How To Dodge The “Keto Flu”
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We have written before about the ketogenic diet, in one of our mythbusting editions:
Ketogenic Diet: Burning Fat Or Burning Out?
The answer to the titular question there, by the way, is both: keto is good for short-term weight loss, but long-term adherence can bring health risks that may make it not worthwhile.
To this end, we could flippantly say that the best way to dodge the “keto flu” (the unwanted symptoms commonly associated with the transition to a ketogenic diet) is to not do keto, but the fact is that there are valid reasons why some people will want to do keto, e.g:
- to do it short-term, enjoy the weight loss, and then keep the weight off with a more rounded diet (such as the Mediterranean diet)
- to do it long-term, in order to manage refractory epilepsy symptoms (the only reason the ketogenic diet was first created and popularized)
- to do it long-term, despite the health risks associated with such (because we’re not the boss of you, and you get to decide for yourself which risks are worth it and which aren’t)
So, with that in mind…
What is the “keto flu”?
The “keto flu” is not in fact a flu of any kind (“flu” gets bandied around a lot in general parlance, but really the term should only be used to refer to variants of the influenza virus), nor indeed even an infection of any kind.
Instead, it’s a collection of symptoms that typically appear a few days into starting the ketogenic diet, and usually continue for a few weeks to a month or so.
The most commonly-reported symptoms are fatigue, brain fog, headache, mood changes, lightheadedness, bad breath, muscle cramps, reduced exercise capacity, constipation, and/or diarrhea.
About those latter two, you may be wondering “how can you have both constipation and diarrhea?” and the answer is that often people will get one of them and try to treat it, and now find they have the other and so they try to treat that, and so oscillate between the two for a bit. Which we cannot imagine is fun, but it’s a pattern that does play out a lot.
A big reason for this is that any sudden change in diet will cause a commensurately sudden change in gut microbiota, which will have many effects on the rest of a person’s health.
There are other reasons too, though, including hypoglycemia (very common when suddenly drastically cutting carbs, for obvious reasons of: fewer carbs in means less sugar in the blood) and electrolyte loss.
In a recent large review of studies found that symptoms like halitosis, constipation, nausea, and vomiting were the most frequently reported; children experienced more issues like hypoglycemia and vomiting, while adults reported dizziness and fatigue. Kidney stones were rare in short-term studies but occurred in an average of 14% of long-term ketogenic diet adherents:
How to avoid it (aside from “don’t do keto”)
There are several main things to consider:
- a more gradual shift into a ketogenic diet, rather than doing it overnight, will allow the gut microbiota to change more gradually, which will avoid many of the symptoms associated with gastrointestinal upset
- electrolyte replacement (sodium, potassium) and again, doing a slower transition, can help avoid the symptoms associated with electrolyte loss
- medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) supplementation helps maintain ketone levels and may ease symptoms (though may cause—rather than alleviate—gastrointestinal problems if not introduced gradually)
About those electrolytes:
Are Electrolyte Supplements Worth It? Here’s When To Take Electrolytes (And When We Shouldn’t!)
And about those MCTs:
How Beneficial Is MCT Oil, Really?
Not sure if keto’s for you?
Check out:
Which Diet? Top Diets Ranked By Experts ← this is great for comparisons of the various dietary approaches
Or if you prefer to do things your own way, then consider:
What Macronutrient Balance Is Right For You? ← this one’s really quite comprehensive, if you’d like to figure out your own best approach in a personalized fashion.
Enjoy!
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Two Unusual Moves For Pelvic Health
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Dr. Brianne Grogan explains:
Get ready for it…
At the very least, the visuals she recommends are indeed unusual:
- “Blueberry picking mini squats” involve squatting back as if sitting into a chair while relaxing the pelvic floor muscles. As you rise, exhale and engage the pelvic floor by visualizing “plucking a blueberry” with the muscles around your vagina and anus. We’ll be honest; we’re not convinced she’s ever picked blueberries. However, the movement shown not only activates the pelvic floor but also works the glutes and deep abs. The focus is on coordinating breath, muscle release on the way down, and gentle contraction on the way up.
