Just 1 or 2 Workouts a Week Can Lower Dementia Risk by 13 Percent

Even people who exercise only on the weekends experience serious benefits to their brain health, according to a new study.

Exercising only on weekends may be just as good for brain health as working out more often throughout the week, a new study suggests. 

For the study, researchers examined survey data collected from about 10,000 people in Mexico City starting when they were 51 years old on average and cognitively healthy. During an average follow-up period of about 16 years, a total of 2,400 participants developed mild dementia. 

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Aim for Moderate to Vigorous Exercise for the Biggest Impact 

“It is the total duration of physical activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most for disease risk, including cognitive decline,” says Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, an electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who wasn’t involved in the new study. 

What’s important is that people get at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week, Dr. Khurshid says. “A rough rule-of-thumb for moderate activity is sustained effort during which you are able to complete sentences but have difficulty singing,” Khurshid adds. 

The new study didn’t look directly at exercise intensity or focus exclusively on the benefits of exercising at least 150 minutes per week. The study also wasn’t designed to prove whether or how weekend warrior workouts might directly benefit brain health. 

Even so, the study authors concluded that about 13 percent of mild dementia cases could be prevented if all middle-aged people exercised at least once or twice a week instead of leading a totally sedentary lifestyle.

It Makes Sense That ‘Concentrated’ Exercise Would Promote Brain Health

One limitation of the analysis was that it relied on survey participants to accurately recall and report on their exercise habits, rather than objectively measuring how often they worked out or the intensity of their workout sessions. 

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Still, it makes sense that weekend warrior workouts might promote brain health along with several other factors known to reduce the risk of cognitive decline such as maintaining a healthy weight, improving cardiorespiratory fitness, managing blood sugar, and building lean muscle mass, Khurshid says. 

“I would hesitate to make strong claims about the weekend warrior activity pattern preventing cognitive decline more effectively,” Khurshid says. However, he says, “Concentrated activity had associations with lower risk of mild cognitive impairment that were at least as beneficial as those observed with regular activity.”