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New United States research has found that doing aerobic exercise three times a week for just six months could be enough to see an improvement in the thinking skills of older adults with cognitive impairments.

Carried out by researchers at Duke University Medical Center, the new small-scale study looked at 160 participants with an average age of 65.

Participants had risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, and problems with thinking skills and cognitive impairments, defined as difficulty concentrating, making decisions or remembering but not severe enough to be diagnosed with dementia.

All participants were also defined as sedentary at the start of the study.

To examine the effects of both exercise and diet, participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups: aerobic exercise alone; following the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet alone; both aerobic exercise and the DASH diet; or health education, in which they received educational phone calls once every one or two weeks.

Those who were assigned to the exercise groups exercised three times a week for 45 minutes. Each session included a ten-minute warm-up and 35 minutes of aerobic exercise, such as walking, jogging or cycling on a stationary bicycle.

Those who followed the DASH diet, which was designed specifically for those with high blood pressure, adhered to a low-sodium, high-fiber diet rich in fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, low-fat dairy products, whole grains, and lean meats.

The findings, published in Neurology, showed that after six months of exercise, the increase in physical activity appeared to improve executive function, a set of skills which includes a person’s ability to regulate their own behavior, pay attention, organize and achieve goals, when compared to those who did not exercise.

Moreover, study participants’ scores on thinking tests improved by the equivalent of reversing nearly nine years of aging.

However, the researchers found no improvement in memory.

There was also no improvement found in participants who only consumed the DASH diet, and for those who received only health education, their performance on executive function tests actually worsened by a half year from their scores at the start of the study.

“The results are encouraging in that in just six months, by adding regular exercise to their lives, people who have cognitive impairments without dementia may improve their ability to plan and complete certain cognitive tasks,” said study author James A. Blumenthal, Ph.D.

Those who took part in both the exercise and diet also had higher average scores compared to those who took part in exercise or diet alone, however Blumenthal added that although there may be an added benefit of the DASH diet when combined with exercise, the number of participants was quite small and therefore the findings should be interpreted with caution.

“More research is still needed with larger samples, over longer periods of time to examine whether improvements to thinking abilities continue and if those improvements may be best achieved through multiple lifestyle approaches like exercise and diet,” Blumenthal said. JB

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