- “Smoothie kegels” use the imagery of sucking a thick smoothie up a straw to guide the pelvic floor muscles into a slow, strong lift. Hold the “suck” for 5–10 seconds, then fully release and imagine the smoothie flowing back down as you relax and open the pelvic floor. This exercise allows a focus on both the contraction and the complete relaxation, and can be performed while sitting, standing, or lying down—with a small ball or rolled towel under you to help enhance awareness and blood flow to the area.
A fascinating set of imagery indeed.
For more on all of this, plus visual demonstrations (no blueberries or straws involved), see:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Pelvic Floor Exercises (Not Kegels!) To Prevent Urinary Incontinence
Take care!
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Bread & Weight Gain/Loss: What’s The Truth?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
No question/request too big or small 😎
❝Every now and again I try quitting bread to lose some weight and it works, but it always seems to come back and then I eat bread again anyway. Is there a way to break out of this cycle?❞
Yes! You can break out of that cycle by simply enjoying bread in moderation without quitting (and then you will certainly not be in the cycle of quitting it and restarting it).
However, to give an answer that’s probably more in the spirit of your question:
Firstly, know that a lot of the short-term benefits of quitting bread are unrelated to fat loss. We’ve covered this part before, and in few words:
Cutting bread for 30 days can lead to weight loss for some people, but the initial change is often more a matter of reduced water retention and bloating rather than immediate fat loss. In particular, it’s common for people feel lighter within the first week or so because reducing fermentable carbohydrates can decrease gas production and resultant digestive discomfort, especially in those with sensitive guts.
You can read more about this, here: Does Quitting Bread For 30 Days Trigger Weight Loss?
Next, understand that oftentimes the issue is not the bread, so much as the glycemic index thereof, and this can vary wildly from one bread to another.
We wrote about this, here: Is Flour As Bad As Sugar?
And more broadly, here: Grains: Bread Of Life, Or Cereal Killer?
Lastly (for today), there’s some recent science that indicates the issue with bread is actually in your non-bread dietary components.
Researchers (Dr. Miona Marutani et al.) found that mice given access to carbohydrate-heavy foods like bread, rice, and wheat strongly preferred them over standard mouse food and gained body fat despite eating roughly the same number of calories.
In other words, the body fat gain wasn’t about eating more bread; it was about eating less of the other food!
You can read the paper itself, here: Wheat Flour Intake Promotes Weight Gain and Metabolic Changes in Mice
Now, this was a mouse study and may or may not be replicated in humans, but it at the very least presents us with an important reminder of the value of positive dieting, that is to say, worrying less about what to exclude from our diets, and more about what to include, to ensure we get good, diverse, nutrient coverage.
Yes, even if your goal is fat loss, making conscious choices about what to include, rather than what to exclude, can help a lot.
For more on that, enjoy: Intuitive Eating Might Not Be What You Think
Want to enjoy bread, healthily?
As we’ve said, moderation is key, as we as a focus on making sure to include plenty of good nutrients.
There are several ways to do this, including:
- A healthy sandwich with lots of nutritious things inside!
- Healthy things on toast (avocado toast is a great example)
- Soup with bread (just make sure there’s plenty of healthy stuff in the soup!)
Another approach (which can be done in tandem with the above) is to make healthier, non-wheat bread, for example:
- “4-Ingredient 10-Minute Bread” That’s High-Protein, High-Fiber, Gluten-Free
- Healthy Homemade Flatbreads ← a different healthy bread recipe of ours
- Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread ← another one, also in text
Enjoy!
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Will my boobs sag if I don’t wear a bra? And 5 other common questions about breasts and bras
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We’re all born with mammary glands – better known as breasts. These are made of glandular tissue, fat and the ligaments that attach them to our chest wall.
