How to Avoid or Delay Brain Drain
What do you have when you’ve lost yourself?
Nothing, nobody – not even yourself.
That’s why Alzheimer’s Disease scares us so much.
Nobody wants to die from a sudden heart attack or suffer cancer, but those health conditions don’t erase your memories and identity – your very sense of who you are and what you’ve accomplished in your life.
Besides, AD is simply the most well-known form of brain decline that can strike seniors. There’s also Parkinson’s, with hand tremors an obvious sign, and other forms of dementia.
First, the good news: much of the risk is preventable through lifestyle changes.
Genetics is certainly a factor, but only one.
Contrary to the mass-media propaganda, genetics is not destiny.
What is Your Brain
Technically, it’s the three or so pounds of fatty tissue taking up the space within your thick skull.
60% of your brain is made of fatty acids.
It’s mostly made up of: neurons, neural stem cells, glial cells and blood vessels. It contains around 86 billion neurons, plus or minus eight billion. It contains about the same number of non-neural cells.
These billions of neurons form connections with each other – synapses – that are extremely complex.
Through your brain stem, your brain is connected to your spine, and the entire network of nerves in your body.
Through the vagus nerve, it’s intimately tuned in to all your vital organs, including the heart, lungs and digestive tract. We know now that our microbiomes living in our intestines are intimately linked to our brains. To such an extent that many call our microbiome our “second brain.”
That’s important to remember, but our focus here is on protecting our first brain.
When a neuron is stimulated, it generates a signal that goes from cell to cell at the rate of 350 miles per hour.
Your brain runs on 20 watts of electricity, enough to light a bulb.
Although our brain’s a small percentage of our bodies by weight, it uses 20% of our energy.
Brains Need an Entire Nervous System
Our nerves extend out to all parts of our bodies, connecting our brains to our physical selves. But it doesn’t stop there. Our nerves, especially our sensory organs, are continuously taking in electronic signals from the outside world: sunlight (including angle and intensity), temperature, sounds, the face of your boss when you’re late to work, and so on.
Your brain is also continuously monitoring what’s going on inside your body. Are you digesting that oatmeal properly? Your leg muscles are working hard to run up that hill.
Your brain continously sends signals to every part of your body. More testosterone here! More T1 immune cells there!
Last, but not least, your brain is always on the lookout for both threats to run away from and goodies to strive for.
Our mammalian brains track and evaluate the people around us. Who’s your friend? Who wants your job? Is your friend telling the truth about her divorce or not?
And our brains need to express themselves to the outside world and other people. We need to talk to and laugh with other people.
Our Brains R Us
We live in our entire bodies of course. Injure your little toe, and you’ll feel the pain. Lose that toe in an accident, obviously, it’ll hurt, but you’ll still feel like “you.”
Even transplant patients who receive new hearts still identify as themselves.
But we feel as though “we” – our selves – reside in our brains, for lack of a better word.
How does three pounds of fatty acids and neurons generate human consciousness and self-awareness? Nobody knows.
How does re-arranging neurons in our brains enable us to learn? We don’t know.
How are memories stored in our brains? Duh . . .
Neuroscientists refer to all this as the “hard problem.”
They can study our biology, our genetics, our biochemistry, the parts of our brains and so on, but nobody can explain self-consciousness.
However, there’s clearly a strong, direct link between the health of our physical brains and both the health of our bodies and how well we think.
That makes it all the more important to make the lifestyle changes to protect our physical brains.
The Blood Brain Barrier
Your brain is so important, it has its own security system to protect it from bacteria, pathogens and toxins carried by your arteries.
It’s called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). It’s layers of tightly packed cells lining the blood vessels leading to your brain. It functions more as a filter, though, not a barrier.
Unfortunately, the BBB isn’t perfect. It does prevent large cells from slipping into your brain, but small ones still get through.
These include adult drinks, caffeine, NSAID painkillers, anesthetics and other medicines that directly affect your brain.
Guarding your brain against harmful substances is so critical, any weakening of the BBB should be considered a risk factor.
These Emergency Conditions Can Weaken the Blood Brain Barrier:
* Stroke
* Seizures
* Brain cancer
* High blood levels of carbon dioxide
* Low blood levels of oxygen
* Concussions
* Brain infections
These Chronic Conditions Weaken the Blood Brain Barrier:
* Parkinsons disease
* Alzheimer’s disease
* Epilepsy
* Neuromyelitis optica
* Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
* Multiple sclerosis
* Frontotemporal dementia
* High blood pressure
* High blood sugar
* High cholesterol
The Driver of a Weakened Blood Brain Barrier
Inflammation.
That’s critical.
The conclusion: anything that reduces inflammation in your body improves the health and functioning of your brain – thereby lowering your risk of brain dysfunction.
Your Brain has Its Own Cleaning Service
We don’t hear or think about it much, but our bodies not only dispose of waste through the blood, but they have another system for getting rid of disease – the lymphatic system. If you’ve ever been sick with the sides of your neck and throat swollen, you had an infection lodged in those lymph glands.
Your brain has its own private cleaning service or lymphatic system, called the glymphatic system.
This finding itself is fairly new, from the 2013 publication of an article explaining how the brain’s glyphatic system clears institial waste products during slow wave sleep.
While we’re awake, conscious and thinking, our brains produce metabolic waste products because of that effort.
While we’re sleeping, our brains actually contract around 60%. This creates space for our cerebralspinal fluid to clean out such waste as amyloid beta plaque.
As is well-known, amyloid plaques are a prominent feature of the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Researchers believe amyloid plaques play a prominent role – at least – in the progression of Alzheimer’s.
