Student-led exercise sessions yield significant fitness gains for Alzheimer's patients

Abstract

At a time when they are losing skills in virtually all arenas of life, persons with Alzheimer's disease can experience significant, esteem-building achievements in physical fitness and mood through supervised participation in an exercise program. The effects of physical exercise plus cognitive and social stimulation on persons with early stage Alzheimer's disease were assessed in a longitudinal study. Twenty-four such individuals, aged 54 to 88 at program entry, participated in 16 to 20 exercise sessions and 10 community activity sessions per semester for two to eight semesters. Half of the weekly exercise sessions included memory and language stimulation activities. Students, supplemented by family caregivers, supervised the sessions. Exercise sessions consisted of flexibility, balance, aerobic, and weight resistance activities. Preparticipation and semiannual post-testing of aerobic fitness and duration and upper and lower body strength was done. Highly significant fitness gains (p < .001) were achieved in the six-minute walk test, upper and lower body strength, and duration of aerobic exercise. Five participants, aged 86 to 91, completed six to eight semesters and were doing 27 to 45 minutes of aerobics per session at program's end. Five participants scored within the normal range for age-matched healthy active adults on the six-minute walk test at baseline. Nine others achieved and three exceeded the normal range during treatment. Cognitive decline was slowed and mood improved. First-year cognitive outcomes have been published elsewhere. An article reporting final cognitive outcomes is in preparation; Outcome data is summarized on the project website: www.u.arizona.edu/ ~sarkin/elderrehab.html. The benefits of physical exercise can be made available at nominal cost to Alzheimer's patients and other elderly persons by using students to provide transportation, supervision, and the motivational support that is key to exercise adherence. Further research is needed to determine the relative contributions of each program component to the positive outcomes.

Can balance exercise programmes improve balance and related physical performance measures in people with dementia? A systematic review

“…However, a further 26 studies were excluded after full papers were reviewed. Reasons for exclusion of these studies were that fewer than 80% of included participants were diagnosed as having dementia [32][33][34] or included demented people but did not clearly explain the term "demented" [35,36] or they included people aged under 65 years [37]; the studies had a physical intervention which did not include any balance training component [38][39][40][41][42]; the studies did not assess balance performance or fall-related outcome measures or did not report the results of balance or fall-related outcomes [37,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] and one potentially relevant study [54] used a non-RCT design and low methodological quality (PEDro score of lower than three) [55,56]. This left a total of seven RCTs for review.…”

Physical activity and behaviour in dementia

“…Four of the five within-subjects exercise studies showed a positive effect on mood (Arkin, 1999(Arkin, , 2001(Arkin, , 2003Heyn, 2003). In the fifth study (Rolland et al, 2000) the exercise intervention was implemented by caregivers and led to a decrease of behavioural problems, but families themselves reported no reduction on their perceived burden.…”

Exercise training for depressed older adults with Alzheimer's disease

“…Weaknesses of the study included non-blinded raters, subjective measures of mood, a small sample (13 participants), a complex intervention combining exercise with other interventions and no control group. Arkin (2003) conducted a one-group study of exercise combined with conversation and cognitive stimulation with community-dwelling participants with mild to moderate dementia. After several months, participants' GDS scores improved significantly.…”