For roughly half of us – those born biologically female – our breasts will change dramatically in size and shape at puberty. Size is largely genetic: genes explain 56% of the differences in breast size between people. But breasts may also change during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and can be affected by age, diet and exercise.
So, what about bras?
There are a lot of popular beliefs about when, how and what kind of bra to wear to stop your boobs sagging or make them grow. But is there any evidence behind these?
Before we myth bust, let’s get one thing straight: breasts are sisters, not twins. So, while your bra is symmetrical, it’s normal your breasts aren’t.
Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock 1. Do bras give you cancer?
No, there is no evidence to show wearing a bra is linked to developing breast cancer.
This myth seems to come from the idea bras can block lymphatic drainage, but there is no evidence to support this or any other cancer-causing mechanism.
One study, involving more than 1,000 women aged 55 to 74, compared those diagnosed with breast cancer to those without. Researchers found no aspect of bra-wearing – including how many hours per day and whether it had an underwire – was linked to breast cancer risk in post-menopausal women.
Risk factors for breast cancer are well established and include being female, over 50 years old, having a family history of breast cancer, and lifestyle factors such as inactivity and drinking a lot of alcohol.
2. Does sleeping in a bra stop your boobs growing?
No. Wearing a bra – day or night – won’t affect their size.
Breasts grow thanks to hormones, which are regulated by your brain. Nutrition and overall health can also play a role; for example, if you lose body fat, your breasts may also shrink.
There is no evidence to suggest sleeping with a bra has a negative effect on their growth.
So, it comes down to comfort. Women with larger breasts may find a bra reduces how much their breasts move during sleep, while others may find it uncomfortable.
If sleeping in a bra is comfortable for you, don’t worry – it doesn’t affect boob size. Willie B. Thomas/Getty 3. Will wearing a bra stop my breasts sagging?
No.
Gravity affects everyone, meaning breasts will sag as we age. But larger breasts are affected more by gravitational forces pulling them towards the ground. This may stretch the skin and ligaments over time, making them sag more.
Being pregnant also usually makes your breasts grow bigger and this – along with milk production affecting their composition – can increase strain, potentially stretching skin and ligaments.
Some other factors can also increase this effect, including being older, having a higher body mass index, having multiple pregnancies and smoking. Even surgically reduced breasts sag more with smoking.
However, breastfeeding does not appear to make breasts saggy.
So, while we don’t have evidence to show bras can prevent natural sagging, a well-fitted one may offer support and comfort.
4. Should you only exercise in a sports bra?
Yes. Breasts and bras move with your body. The pull of gravity on your breasts has the potential to cause damage by straining the skin and breaking collagen fibres which support the structure of the breast.
Again, this is more likely to affect women with larger breasts. Researchers found when women with D-cups exercised without a sports bra, their breasts moved up and down about 4 centimetres when walking. When they ran, their breasts bounced about 15cm – the height of your smartphone.
High-impact sports bras are the most effective at reducing breast movement and discomfort, compared to crop tops and everyday bras.
So exercising in a bandeau or “boob tube” bra – like these Roman women in a 4th century mosaic – is not recommended.
These strips of fabric pulled across the chest don’t offer support against gravity and bounce. izanbar/Getty 5. Can underwire bras injure your boobs?
Yes. It’s possible for underwires from bras to escape their casing and scratch or dig into your breast skin, but this has not been studied.
However, one 2023 study found women who wear underwire bras after breast implants are 2.7 more times likely to have them rupture. This suggests underwire bras can put more pressure on breasts.
One case study in 2014 suggested a tight underwire bra was responsible for blocking and inflaming breast veins, causing pain and breast tissue to harden.
However we don’t have evidence this condition is common, and it can be avoided by wearing correctly fitted bras. If you have breast pain or notice unusual lumps or changes, speak to a doctor.
6. Should I get fitted if I have small breasts?
Yes. Wearing a poorly fitting bra can cause unnecessary discomfort, even if you have small breasts.
