Here’s an interesting study I recently came across that was published back in 2015. Researchers in England looked at 162 pairs of middle-aged female twins (thus making a total of 324 women in the study). They administered a baseline cognitive test to them, and performed brain MRIs. They also did tests of their leg strength and power. A decade later they saw the women back and repeated the cognitive tests and brain MRIs. What emerged was that even after controlling for any obvious variables they could think of (smoking, alcohol use, exercise habits, obesity, diabetes, etc), the women with the strongest legs at the start of the study fared better than their twin in terms of brain aging. Or put another way: having weak legs was a risk for starting to show signs of dementia a decade later.
