Can Strength Training Fight Dementia?

…and other items from this week’s health news:

Strong muscles, strong brain?

Muscle mass and quality has been linked with better cognitive outcomes in old age, and now researchers have examined the onset of cognitive decline in relation to various muscular tests, including grip strength and “phase angle“, which is a measure of muscle quality via bioelectrical impedance.

They found that better muscle quality was linked to:

• better memory, language, executive function, and attention (in women)
• better memory (in men)

Read in full: Muscle quality may hold clues to early cognitive decline

Related: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

When “once” is once too often

Many people over a certain age fall, and this can often be life-changing (in a bad way), if not outright life-ending (such as by going to hospital, deteriorating rapidly enough to shock everyone, and then not coming home).

If you’re thinking “not me; that happens to older more infirm people”, rest assured, it can and statistically probably will happen to you at some point. So, how to play the odds?

❝One big challenge is that small balance impairments can go unnoticed until someone actually falls. So, we wanted to ask: Can we detect these impairments before someone gets hurt?❞

~ Dr. Jiaen Wu, lead researcher

In short, they arranged various tests, and found that some tests predicted instability well, while others did not at all:

❝We found that step-width variability, step-time variability and foot placement predictability, using steady-state data and subject-specific thresholds, detected impaired balance with the highest accuracy (≥86%), whereas other metrics were less effective (≤68%)❞

Read in full: Detecting balance impairments early could prevent life-threatening falls

Related: How To Not Fall, And How To Reduce Risk Of Damage If You Do Fall

One more reason to get plenty of fiber

Dr. Leticia Camargo Tavares et al. looked at the data of nearly 400,000 people, and found that short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), produced when gut bacteria digest dietary fiber, can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and hypertension by up to 20%.

How it works: these SCFAs effect their protective effect by activating specific receptors (GPCRs); genetic variants that impair these receptors prevent individuals from benefiting from SCFAs, and people with these genetic variants have significantly higher rates of hypertension, heart attacks, heart failure, and stroke, even after adjusting for factors like weight and smoking.

While nothing can currently be done if you have that genetic variant (which is about 1% of the population), it indicates that a high fiber diet is important for everyone in order to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease—for one more reason that we already knew.

In this case: your gut bacteria can’t produce SCFAs from dietary fiber if there’s not enough dietary fiber for them to use!

Read in full: Activation of receptors involved in gut microbial breakdown of fiber may cut heart disease risk by up to 20%

Related: Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)

Take care!