Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
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Being physically fit is known to contribute to a host of healthy benefits, including staving off metabolic diseases and protecting against heart disease. Now, a new study says that being physically fit can highly decrease a women’s risk of dementia.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Dementia is the general term for a decline in mental ability that is severe enough to impact every day life. Memory loss, for example, is one of the symptoms. Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common type of dementia.
Symptoms of Dementia include significantly impaired memory, communication and language, ability to focus, reasoning and judgement, and visual perception. Dementia occurs when there is damage to the brains cells. “This damage interferes with the ability of the brain cells to communicate with each other. When brain cells cannot communicate normally, thinking, behavior and feelings can be affected”, reports the Alzehimer’s Associations website.
“At least 1 in 20 people with dementia developed it an age younger than 65. It is estimated that dementia affects one in 14 people over 65 and one is six over 80. Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, but for most other dementia’s, men and women have much the same risk. There is some evidence that people from certain ethnic communities are high risk of dementia than others, including South Asians, African or African-Caribbean”, reports The Alzheimer’s Society.
A new study from the University of Gothernburg in Sweden has now found that women who are very physically fit in middle age have an almost 90% decreased risk of being diagnosed with dementia later in life, unlike their moderately fit peers, who are more exposed to this condition. The results of this study are published in the journal Neurology.
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For the purpose of this study, the researchers worked with 191 women, aged 50 (on average). The participants’ cardiovascular fitness, or their ability to sustain physical effort over a prolonged period, was assessed through a bicycle exercise test. The research team asked the women to participate in the exercise until they felt physically exhausted; this allowed the researchers to establish what each participant’s peak cardiovascular capacity was. Peak capacity is defines as “the maximum ability of the cardiovascular system to deliver oxygen to exercising skeletal muscle and of the exercising muscle to extract oxygen from the blood.” Of the women who scored highly fit, only 5% were diagnosed in the follow up period of 44 years after the study. Twenty-five percent of the moderately fit participants and 32% of the women who low physical fitness levels developed the disease.
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In order to achieve peak performance, athletes need good nutrition and specific vitamins and minerals to keep their bodies in optimal health. Female athletes have special nutritional needs, due to hormones and menstruation. The three commonly suggested minerals for female athletes are iron, copper and zinc. But a new study shows that a combination of those minerals with carnitine and phosphatidylserine will further improve aerobic exercise performance for women.
The mineral iron is an essential component of proteins and enzymes in our body. Iron transports oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body via the hemoglobin within red blood cells. During physical activity, iron helps match the supply of oxygen to the demand of working muscles and is important for endurance; people who engage in regular exercise may have a 30% higher-than-usual iron requirement. The prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in the US population is 2% in men and 9-12% in women. Symptoms of an iron deficiency include fatigue, loss of energy, shortness of breath, and headaches (particularly with exercise). Vegetarians, vegans and females in their menstruating years may benefit from iron supplementation. Speak with your doctor or a nutritionist before starting an iron supplementation regimen.
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Copper is a mineral that helps the body make blood cells and keeps your nerve cells and immune system healthy. It also helps to form collagen, reducing free radical damage. Copper helps the body to absorb iron and is needed to make energy. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, signs of a possible copper deficiency include bone fractures, osteoporosis, and anemia. Speak with your doctor or a nutritionist before starting a copper supplementation regimen.
Zinc is a very important, essential mineral in the body. It helps to support your immune system, is essential for wound healing and supports healthy growth and development of the body during adolescence, childhood and pregnancy. Most of the zinc in the body is found in the muscle tissue and the bone. The risk of zinc deficiency is much greater in women than in men, especially when they are breastfeeding.
Published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, researchers argued that “aerobic exercise performance can respond to some type of increased micronutrient intake. For active, young adult women, intake of these three minerals – iron, copper, and zinc – may often fall below optimal amounts.”
Researchers set out to perform two small clinical trials, each with a different set of participants to test reproducibility of the results.
For the first trial, 42 aerobically fit young women were randomly divided into three different groups. One group received a ‘generic’ mineral complex (iron, copper, zinc, carnitine, and phosphatidylserine). The next received the same combination but with ‘more absorbable’ minerals – iron bisglycinate, copper glycinate, zinc glycinate, carnitine and phosphatidylserine. The placebo group received only cornstarch. All of the supplements were in powdered form and split into two servings, taken daily.
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In the second trial, a new set of 34 participants were divided into two groups; the first received a similar ‘generic’ combination as in the first trial, but with half the amount of carnitine. The placebo control group for trial two also received a cornstarch capsule.
In both trials, researchers found that participants who ingested the glycinate mineral combination ran faster in three miles than the other groups. Distance covered in a cycling test increased, as well.