Can you Defeat Alzheimer's Disease with Exercise?

No one knows the answer to this, but some very promising research coming out of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA sounds exciting.

Now this research was performed on mice and mice are not humans. However, there are many similarities on the cellular level of all of us in the animal kingdom.

And there have been many studies on mice that have helped the development of research on understanding how the human body works.

This study took older mice (the equivalent of 70 years old in human life) and trained them to do an underwater task.

There was also a group of younger mice (about 20 years old in human life) that was trained on the task as well.

Then they divided the older mice into two groups. One group did exercise on a running wheel every day for 30 days. The other group did no exercise.

The younger mice group also exercised every day for 30 days.

At the end of the 30 days the underwater task was repeated.

The older mice group that did not exercise flunked miserably. None of them remembered how to do the task.

On the other hand all of the younger mice did very well.

The important part of the study was the fact that the older mice that exercised performed the task just as well as the younger mice.

On analysis the researchers found that the older mice that exercised had significantly more new cells in the hypothalamus. This is the part of the brain that helps with memory and the ability to learn new tasks.

Now does this mean that exercise will help replace the cells in the hypothalamus that Alzheimer