PUMPING iron at the gym could help protect you against dementia, a study suggests.
People with more lean muscle mass through life were 12 per cent less at risk of the deadly disease in old age, US researchers found.
They looked at data from more than one million people to see how their body composition affected their brain in later years.
Dr Iyas Daghlas, of University of California San Francisco, said the study suggests “a cause-and-effect relation between lean mass and risk of Alzheimer’s disease”.
Around 900,000 Brits have dementia, with experts predicting the number will rise to 1.6million by 2040.
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Alzheimer’s is the most common form of the condition, and is thought to be caused by build-ups of proteins in the brain, including tau and amyloid.
Obesity has been associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease in numerous studies.
Lower levels of lean muscle have also been linked to a greater risk of the disease, although it is not clear if this comes before or after being diagnosed.
The latest study, published in the BMJ, used a genetic prediction technique called Mendelian randomisation to get data on the link between lean muscle and Alzheimer's.
The researchers estimated lean muscle and fat tissue in the arms and legs, taking into consideration age, sex and genetic ancestry.
On average, higher, lean muscle mass was linked with a small but statistically sound drop in Alzheimer's disease risk.
Lean mass was also linked with better performance on cognitive tasks, researchers found.
Body fat was not associated with the risk of Alzheimer's disease but it was associated with poorer cognitive task performance.
Dr Daghlas the findings also "refute a large effect of fat mass on the risk of Alzheimer's disease”.
He said they “highlight the importance of distinguishing between lean mass and fat mass when investigating the effect of adiposity measures on health outcomes".
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But he added: "Our findings need to be replicated with independent lines of complementary evidence before informing public health or clinical practice.
"More work is needed to determine the cut-off for age after which modifications of lean mass might no longer reduce the risk."
