There is a continuous increase in dementia partly due to increasing life-expectance. Currently there are no causal therapies for dementia, neither for dementias with vascular etiology nor for neurodegenerative dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease. Main risk factors for the development of dementia are low physical activity, hypertonia and diabetes mellitus. Physical activity has shown to exert beneficial effects on cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors und is closely connected with cognitive disturbance and the development and the course of dementia. Therefore, the implementation of physical activity in preventive and therapeutic strategies of dementia is recom­mended.