise may help
There are things we can do as we age to reverse the brain shrinkage that comes along with typical aging. Studies have found that aerobic exercise increases the size of the hippocampus, increasing some aspects of memory.
Buried deep in the brain’s temporal lobe, the hippocampus is an oddly shaped organ that is responsible for learning, consolidating memories and spatial navigation, such as the ability to remember directions, locations and orientations.