Study: Enhancing brain functioning, and preventing cognitive decline, via diet, exercise and cognitive training

Healthy eat­ing, exer­cise, and brain-train­ing pro­gram results in slow­er men­tal decline for old­er peo­ple (Sci­ence Daily):

“A com­pre­hen­sive pro­gram pro­vid­ing old­er peo­ple at risk of demen­tia with healthy eat­ing guid­ance, exer­cise, brain train­ing, and man­age­ment of meta­bol­ic and vas­cu­lar risk fac­tors appears to slow down cog­ni­tive decline, accord­ing to the first ever ran­domised con­trolled tri­al of its kind, pub­lished in The Lancet.

After two years, study par­tic­i­pants’ men­tal func­tion was scored using a stan­dard test, the Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal Test Bat­tery (NTB), where a high­er score cor­re­sponds to bet­ter men­tal func­tion­ing. Over­all test scores in the inter­ven­tion group were 25% high­er than in the con­trol group. For some parts of the test, the dif­fer­ence between groups was even more strik­ing — for exec­u­tive func­tion­ing (the brain’s abil­i­ty to organ­ise and reg­u­late thought process­es) scores were 83% high­er in the inter­ven­tion group, and pro­cess­ing speed was 150% higher.”

Study: A 2 year mul­tido­main inter­ven­tion of diet, exer­cise, cog­ni­tive train­ing, and vas­cu­lar risk mon­i­tor­ing ver­sus con­trol to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline in at-risk elder­ly peo­ple (FINGER): a ran­domised con­trolled tri­al (The Lancet)

• Back­ground: Mod­i­fi­able vas­cu­lar and lifestyle-relat­ed risk fac­tors have been asso­ci­at­ed with demen­tia risk in obser­va­tion­al stud­ies. In the Finnish Geri­atric Inter­ven­tion Study to Pre­vent Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and Dis­abil­i­ty (FINGER), a proof-of-con­cept ran­domised con­trolled tri­al, we aimed to assess a mul­tido­main approach to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline in at-risk elder­ly peo­ple from the gen­er­al population.
• Find­ings: Find­ings from this large, long-term, ran­domised con­trolled tri­al sug­gest that a mul­tido­main inter­ven­tion could improve or main­tain cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in at-risk elder­ly peo­ple from the gen­er­al population.

Learn more:

• The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age