One study of 309 Australian women, with bra cup sizes ranging from A to K, found only one in ten were wearing a bra that fitted correctly. This affected women with small, medium, large and extremely large breasts equally.
Most had an incorrectly fitting backband (either too loose or too tight) and the wrong cup size. However women with smaller breasts were more likely to have badly fitting bra straps while women with medium or larger breasts were more likely to have ill-fitting front bands and underwire.
A 2018 review of evidence about women with benign but unidentified breast pain (mastalgia) also found most experienced relief when offered bra-fitting advice and reassurance from their GP.
Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology in the College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University and Monika Zimanyi, Associate Professor in Anatomy, James Cook University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What is mitochondrial donation? And how might it help people have a healthy baby one day?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Mitochondria are tiny structures in cells that convert the food we eat into the energy our cells need to function.
Mitochondrial disease (or mito for short) is a group of conditions that affect this ability to generate the energy organs require to work properly. There are many different forms of mito and depending on the form, it can disrupt one or more organs and can cause organ failure.
There is no cure for mito. But an IVF procedure called mitochondrial donation now offers hope to families affected by some forms of mito that they can have genetically related children free from mito.
After a law to allow mitochondrial donation in Australia was passed in 2022, scientists are now preparing for a clinical trial to see if mitochondrial donation is safe and works.
Jonathan Borba/Pexels What is mitochondrial disease?
There are two types of mitochondrial disease.
One is caused by faulty genes in the nuclear DNA, the DNA we inherit from both our parents and which makes us who we are.
The other is caused by faulty genes in the mitochondria’s own DNA. Mito caused by faulty mitochondrial DNA is passed down through the mother. But the risk of disease is unpredictable, so a mother who is only mildly affected can have a child who develops serious disease symptoms.
Mitochondrial disease is the most common inherited metabolic condition affecting one in 5,000 people.
Some people have mild symptoms that progress slowly, while others have severe symptoms that progress rapidly. Mito can affect any organ, but organs that need a lot of energy such as brain, muscle and heart are more often affected than other organs.
Mito that manifests in childhood often involves multiple organs, progresses rapidly, and has poor outcomes. Of all babies born each year in Australia, around 60 will develop life-threatening mitochondrial disease.
What is mitochondrial donation?
Mitochondrial donation is an experimental IVF-based technique that offers people who carry faulty mitochondrial DNA the potential to have genetically related children without passing on the faulty DNA.
It involves removing the nuclear DNA from the egg of someone who carries faulty mitochondrial DNA and inserting it into a healthy egg donated by someone not affected by mito, which has had its nuclear DNA removed.
The donor egg (in blue) has had its nuclear DNA removed. Author provided The resulting egg has the nuclear DNA of the intending parent and functioning mitochondria from the donor. Sperm is then added and this allows the transmission of both intending parents’ nuclear DNA to the child.
A child born after mitochondrial donation will have genetic material from the three parties involved: nuclear DNA from the intending parents and mitochondrial DNA from the egg donor. As a result the child will likely have a reduced risk of mito, or no risk at all.
The procedure removes the faulty DNA to reduce the chance of it passing on to the baby. Josh Willink/Pexels This highly technical procedure requires specially trained scientists and sophisticated equipment. It also requires both the person with mito and the egg donor to have hormone injections to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs. The eggs are then retrieved in an ultrasound-guided surgical procedure.
Mitochondrial donation has been pioneered in the United Kingdom where a handful of babies have been born as a result. To date there have been no reports about whether they are free of mito.
Maeve’s Law
After three years of public consultation The Mitochondrial Donation Law Reform (Maeve’s Law) Bill 2021 was passed in the Australian Senate in 2022, making mitochondrial donation legal in a research and clinical trial setting.
Maeve’s law stipulates strict conditions including that clinics need a special licence to perform mitochondrial donation.
To make sure mitochondrial donation works and is safe before it’s introduced into Australian clinical practice, the law also specifies that initial licences will be issued for pre-clinical and clinical trial research and training.
