Problems with walking, balance and coordination among seniors could be an early signal of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, Group Health and University of Washington researchers said Monday.
Their findings are based on a study of more than 2,000 members of Group Health Cooperative age 65 and older, who were followed for six years. None initially showed signs of Alzheimer’s or dementia.
A link was found between mind and body in aging patients – problems with balance and walking or gait, and later problems with dementia.
“With aging, your gait slows. … If your gait slows a lot, the odds are higher that your mind also is going to be slowing in a way that often leads to Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Eric Larson, director of Group Health’s Center for Health Studies.
Larson was one of a group of researchers who reported the findings Monday in a medical journal, the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the past, Larson said, people often thought the earliest signs of the disease would be subtle cognitive changes or problems with mental processing.
The study underscored that physical problems preceded development of the disease, he said.
“The people who did the worst in terms of their walking speed, those were the people who had quite a high rate of developing Alzheimer’s in the next six years,” he said.
Patients were asked to do simple physical tests. These included how well they could balance themselves while standing and timing how long it took them to walk 10 feet. They were retested every two years.
Those who did best on the physical tests at the start of the study were three times less likely to develop dementia than those who scored lower.
The research does a good job highlighting that “in the brain, the thinking skills and motor skills are not entirely separate,” said Dr. James Leverenz, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Washington.
“If one is going bad, the other goes bad, too,” he said. “These two components can be linked.”
Yet people shouldn’t think that there is a direct link between physical problems, such as trouble walking, and dementia, he said.
“You don’t want people to read this and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got this walking problem, I’m doomed, ‘“he said.
Having balance problems and holding on to a banister for support is common as people age and not necessarily a sign of dementia, said Dr. Bill Likosky, a neurologist at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. “I wouldn’t want to freak people out.”
“Somewhere between the age of 80 and 90 most people can’t walk anymore,” he said.
Although people sometimes take the skills involved in walking for granted, it’s a challenging task, he said.
The reason is the complex integration of mental and muscular coordination that requires a high level of brain function, he said. Walking “is not mundane for a 2-year-old, nor an 80-year-old, either,” he said.
Memory problems are extremely common as people age, affecting 10 percent of people by age 65 and up to half of those over age 85, said Dr. Michael Chun, a neurologist at the Everett Neurological Center. He has specialized in dementia care since 1995.
A lot of effort has been put into finding medicine that can help slow the progression of the memory diseases, he said.
Yet having good health habits, such as attention to a good diet, exercise and curbing high blood pressure and not smoking “probably have as much affect on memory problems as any of our current medications,” Chun said.
Over the past decade, there’s been increasing evidence that people who are intellectually and socially active have later onset of dementia and it progresses more slowly, he said.
“That can be anything: social clubs, puzzles, learning a new instrument or language. Just as long as they’re active.”
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