The speed at which we walk can tell more about the aging of the brain than we imagine. A new study found that older adults who maintain a naturally faster pace of walking tend to present better brain health and a lower risk of cognitive decline.
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19/08/2026
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Dthe next time you go for a walk, remember that speeding up the pace can benefit both your physical and mental health.
A new study, published in Neurology magazine, found that the brains of older adults who maintained a naturally faster pace of walking until they were 80 years old were healthier.
The researchers analyzed data from five large studies on aging, which involved almost 4,000 older adults with an average age of 84 years, as well as two smaller studies with adults aged 80 years or older, who used brain imaging exams or analyzed brain tissue after death.
The research team separated the data from the participants who called them ‘super fast’ – those who walked faster than 93% of their peers in timed walking tests.
The researchers observed that walking requires complex coordination between the brain, nerves and muscles, becoming a strong general indicator of healthy aging.
Compared to their slower gait pairs, individuals with higher mobility had a 50% lower probability of developing cognitive impairment during follow-up periods ranging from 3.4 to 5.4 years.
They also showed a lower prevalence of Alzheimer's disease or other dementias. Its memory and reasoning capacity also declined more slowly over time, as measured by memory recall tests, processing speed and mental flexibility.
Brain tests showed that individuals with higher locomotion capacity tended to have a larger hippocampus, a brain region fundamental to memory.
However, in post-mortem brain tissue analyses, individuals with and without this characteristic presented similar amounts of brain changes associated with Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that individuals with higher locomotion capacity were not immune to the underlying biology of dementia, but might have more resilient brains, able to function better despite it.
Although the study suggests a strong link between mobility and brain health, it could not prove that walking faster improves cognitive health, since this is an observational study.
Still, walking speed may be a simple and accessible measure to help identify elderly people with higher risk of cognitive decline, allowing for earlier follow-up and intervention.