We’re expecting one such licence to be issued for the mitoHOPE (Healthy Outcomes Pilot and Evaluation) program, which we are part of, to perfect the technique and conduct a clinical trial to make sure mitochondrial donation is safe and effective.
Before starting the trial, a preclinical research and training program will ensure embryologists are trained in “real-life” clinical conditions and existing mitochondrial donation techniques are refined and improved. To do this, many human eggs are needed.
The need for donor eggs
One of the challenges with mitochondrial donation is sourcing eggs. For the preclinical research and training program, frozen eggs can be used, but for the clinical trial “fresh” eggs will be needed.
One possible source of frozen eggs is from people who have stored eggs they don’t intend to use.
A recent study looked at data on the outcomes of eggs stored at a Melbourne clinic from 2012 to 2021. Over the ten-year period, 1,132 eggs from 128 patients were discarded. No eggs were donated to research because the clinics where the eggs were stored did not conduct research requiring donor eggs.
However, research shows that among people with stored eggs, the number one choice for what to do with eggs they don’t need is to donate them to research.
This offers hope that, given the opportunity, those who have eggs stored that they don’t intend to use might be willing to donate them to mitochondrial donation preclinical research.
As for the “fresh” eggs needed in the future clinical trial, this will require individuals to volunteer to have their ovaries stimulated and eggs retrieved to give those people impacted by mito a chance to have a healthy baby. Egg donors may be people who are friends or relatives of those who enter the trial, or it might be people who don’t know someone affected by mito but would like to help them conceive.
At this stage, the aim is to begin enrolling participants in the clinical trial in the next 12 to 18 months. However this may change depending on when the required licences and ethics approvals are granted.
Karin Hammarberg, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University; Catherine Mills, Professor of Bioethics, Monash University; Mary Herbert, Professor, Anatomy & Developmental Biology, Monash University, and Molly Johnston, Research fellow, Monash Bioethics Centre, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What Would a Second Trump Presidency Look Like for Health Care?
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On the presidential campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is, once again, promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures.
“We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Jan. 6.
The perplexing revival of one of Trump’s most politically damaging crusades comes at a time when the Obama-era health law is even more popular and widely used than it was in 2017, when Trump and congressional Republicans proved unable to pass their own plan to replace it. That failed effort was a big part of why Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms.
Despite repeated promises, Trump never presented his own Obamacare replacement. And much of what Trump’s administration actually accomplished in health care has been reversed by the Biden administration.
Still, Trump secured some significant policy changes that remain in place today, including efforts to bring more transparency to prices charged by hospitals and paid by health insurers.
Trying to predict Trump’s priorities in a second term is even more difficult given that he frequently changes his positions on issues, sometimes multiple times.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Perhaps Trump’s biggest achievement is something he rarely talks about on the campaign trail. His administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” managed to create, test, and bring to market a covid-19 vaccine in less than a year, far faster than even the most optimistic predictions.
Many of Trump’s supporters, though, don’t support — and some even vehemently oppose — covid vaccines.
Here is a recap of Trump’s health care record:
Public Health
Trump’s pandemic response dominates his overall record on health care.
More than 400,000 Americans died from covid over Trump’s last year in office. His travel bans and other efforts to prevent the global spread of the virus were ineffective, his administration was slower than other countries’ governments to develop a diagnostic test, and he publicly clashed with his own government’s health officials over the response.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump resumed large rallies and other public campaign events that many public health experts regarded as reckless in the face of a highly contagious, deadly virus. He personally flouted public health guidance after contracting covid himself and ending up hospitalized.
At the same time, despite what many saw as a politicization of public health by the White House, Trump signed a massive covid relief bill (after first threatening to veto it). He also presided over some of the largest boosts for the National Institutes of Health’s budget since the turn of the century. And the mRNA-based vaccines Operation Warp Speed helped develop were an astounding scientific breakthrough credited with helping save millions of lives while laying the groundwork for future shots to fight other diseases including cancer.
