Healthy body, healthy mind. It is the ancient Greeks who are commonly accredited with the origins of this ideal. The phrase instantly conjures images of clean, white marble statues featuring chiselled musculatures and pondering gazes, at least to my overactive mind’s eye.

In ancient Greece, a mind stimulated by education, art, philosophy and discussion and a body honed by athletics and military training led to the development of the perfect Athenian citizen.

Politician, artist and soldier all rolled into one, it is difficult to deny the profound impact such men had on civilisation as we know it.

In this day and age though, is there any evidence alluding to the truth of the ideal they held so dear? Do healthy minds and bodies really share some sort of correlation? As a fitness professional, I’ve noticed quite a natural connection between the two over the years through simple observation. People tend to get sick and develop a range of conditions, and while we often look in all sorts of odd places for answers or cures, the real solutions are usually a lot closer to home.

Our first and easiest line of defence in terms of maintaining good health is to remain active, eat a healthy balanced diet, including plenty of water, and combat stress. It is stress that occurs inside the mental sphere, but all three appear to affect each other. I like to call it the ABC of good health: activity, balanced diet and chillout. When things go a little haywire with our health, we can help the situation by revisiting the ABC and identifying where we’re slipping up. If we’re not slipping up here, then there is another issue at play and alternative methods must be explored.

Getting the ABC straight, however, should always be the first port of call, as they are well within our power to fix. Popping a pill or paying for an expensive form of treatment might not always be necessary if you exercise your first line of defence effectively.

But there is more to the argument than this basic idea. Researchers are now discovering stronger and more measurable links between the health of body and mind. Through my research, combing various journals and publications related to health and fitness, I cannot help but notice the spate of articles and papers cropping up of late regarding dementia, or more specifically, early-onset dementia.

It turns out many people I talk to have a close relative or someone they know who is struggling with the condition. Dementia is a condition affecting memory, reasoning and personality. A mental health disorder previously associated with the elderly, it strangely seems to be affecting people of younger ages.

Developing dementia before the age of 60 is becoming more widespread and research into the causes of this seems to be uncovering links between physical activity and mental health.

Over a million Swedish men who had been previously conscripted into the Swedish army were recently examined later on in their lives, with their latter state of health compared with the results of their fitness test results upon conscription.

It was found that those with poorer cardiovascular fitness at a younger age were 2.5 times more likely to develop early-onset dementia. In addition to this, when compounded with a lower IQ score, the unfit became seven times more likely to develop the condition early.

Apart from indicating that particularly those with a lower IQ should start exercising as soon as possible, the study clearly showed a link between cardiovascular fitness and mental health, showing that a healthy body may certainly help maintain a healthy mind.

In another interesting study conducted in Finland, it was found that middle-aged people who rated their own physical fitness levels as low were four times as likely to develop the condition over the next 30 years than those who ranked their own fitness level as medium or high. It seems clear that when we are fit, the brain is more resistant to damage or disease.

Popping a pill or paying for an expensive form of treatment might not always be necessary if you exercise your first line of defence effectively

And it’s never too late to start fighting dementia either. A US study showed that even once the process has started, exercise can help in slowing it down. At a physiological level, structures in the brain linked to cognitive decline have been found to ‘re-grow’ in subjects who walked briskly for 30 to 40 minutes a day.

After a year-long study, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania were able to prove this with brain scan data. The prefrontal cortex and hippocampus were two parts of the brain in particular that were shown to increase in size among sufferers who exercised, and continue to shrink in those who were inactive.

Of course, there are no guarantees we won’t contract the disease by virtue of increased physical activity alone, but the figures indicate it can certainly help. Why dementia has become so common these days remains unclear, but it is likely we will find out more soon with more studies set to surface.

Since early-onset dementia sufferers are often still in employment and have families to support, the implications are unfortunately potentially far-reaching. So in the meantime, let’s sort out our ABC of good health for that healthy mind-body connection that would do our forefathers proud.

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt

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