Cycling regularly during middle age can reduce the risk of dementia and maintain brain health, a new study suggests.
With the global number of dementia cases projected to rise from 55 million in 2019 to 139 million in 2050, the study aimed to investigate the relationship between how people travel, and dementia risk and brain structure.
It found that, compared with non-active travel such as driving or public transport, active travel such as cycling and walking was associated with a lower adjusted risk of dementia.
A lower risk of dementia
The study, conducted by researchers in China and Australia, assessed data from 479,723 participants collected over 13 years. The data was from UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database that contains de-identified genetic, lifestyle and health data.
The participants in the study had an average baseline age of 56.5 years. More than half were women and over 85 per cent were of European ancestry. They were free of dementia and able to walk at the beginning of the study.
Participants were asked which forms of transport they had used most to get about in the last four weeks, excluding commuting to and from work. The answers were categorised into four groups: non-active, walking, mixed-walking, and cycling and mixed-cycling.
Nearly half of the participants were non-active, while 6.8 per cent walked, 37 per cent were in the mixed-walking group and 7 per cent were in cycling and mixed-cycling.
Over a follow-up of 13 years, 8,845 cases of dementia and 3,956 cases of Alzheimer’s disease were recorded.
The study found that cycling and mixed cycling reduced the risk for three forms of dementia: Alzheimer’s diseases, young-onset dementia and late-onset dementia.
Cycling could help maintain brain health
Cycling or mixed cycling was significantly associated with a higher hippocampal volume, with the researchers suggesting that cycling is “a promising approach for maintaining brain health”.
“Our findings suggest that active travel modes, particularly cycling and mixed-cycling, are associated with higher hippocampal volumes. The hippocampus is critical for memory and cognitive function, and greater volume is generally considered a sign of better brain health,” co-author Liangkai Chen, of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, told MedPage Today.
“Cycling, especially as a regular form of transport, may help increase blood flow to the brain, reduce inflammation, and stimulate neurogenesis, and requires higher cognitive engagement during travel, which could all contribute to the observed preservation of hippocampal volume,” Chen added.
Participants without the APOE4 gene, which can double or triple the risk of dementia, appeared to derive greater benefits from active travel in terms of dementia risk. But the research suggests APOE4 carriers can still benefit from cycling.
Walking results were more mixed. “Our results suggest that mixed-walking models, which combine walking with other forms of travel that require higher cognitive engagement (eg, driving), may be more beneficial in reducing dementia risk than walking alone,” said Chen.
The study follows research published in the British Medical Journal that found that “weekend warriors” – those who exercise only once or twice a week – were 25 per cent less likely to develop dementia than those who didn’t exercise at all.