Abortion
Trump’s biggest contribution to abortion policy was indirect: He appointed three Supreme Court justices, who were instrumental in overturning the constitutional right to an abortion.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump has been all over the place on the red-hot issue. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Trump has bemoaned the issue as politically bad for Republicans; criticized one of his rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for signing a six-week abortion ban; and vowed to broker a compromise with “both sides” on abortion, promising that “for the first time in 52 years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us.”
He has so far avoided spelling out how he’d do that, or whether he’d support a national abortion ban after any number of weeks.
More recently, however, Trump appears to have mended fences over his criticism of Florida’s six-week ban and more with key abortion opponents, whose support helped him get elected in 2016 — and whom he repaid with a long list of policy changes during his presidency.
Among the anti-abortion actions taken by the Trump administration were a reinstatement of the “Mexico City Policy” that bars giving federal funds to international organizations that support abortion rights; a regulation to bar Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide abortions from the federal family planning program, Title X; regulatory changes designed to make it easier for health care providers and employers to decline to participate in activities that violate their religious and moral beliefs; and other changes that made it harder for NIH scientists to conduct research using fetal tissue from elective abortions.
All of those policies have since been overturned by the Biden administration.
Health Insurance
Unlike Trump’s policies on reproductive health, many of his administration’s moves related to health insurance still stand.
For example, in 2020, Trump signed into law the No Surprises Act, a bipartisan measure aimed at protecting patients from unexpected medical bills stemming from payment disputes between health care providers and insurers. The bill was included in the $900 billion covid relief package he opposed before signing, though Trump had expressed support for ending surprise medical bills.
His administration also pushed — over the vehement objections of health industry officials — price transparency regulations that require hospitals to post prices and insurers to provide estimated costs for procedures. Those requirements also remain in place, although hospitals in particular have been slow to comply.
Medicaid
While first-time candidate Trump vowed not to cut popular entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, his administration did not stick to that promise. The Affordable Care Act repeal legislation Trump supported in 2017 would have imposed major cuts to Medicaid, and his Department of Health and Human Services later encouraged states to require Medicaid recipients to prove they work in order to receive health insurance.
Drug Prices
One of the issues the Trump administration was most active on was reducing the price of prescription drugs for consumers — a top priority for both Democratic and Republican voters. But many of those proposals were blocked by the courts.
One Trump-era plan that never took effect would have pegged the price of some expensive drugs covered by Medicare to prices in other countries. Another would have required drug companies to include prices in their television advertisements.
A regulation allowing states to import cheaper drugs from Canada did take effect, in November 2020. However, it took until January 2024 for the FDA, under Trump’s successor, to approve the first importation plan, from Florida. Canada has said it won’t allow exports that risk causing drug shortages in that country, leaving unclear whether the policy is workable.
Trump also signed into law measures allowing pharmacists to disclose to patients when the cash price of a drug is lower than the cost using their insurance. Previously pharmacists could be barred from doing so under their contracts with insurers and pharmacy benefit managers.
Veterans’ Health
Trump is credited by some advocates for overhauling Department of Veterans Affairs health care. However, while he did sign a major bill allowing veterans to obtain care outside VA facilities, White House officials also tried to scuttle passage of the spending needed to pay for the initiative.
Medical Freedom
Trump scored a big win for the libertarian wing of the Republican Party when he signed into law the “Right to Try Act,” intended to make it easier for patients with terminal diseases to access drugs or treatments not yet approved by the FDA.
But it is not clear how many patients have managed to obtain treatment using the law because it is aimed at the FDA, which has traditionally granted requests for “compassionate use” of not-yet-approved drugs anyway. The stumbling block, which the law does not address, is getting drug companies to release doses of medicines that are still being tested and may be in short supply.
Trump said in a Jan. 10 Fox News town hall that the law had “saved thousands and thousands” of lives. There’s no evidence for the claim.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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How Much Exercise Is Really Necessary To Keep Dementia At Bay?
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Hint: it’s rather less than the oft-recommended 150 minutes per week!
