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For the 6.2 million Americans currently affected by Alzheimer's disease, the condition can be truly debilitating – interfering with judgment, distorting personality, erasing precious memories, and torpedoing the potential of many seniors to live independently.  While pharmaceutical treatments for Alzheimer's disease and dementia have yielded disappointing results, brand-new research – involving a simple, natural intervention – might provide a ray of hope.
In a just-published study from UC San Francisco, researchers examined the potential of regular physical activity to maintain healthy cognition and memory in elderly individuals.  Let's look at the encouraging findings.
Physical Activity Alters Brain Chemistry and Protects Function
The study, published last month in the journal Alzheimer's and dementia, involved the postmortem examination of 404 elderly patients from the Memory and Aging Project at Rush University in Chicago.  The project had tracked the later-life physical activity of the participants, who had agreed to donate their brains after death.  The scientists found that the patients who had stayed physically active had more of a certain type of protein that enhances the connections (or synapses) between neurons – promoting healthy thought processes and memory and allowing participants to maintain cognition late in life....