Dual-Task, High-Velocity Training For The Brain

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

Body & brain

The research question posed by Dr. Rachel Duckham et al: can long-term dual-task high-velocity functional power training improve cognitive function in older adults, compared with usual care?

First you may be wondering, what’s that? So, it’s group-based dual-task functional power training performed twice weekly, combining high-velocity resistance movements with simultaneous cognitive and/or motor tasks.

Here’s what they found:

• Short-term effects: after the 6-month supervised phase, the intervention improved choice reaction time, attention, and psychomotor-attention compared with usual care.
• Long-term effects: at 12 and 18 months, benefits extended to visual learning and learning-working memory in the intervention group.
• Control group finding: the usual care group showed a slight, lesser improvement in executive function at 18 months.

In short, the answer is: yes, yes it can!

Read in full: Can dual-task high-velocity exercise training improve cognitive function in older adults? Secondary analysis of an 18-month cluster randomized controlled trial

Related: A Surprising Extra Way Exercise Fights Dementia

The downstream effects of vaccines

Vaccines have a single, simple purpose: reduce the incidence of the diseases they are created to vaccinate against, especially in the most vulnerable demographics. For example, RSV, flu, pneumococcal, and COVID vaccines primarily reduce infection, hospitalization, and disease severity in populations with higher baseline risk.

However, Dr. Stefania Maggi, geriatrician and senior fellow at the Institute of Neuroscience at the National Research Council in Padua, has shown how vaccines have “downstream effects” and, in her words, “are key tools to promote healthy aging and prevent physical and cognitive decline.”

For example her research found reduced dementia risk after vaccination for multiple diseases, including shingles, flu, pneumococcal disease, and Tdap (Tetanus, diphtheria, and polio).

This was a large-scale meta-analysis, and across 21 studies with more than 104 million participants, shingles vaccination was associated with a 24% reduction in dementia risk, flu with 13%, pneumococcal with a 36% reduction in Alzheimer’s risk, and Tdap with about a one-third reduction.

There are other downstream benefits too, for example decades of data link flu shots in older adults to lower risks of hospitalization for heart failure, pneumonia, heart attack, and stroke.

Read in full: Vaccines are helping older people more than we knew

Related: Vaccine Mythbusting

US officially leave the WHO

At the end of a process that we wrote about on January 24 last year (after Trump initiated the process of leaving via an executive order, accusing the World Health Organization of being too China-centric in the wake of the first flushes of the COVID pandemic, when multiple studies indicated that delayed lockdowns and politicized avoidance of public health measures worsened American health outcomes and especially mortality in the United States), the US has now officially withdrawn from the WHO as of 23 January 2026.

On the one hand, this has caused economic problems all around, including the US is/was several years behind on payments, with arrears estimated at $260m that Washington says it will not pay. Also, it has of course caused a lot of job losses across the US.

On the other hand, US officials said they would rely on bilateral relationships, NGOs, and faith-based groups for disease surveillance and global health work, but provided no concrete details. Those same US officials were also unsure whether the country would continue participating in global information sharing and development of the annual influenza vaccine.

Read in full: US officially leaves World Health Organization

Related: Stop The World… “US vs Them”?

Take care!