Yes.
Of all the things we could potentially do to lessen our risk for cognitive failure in later life, whether it's frank dementia—Alzheimer's being the primary cause—or whether it's a milder version, called mild cognitive impairment, the data are most compelling that physical exercise in mid and later life is the most important protective thing we can do. And that's something we have control over.
Whether, ultimately, it reduces the risk of our ever getting Alzheimer's disease is still an open question. But in order to maintain cognitive health, just like maintaining cardiovascular health, good nutritional practice and physical exercise is where the most compelling data reside right now.
I think the critical message there is that if you ask boomers what they are most afraid of when they get older, as much as we will accept physical frailty and the dependence that may come with physical frailty, what we most fear is giving up autonomy. When do we have to give up autonomy? We give up autonomy when we can no longer make decisions for ourselves, and that's because of cognitive frailty, not physical.
At Baycrest, as well as other places across Canada, there are research programs growing now, looking at how to maintain good brain fitness, good cognitive fitness. Let's not wait until somebody has dementia to first think about how to restore cognitive health. We don't wait until advanced congestive heart failure to think about how to improve or maintain the cardiovascular fitness of a population, so why would we do that with brain fitness, which is exactly what we've been doing for the last 30 years? But it's shifting, and a lot of the research we do now is focused on how middle-aged people can keep their brains as vital as the rest of their bodies.
