sixth

If we observe the traffic on a street, it is easy to see that each person has a speed when walking very different. This is something that may seem like a fact without much relevance, except that going slower can annoy someone who is behind or cause them to let’s lose less fat. But the reality is that science found a correlation between walking speed in middle age and the state of the brain. It has been investigated. Here is a great study published in JAMA in 2019 changed our perspective on how and when we begin to age neurologically. To look for this relationship, the researchers focused on New Zealand, where the development of 904 participants from his childhood until reaching the age of 45. Just when they reached middle age, the researchers measured the subjects’ walking speed at a normal pace, performing a simultaneous cognitive task and maximum speed. And from here all that was left was to cross-check the information. The results. Here it could be seen that the participants who walked slower at age 45 presented accelerated biological aging, evidencing deterioration in multiple organic systems. In addition, these slower walkers also showed worse brain integrity, causing them to have a smaller volume, as if they had aged much earlier. The link with childhood. Surprisingly, neurocognitive dysfunction detected when participants were just 3 years old already predicted slower walking speed in their midlife. In fact, a difference of between 12 and 16 points of IQ between the group of the slowest walkers and that of the fastest. A deterioration sensor. All of this strongly supports the idea of ​​the brain-body nexus, since the relationship between worse cognitive function in childhood and a slow gait at age 45 suggests that the brain acts as an early “sensor” organ for systemic decline driven by genetics, aging, and environmental factors. In this way, walking speed in middle age is no longer seen only as a symptom of old age frailty, but as a true “summary index” of cumulative aging and brain health over a lifetime. It has implications for the future. The preventive potential here is incredible, since an extraordinarily simple evaluation such as timing how long it takes a patient to walk 4 to 6 meters could become a standard tool in medical consultations to assess the patient’s cognitive status. Something that can also be standardized with the use of smartwatches, which today make very precise measurements of the movement we do daily. This would allow specialists to identify people at risk of experiencing accelerated aging and cognitive decline long before reaching old age or meeting the criteria for classic frailty. And having this information is essential to anticipate, for example, the onset of dementia. Images | Drazen Zigic in Magnific rawpixel.com on Magnific In Xataka | Dementia is devastating largely because it arrives without warning: some researchers already predict it seven years in the future