But that is still good though and that recommendation is still worthwhile. We often say “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain”, because the former feeds the latter (with oxygen and nutrients) and helps clear away detritus. It can’t do that without good circulation.
For that reason, we have written such articles as: What’s Your Vascular Dementia Risk? ← includes actual numbers and a risk calculator tool and things like that 😎
The threshold you want to meet
All so recently, researchers at the Texas Center for Community Health and Aging found that maintaining moderate regular activity lowered dementia risk in adults aged 50 and older.
How much is “moderate”, that’s so much less than the 150 minutes popularly recommended?
Will not keep you in suspense: per the study, at least 20 minutes of exercise twice-weekly appeared to slow dementia in older adults with mild cognitive impairment.
It was quite a big study; the team analysed data from 9,714 adults (average age 78), and assessed memory, working memory, and attention/processing speed. Of those in the study, 8% developed Alzheimer’s disease or dementia during the study period.
As Dr. Lee noted,
❝One out of every nine adults 45 and older in the United States say they experience confusion or memory loss that is getting worse.
Our age and how well our brain was working to begin with are factors. In addition, solving puzzles, spending time with others and staying physically active may help slow down or even stop the slide.
The benefits of exercise for this group have long been known, but by using a longitudinal study design and analyzing various levels of activity, we could determine the amount and duration needed to help prevent further decline.❞
About those numbers, and how the “20 minutes twice-weekly” was arrived at:
❝Individuals with a PA level of 2.80 experienced a 4.6% reduction in the odds of developing AD/ADRD (B = −0.046, OR = 0.954, 95% CI, 0.946–0.964). Similar significant effects were observed at PA levels of 2.60, 2.40, and 2.20, with ORs of 0.962, 0.967, and 0.970, respectively, all within 95% CI. These findings indicate that maintaining a PA level between 2.20 and 2.80 is significantly associated with a reduced risk of AD/ADRD. Lower PA levels such as 2.00 (OR = 0.974, P = .09) and 1.80 (OR = 0.983, P = .06) showed nonsignificant trends toward risk reduction.❞
- PA = physical activity
- ADRD = Alzheimer’s disease & related dementias
Translating those numbers from sciencese, it’s worth noting that while the PA levels (e.g. 1.80, 2.00, 2.20, 2.40, 2.60) look like ratios (wherein 2.0 would mean doing twice as much as the average person, with the average person definitionally scoring 1.0), they’re not.
In actual fact, they’re borrowed from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) 2012–2020 survey instruments, whose questions ask how often participants do:
- vigorous activity
- moderate activity
- mild/low-intensity activity
For each, participants choose one of four frequency categories, which are numerically coded as follows:
1 = hardly ever / never
2 = one to three times per month
3 = once a week
4 = more than once a weekWhich is how the “20 minutes (enough to count as having exercised if picking the most moderate exercise options), twice per week (incidence)” gets represented in numbers, as this maps neatly to the cutoff between PA level 2.0 (nonsignificant) and PA level 2.2+ (significant).
Since in numbers, this looks like:
- ≤ 2.0 represents mostly just monthly activity, thus no significant benefit
- ≥ 2.2 is at least weekly activity in multiple categories, thus a statistically significant benefit
So, get those two 20-minute walks in per week, and you’re hitting the minimum for significant brain benefits!
See also: How To Walk Away From Alzheimer’s
Want to do even better for your brain? Check out: Do Try This At Home: The 12-Week Brain Fitness Program (12 Weeks To Measurably Boost Your Brain)
You may be wondering what the strange-looking creature is in the image at the top of that article. No, not the neuroscientist, the other image, the cartoon. The clue is in its seahorse-like shape—it’s a hippocampus, best known for its role in memory! Training with weights in the cartoon there, which is not quite the way to train it in reality.
However! Training with weights (using your muscles) can actually improve brain health too; see: Can Strength Training Fight Dementia?
Want to learn more?
For a much deeper dive, you might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:
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