A doctorate is no guarantee against Alzheimer’s—a university physics teacher in Washington, D.C., succumbed to the disease not long ago. However, mental activity may possibly help, as may physical activity, in warding off the development of this devastating disease, according to a study reported at the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in San Diego.

Robert Friedland, M.D., a neurologist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, and his colleagues collected information about the nonoccupational intellectual and physical activities that 193 Alzheimer’s patients and 358 healthy seniors had engaged in during their middle years. The controls provided the information themselves by filling out a questionnaire, whereas the loved ones of Alzheimer’s patients filled out the questionnaire for them. Activities for the patients were considered only for the period before they started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s. This was to ensure that any inactivity reported was not the result of the disease itself.

The healthy subjects, the researchers found, had been both more intellectually active and more physically active in their middle years than had the Alzheimer’s patients, even after taking into account differences such as age, income, gender, and education. Intellectual activities included reading, painting, doing jigsaw puzzles, woodworking, knitting, and playing board games, but not passive pursuits like watching television ore attending church. Physical activities ran the gamut from gardening to racquet sports.

"People who were less active were more than three times more likely to have Alzheimer’s disease as compared to those who were more active," Friedland said.