Brain scans and blood tests show a clear link between brain health and these nutrients.
‘Immense’ boost to memory and thinking skills by investing just one hour a week.
‘Immense’ boost to memory and thinking skills by investing just one hour a week.
Aerobic workouts can remove five years of brain aging, research finds.
Short workouts done three times a week are enough to roll back the clock on memory and thinking skills, the study demonstrated.
Exercise helps pump more blood to the parts of the brain vital to these functions.
Dr Marc J. Poulin, the study’s first author, said:
“As we all find out eventually, we lose a bit mentally and physically as we age.
But even if you start an exercise program later in life, the benefit to your brain may be immense.
Sure, aerobic exercise gets blood moving through your body.
As our study found, it may also get blood moving to your brain, particularly in areas responsible for verbal fluency and executive functions.
Our finding may be important, especially for older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s and other dementias and brain disease.”
The study included 206 adults with an average of age of 66 who did little exercise.
They started doing aerobic workouts of between between 20 and 40 minutes per day, three times a week.
After six months they performed 6 percent better on thinking skills and improved their verbal fluency by 2.4 percent.
Dr Poulin said:
“This change in verbal fluency is what you’d expect to see in someone five years younger.”
Blood flow also increased to the brain by 2.8 percent.
Dr Poulin said:
“Our study showed that six months’ worth of vigorous exercise may pump blood to regions of the brain that specifically improve your verbal skills as well as memory and mental sharpness.
At a time when these results would be expected to be decreasing due to normal aging, to have these types of increases is exciting.”
The study was published in the journal Neurology (Guadagniet al., 2020).
Scientists identify four eating patterns that impact your mental state.
How exposure to everyday chemicals might be damaging the protective insulation of your brain cells.
After consuming this juice, blood flows more strongly to brain regions involved in the emotions, memory, language and judgement.
This ubiquitous supplement may improve memory and abstract reasoning.
This ubiquitous supplement may improve memory and abstract reasoning.
Omega-3 fatty acids may enhance brain function in middle age, research finds.
Among over 2,000 people in the study, those with higher concentrations of omega-3 in their blood had a range of cognitive advantages:
People in the study were in their 40s and 50s, explained Dr Claudia Satizabal, the study’s first author:
“Studies have looked at this association in older populations.
The new contribution here is that, even at younger ages, if you have a diet that includes some omega-3 fatty acids, you are already protecting your brain for most of the indicators of brain aging that we see at middle age.”
Omega-3 levels were calculated by adding together levels of DHA and EPA.
EPA and DHA, two of the three main fatty acids, are sometimes known as the marine omega-3s as they come mainly from fish.
What makes omega-3 fatty acids so important in the diet is that the body cannot make them but has to get them from food.
Dr Debora Melo van Lent, study co-author, said:
“Omega-3 fatty acids such as EPA and DHA are key micronutrients that enhance and protect the brain.
Our study is one of the first to observe this effect in a younger population.
More studies in this age group are needed.”
In the study, people were divided into groups based on their levels of omega-3 fatty acids, Dr Satizabal said:
“We saw the worst outcomes in the people who had the lowest consumption of omega-3s.
So, that is something interesting.
Although the more omega-3 the more benefits for the brain, you just need to eat some to see benefits.”
It is not yet known exactly why omega-3 fatty acids are beneficial for the brain.
It may be because they are important in the building of neurons and that they have anti-inflammatory properties.
Dr Satizabal said:
“It’s complex.
We don’t understand everything yet, but we show that, somehow, if you increase your consumption of omega-3s even by a little bit, you are protecting your brain.”
Whether or not omega-3 fatty acids help prevent dementia continues to be controversial.
However, omega-3 has been linked to maintaining IQ levels with age and even reducing anxiety.
Other research has suggested that omega-3 needs to be combined with B vitamins to help the body deal with mental decline.
Still further studies have found:
→ The dietary change with some of the best evidence for keeping the brain healthy is the MIND diet.
The study was published in the journal Neurology (Satizabal et al., 2022).
The study tested a variation on the now well-known Mediterranean diet.
A simple, inexpensive way to slow age-related cognitive decline.
Brain health can be improved, concludes a study of ‘super-agers’.
Brain health can be improved, concludes a study of ‘super-agers’.
The keys to ‘super-aging’ are embracing aging, quitting negativity, moving more and meditating, research on brain health suggests.
Super-agers are people in their 70s or 80s who have the mental and physical capabilities of someone decades younger.
In recent years, scientists have begun studying what separates super-agers from the rest.
Dr Joel Kramer, a neuropsychologist has been studying super-agers.
One particular super-ager inspired Dr Kramer:
“He talked about how his attitude toward life is one of embracing it—not getting stressed out by the little things and valuing the importance of relationships.
I was so impressed.
It was inspiring.”
The first key is to embrace the aging process because emotions tend to be more balanced with age.
Dr Elissa Epel, co-director of the UCSF Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center, explains:
“When we’re older, we seek positive situations in our life much more and cut out things we don’t like.
We take more control of our environment.
It’s because of the brains of elders.
We are more pro-social.
We are more likely to give to people in need than younger people.
This is not a huge surprise … but we’re now able to think of the biology of this.
We really need our elders.”
Fear of aging can be dangerous in itself — research suggests it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dr Epel said:
“We hold these tremendously negative stereotypes about aging, and these start from when we’re really young.
By the time we’re older, these are actually having a negative effect on our health.”
Negative attitudes about aging can accelerate aging, so better to banish them.
Study after study shows the benefit of exercise.
It produces more new brain cells, improves well-being and physical health.
Exercise may even help protect against Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
Meditation has been shown to reduce anxiety, depression and to have physiological benefits.
The research on super agers is from a range of scientists working at UCSF and elsewhere.
Type 2 diabetes doubles the risk of cognitive problems and dementia.
Type 2 diabetes doubles the risk of cognitive problems and dementia.
Many studies have shown that type 2 diabetes is linked to brain shrinkage and dementia.
Now a study finds that controlling blood sugar levels is the best way for people with type 2 diabetes to improve their brain function.
People who used diet and exercise to reduce blood sugar were able to think more clearly and to remember and learn more.
Losing weight, though, was not directly linked to better brain function.
This may be because the brain cannot recover from too much weight gain, said Professor Owen Carmichael, the study’s first author:
“It’s important to properly control your blood sugar to avoid the bad brain effects of your diabetes.
Don’t think you can simply let yourself get all the way to the obese range, lose some of the weight, and everything in the brain is fine.
The brain might have already turned a corner that it can’t turn back from.”
The study included almost 1,100 people who were tracked for over a decade.
One group were asked to focus on improving their blood sugar levels through diet and physical activity.
The other group did something similar but were focused on losing weight and maintaining that weight loss.
The results demonstrated the benefits to the brain of exercising and eating healthily.
However, weight loss did not provide a consistent improvement to brain function.
Weight loss was linked to improvements in cognitive skills like attention, memory and planning but verbal learning and overall memory got worse.
Professor Carmichael said:
“Every little improvement in blood sugar control was associated with a little better cognition.
Lowering your blood sugar from the diabetes range to prediabetes helped as much as dropping from prediabetes levels to the healthy range.”
Over 25 percent of US adults over 65 have type 2 diabetes.
It doubles the risk of cognitive problems and dementia.
Avoiding obesity is one key to fighting the disease.
Professor Carmichael said:
“The results were worse for people who had obesity at the beginning of the study.
That’s a ‘too little, too late’ type of message.
People with diabetes who let their obesity go too far, for too long may be past the point of no return, cognition-wise.”
The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (Carmichael et al., 2020).
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