“Among a group of Swedish women, those with high cardiovascular fitness at middle age were 88% less likely to develop dementia decades later, compared with women with moderate cardiovascular fitness, researchers reported online in Neurology.”
This means that if cardiovascular fitness is improved or maintained during middle age that has the potential to delay or prevent dementia from developing in a person’s later years. However, this was a limited study and it does not prove causation, just association, which means that more research needs to be done to determine if there is a true link between cardiovascular fitness and the prevention of dementia and if so when exactly in a person’s lifetime a high fitness level most important (be it midlife or otherwise).
To learn more details about the study read this post from the Psych Congress Network: “Fitness in Midlife May Significantly Lower Dementia Risk.” And you may also want to read the wonky source article, “Midlife cardiovascular fitness and dementia: A 44-year longitudinal population study in women“, published on March 14, 2018 by Helena Horder, PhD, Lena Johansson, PhD, XinXin Guo, MD, PhD, Gunnar Grimby, MD, Silke Kern, MD, PhD, Svante O ̈stling, MD, and Ingmar Skoog, MD. (The Neurology article came to our attention via Nicholas Bakalar’s post, “Fitness in Midlife May Help Fend Off Dementia” in the The New York Times.)