If you ever needed another reason to lace up those sneakers and head out for a walk, science just gave you one. Walking, it turns out, doesn’t just help you burn calories or clear your mind after a long day or help with cardio health. It actually help keeps your memory sharp and your brain young, too.
A new study published in Nature Medicine by researchers at Mass General Brigham, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, found that increasing your daily steps, even by a modest amount, could slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in people at higher risk.
So if your fitness tracker has been collecting dust, consider this your gentle nudge from both science and your future self.
Researchers analysed data from nearly 300 adults aged 50 to 90 who were part of the Harvard Aging Brain Study. All participants were cognitively healthy when the study began and were followed for up to 14 years.
Using brain scans, researchers tracked two key Alzheimer’s proteins (amyloid-beta and tau) and measured participants’ daily steps using pedometers.
Here’s where things get interesting:
People who walked 3,000–5,000 steps per day experienced a delay of three years in cognitive decline. Those who managed 5,000–7,500 steps per day slowed their decline by an impressive seven years.
The couch potatoes? They had faster buildup of tau proteins and a quicker decline in memory and thinking skills.
That’s right: your brisk evening walk might just be giving your brain a much-needed tune-up.
“This sheds light on why some people who appear to be on an Alzheimer’s disease trajectory don’t decline as quickly as others,” said Dr. Jasmeer Chhatwal, senior author of the study.
Lifestyle factors appear to impact the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that lifestyle changes may slow the emergence of cognitive symptoms if we act early.
WHAT’S HAPPENING INSIDE THE BRAIN
To understand why walking helps, think of your brain like a well-tuned machine. The proteins amyloid-beta and tau are naturally present in everyone’s brain, but in Alzheimer’s disease, they start clumping together, disrupting normal brain function.
The researchers found that participants who were more physically active had a slower buildup of tau proteins, the very tangles associated with memory loss.
Essentially, walking helped keep their brains cleaner and their neurons happier.
As Dr. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist and co-principal investigator of the Harvard Aging Brain Study, put it: “These findings show us that it’s possible to build cognitive resilience and resistance to tau pathology in the setting of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. This is particularly encouraging for our quest to ultimately prevent Alzheimer’s disease dementia.”
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