14 DAY TRIAL // According to a paper published yesterday, September 4, in the online issue of the journal Neurology, vigorous exercise greatly reduces an individual's risk of developing epilepsy. At least in the case of men.
The researchers who pieced together this paper base their conclusions on data collected while looking into the health records of 1.17 million men from Sweden.
These men all had their health evaluated when they were 18 years old and enlisted for mandatory military service.
At that time, they were asked to perform several cycle tests, which allowed specialists to determine their level of cardiovascular fitness.
When the men all reached the age of 25, researchers investigated how many of them had developed epilepsy.
It turns out that 6,796 of the people taken into consideration for this researcher were suffering from said medical condition, EurekAlert reports.
By looking into these individual's cardiovascular fitness, the researchers were able to determine how their exercise routine influenced their epilepsy risk.
They concluded that, all things considered, men who exercised both regularly and vigorously were 79% less likely to get epilepsy than those who did not exercise at all.
When compared to men with medium fitness levels, the exercise enthusiasts were found to have a 36% lower epilepsy risk.
Commenting on the outcome of this investigation, researcher Elinor Ben-Menachem stated as follows:
“There are a host of ways exercise has been shown to benefit the brain and reduce the risk of brain diseases. This is the first study in humans to show that exercise may also reduce the risk of epilepsy, which can be disabling and life-threatening.”
“Exercise may affect epilepsy risk in two ways. It may protect the brain and create stronger brain reserve, or it may simply be that people who are fit early in life tend to also be fit later in life, which in turn affects disease risk,” he added.