Physical activity ‘could help older people avoid mobility-impairing brain damage’

Physical activity among older people could help them to limit the effects of small areas of brain damage that can affect movement abilities.

This is according to a new study published in the medical journal Neurology, which involved 167 people with an average age of 80.

Many older people have small areas of damage in their brains, seen in magnetic resonance imaging as white matter hyperintensities, with higher levels of this damage linked to mobility issues such as difficulty walking.

However, this new study found that people who were the most physically active did not have a drop-off in their movement abilities, even when they had high levels of brain damage. This association remained after adjusting for factors such as body mass index, depression and vascular disease.

As yet, it is not known if physical activity actually causes people to preserve their movement abilities, but the association between the two trends was clear.

Dr Debra Fleischman of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago said: "These results underscore the importance of efforts to encourage a more active lifestyle in older people to prevent movement problems, which is a major public health challenge."