How You Walk Shows Early Signs of Dementia and Alzheimer’s

The elderly population is booming and more than ever, people are living longer.  This is causing great energy in the medical community to explore diseases affecting our aging population.   Though we expect our bodies to age, it often troubles us to see ourselves or our loved ones have a decline in cognitive ability.  Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia can be a very painful disease for all involved.  New ways of detecting these diseases are being developed rapidly and now researchers are watching the way we walk to gain insight into our aging cognitive ability. 

The study of gait as it relates to medical pathology has been an increasing interest since the 1970’s.  You may notice that your podiatrist, orthopedist, physical therapist, or other health professionals take special interest in the way you walk.  Some offices now have gait labs that use state of the art technology to gain information about your walking patterns.  The way you walk gives great insight to a podiatrist on the cause or effect of different foot and ankle pathologies.  Gait analysis can be used to help train professional athletes to improve their performance, detect postural related pathology or injuries, and identify stroke patterns or other neuromuscular ailments.  Now science is discovering that our gait may give great insight into our cognitive ability.

In recent studies exploring gait patterns in the elderly population a correlation was found between a person’s gait pattern and their overall cognitive, memory, and executive function.   It appears that a person’s gait becomes slower and more variable as their cognitive function declines.  One study also evaluated brain atrophy using an MRI and found atrophy of the entorhinal cortex related to a decrease in gait velocity.  This portion of the brain functions as the center for a widespread network for memory and navigation.   Those patients with Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease showed measurable variations in gait compared to healthy individuals and as the severity of the disease increased.

Though it may seem logical that as we age we move slower, but these studies demonstrate gait to be much more dynamic than a simple, automatic, motor activity.  Gait is dependent on our cognitive ability and with cognitive decline, our ability to walk within normal parameters declines.  As the science of gait continues to evolve it may become common to have a doctor study your movements as you walk into the treatment room.  Examination of your gait may become as common as taking a blood pressure

Click here to have your gait analyzed by podiatrist in order to learn your chances of developing Alzheimer's Disease or Dementia.