Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

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Study finds that cognitive activity in old age may delay the onset of dementia by 5 years

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– Yuji Sakai / Dig­i­talVi­sion / Get­ty Images

Demen­tia Comes 5 Years Lat­er for Some (Med­Page Today):

A cog­ni­tive­ly active lifestyle that involves read­ing and pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion in old age may delay the onset of demen­tia in Alzheimer’s dis­ease by as much as 5 years, a lon­gi­tu­di­nal study suggested.

Old­er adults who had the high­est lev­el of late-life cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty had a mean onset age of Alzheimer’s demen­tia of 94, report­ed Robert Wil­son, PhD, of Rush Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter in Chica­go, and colleagues.

In con­trast, those with the low­est late-life cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty lev­els devel­oped demen­tia at age 89, they wrote in Neu­rol­o­gy. [Read more…] about Study finds that cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty in old age may delay the onset of demen­tia by 5 years

New book outlines the five lifestyle pillars to “build a better brain at any age”

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Like many peo­ple over 60, I some­times lose my keys or for­get the names of favorite films. When I do, it makes me won­der: Is this the begin­ning of cog­ni­tive decline? Or, worse, am I fat­ed to fol­low in the foot­steps of my moth­er, who died of Lewy-body demen­tia in her 70s?

Accord­ing to neu­ro­sur­geon San­jay Gup­ta, CNN med­ical cor­re­spon­dent and author of the new book Keep Sharp: Build­ing a Bet­ter Brain at Any Age, the answer is no. For­get­ful­ness is nor­mal at all ages, and your genes don’t doom you to demen­tia. What’s impor­tant is tak­ing care of your brain in the best way pos­si­ble, he argues.

“You can affect your brain’s think­ing and mem­o­ry far more than you real­ize or appre­ci­ate, and the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple haven’t even begun to try,” he writes.

Gup­ta dis­tills results from hun­dreds of research stud­ies to help read­ers under­stand what’s known (and not known) [Read more…] about New book out­lines the five lifestyle pil­lars to “build a bet­ter brain at any age”

Study: Over-the-counter “brain enhancement” supplements in the US found both to a) contain multiple unapproved drugs and b) lack some ingredients listed on the label

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Study: Your Brain Sup­ple­ments Could Con­tain Dan­ger­ous, Ille­gal Ingre­di­ents (Being Patient):

Brain sup­ple­ments that claim to boost cog­ni­tive func­tion are increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, grow­ing from a $4 bil­lion indus­try of about 4,000 unique prod­ucts to a $40 bil­lion indus­try with as many as 80,000 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts on the mar­ket. [Read more…] about Study: Over-the-counter “brain enhance­ment” sup­ple­ments in the US found both to a) con­tain mul­ti­ple unap­proved drugs and b) lack some ingre­di­ents list­ed on the label

Study: Actual, sustained practice–not mere knowledge–is needed to harness neuroplasticity and improve cognition over time

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Lifestyle improve­ments may lessen cog­ni­tive decline (Wiley):

” … 19 indi­vid­u­als old­er than 65 years of age who were expe­ri­enc­ing cog­ni­tive decline were ran­dom­ized to a con­trol group or an inter­ven­tion group for 8 weeks. The con­trol group received online infor­ma­tion relat­ed to demen­tia and lifestyle risk fac­tors, Mediter­ranean diet, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment. Par­tic­i­pants were instruct­ed to imple­ment this infor­ma­tion into their own lifestyles. The inter­ven­tion group received the same online infor­ma­tion, plus active com­po­nents to assist with imple­ment­ing this infor­ma­tion into their lifestyles: dietit­ian ses­sions, an exer­cise phys­i­ol­o­gist ses­sion, and online brain train­ing. [Read more…] about Study: Actu­al, sus­tained practice–not mere knowledge–is need­ed to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and improve cog­ni­tion over time

Higher body mass index (BMI) linked to lower blood supply to the brain in large neuroimaging study

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Fig­ure 6 from the study, show­ing 3‑D ren­der­ings of cere­bral per­fu­sion aver­aged across nor­mal BMI (23), over­weight (29), and obese (37) 40-year-old men

Body weight has sur­pris­ing, alarm­ing impact on brain func­tion (Sci­ence Daily):

As a per­son­’s weight goes up, all regions of the brain go down in activ­i­ty and blood flow, accord­ing to a new brain imag­ing study in the Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease … sci­en­tists ana­lyzed over 35,000 func­tion­al neu­roimag­ing scans using sin­gle-pho­ton emis­sion com­put­er­ized tomog­ra­phy (SPECT) from more than 17,000 indi­vid­u­als to mea­sure blood flow and brain activ­i­ty. [Read more…] about High­er body mass index (BMI) linked to low­er blood sup­ply to the brain in large neu­roimag­ing study

Reminder: A brain-friendly lifestyle is the best approach to delay cognitive decline and dementia

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While the hip­pocam­pus tends to shrink with age, which con­tributes to cog­ni­tive decline, a recent study shows that this is not always the case (see all those blue lines), sug­gest­ing it can be pos­si­ble to main­tain hip­pocam­pus vol­ume and cog­ni­tive func­tion into our lat­er years.

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What Sci­ence Tells Us About Pre­vent­ing Demen­tia (The Wall Street Journal):

“When it comes to bat­tling demen­tia, the unfor­tu­nate news is this: Med­ica­tions have proven inef­fec­tive at cur­ing or stop­ping the dis­ease and its most com­mon form, Alzheimer’s dis­ease. But that isn’t the end of the sto­ry. Accord­ing to a recent wave of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies, we have more con­trol over our cog­ni­tive health than is com­mon­ly known. We just have to take cer­tain steps—ideally, ear­ly and often—to live a health­i­er lifestyle.

In fact, accord­ing to a recent report com­mis­sioned by the Lancet, a med­ical jour­nal, around 35% of demen­tia cas­es might be pre­vent­ed if [Read more…] about Reminder: A brain-friend­ly lifestyle is the best approach to delay cog­ni­tive decline and dementia