Poor and reduced amounts of sleep are known risk factors for Alzheimer’s. Do they cause AD by allowing the build up of amyloid plaques?
It’s probably a vicious cycle.
That is, lack of sleep causes amyloid plaque buildup, which leads to early AD, causing poor sleep, causing more plaque buildup.
Plus, we know there’re other factors that affect risk of AD.
I suspect AD – like many chronic diseases of later years – comes from an accumulation of stress and poor lifestyle habits, the damage increasing over time.
That problably includes Parkinson’s, other forms of dementia, and other brain issues such as lack of focus, forgetfulness, inability to learn and depression.
Does that mean you can avoid Alzheimer’s simply by sleeping a lot more?
It’s probably not that simple, but nobody knows for certain. Getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night IS important for your brain – and many other areas of your health.
This Just In – the Latest Brain Health Finding
We tend to think of our brains as working – just plain old working. Like our hearts just keep on pumping and our lungs keep on breathing, and so on. Think think think. Chug chug chug.
Turns out, reality is more complicated. Our hearts and lungs are far less complicated than our brains.
According to a recent metastudy just published in NEURON, brains naturally seek to organize themselves to operate in a sweet spot, where all of their many functions are in dynamic balance – operating at optimal speed.
This concept applies not only to human brains, but to the brains of all the animal species studied: monkeys, turtles, zebrafish, cats and even crayfish.
It’s called “criticality.”
The concept comes from physics. The term refers to systems at the edge of dramatic change. Between order and chaos. That could be water that’s just on the edge of boiling.
At criticality, your entire brain is working together. That includes individual neurons that fire in milliseconds and large areas of the brain coordinating with each other.
When your brain’s at this point of criticality, all parts of it communicate with each other. You learn and store memories. You make rational decisions. You adapt to changing circumstances.
When your brain is operating at criticality, it’s finding its best balance. Like a trapeze artist walking a high wire. Or a surfer riding a board. Or an air traffic controller landing multiple airplanes and letting others take off – all at the same time.
Your brain is handling multiple inputs, outputs and tasks at once.
Driving to work: the angle of the sunlight tells your brain what time it is. You’re worried about your three o’clock client meeting. Oh, that black car is cutting in front of you! Hit the brakes! The radio is playing a blathering ad for a restaurant you’ve thought of trying. That reminds you, what to eat for dinner?
Oh, and no matter what – heart beats. Lungs inhale and exhale.
And your stomach is still digesting breakfast. And your brain is monitoring your blood sugar.
When your brain loses its ability to remain at that sweet spot, you become vulnerable to brain disorders.
Epilepsy may result from a brain remaining too organized, too rigid, too coordinated – too synchronized.
Many other conditions seem to result from the brain becoming not organized enough, prone to too much randomness and patterns of miscommunication and disrupted signals between areas of the brain.
This may lead not only to Alzheimer’s, but also schizophrenia, depression, and autism spectrum disorders.
One of the reasons we need to sleep every night is that sleep helps your brain return to its critical point. This is at least partially why we need sleep to learn and to remain healthy.
The Major Brain Problems of Age
1. Dementia
This is the general medical term for what used to be called “senility.”
That’s when an older person becomes forgetful and incapable of carrying out their normal daily lives.
It includes memory failures, plus loss of the ability to make decisions.
Dementia is considered a diagnosis, whereas senility implies a condition inevitable with age.
Fortunately, not all seniors get dementia.
Years ago, medical science believed that by the time we hit old age, we’ve lost as many as half our brain cells.
Turns out, that’s not true. Our brains do shrink somewhat, but we retain 96% to 98% as many neurons as we have when young.
Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60% to 80% of all dementia cases, and of course is the most well-known.
The second most common type is vascular. It’s caused by microscopic bleeding and blood vessel damage in the brain.
2. Alzheimer’s Disease
Around 7 million Americans over the age of 65 currently have Alzheimer’s. Of them, 70% are over age 75. It affects 40% of everyone older than 85. 45% of those in their late 90’s.
Until 2020, when Covid surpassed it, Alzheimer’s was the sixth most common cause of death in the US.
Like many common chronic diseases, Alzheimer’s doesn’t develop overnight. It’s normally not diagnosed until the patient is in their 70’s, but it begins developing decades before that.
By now, we all know the most common symptoms. People lose their memories of recent events. They get lost in familiar places. They don’t recognize family and friends.
They lose their ability to make plans and carry them out – even to perform familiar household chores such as cooking and cleaning.
Many Alzheimer’s patients exhibit changes in personality. They withdraw from other people. They lose social inhibitions. They wander around. They get agitated, losing emotional control.
The average time between a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and death is five years.
Clearly, your risk for Alzheimer’s goes up with age. However, some people reach extreme longevity with no signs of dementia.
When she was 113, Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper’s cognitive test scores were above average for someone half her age. When she died two years later, of stomach cancer, the autopsy found almost no artherosclerosis in her blood vessels or protein tangles in her brain.
Small wonder this disease frightens us so much.
The Patient’s Family Suffers More than the Patient
The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America estimates that more than 10 million family members and friends help take care of Alzheimer’s patients. They put in an estimated 15 billion (unpaid) hours. Even though the patient may not even recognize them.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates the new Alzheimer’s medicines Leqembi will cost the program $3.5 billion in 2025.
That’s so much money, it’s going to force a rise in Medicare premiums for everyone. No other pharmaceutical medicine or procedure is so expensive that by itself, it raises premiums.
Furthermore, nobody sees any new Alzheimer’s medicine (and there’re many more in the pipeline), as a “cure.” Once Alzheimer’s has damaged your brain, there’s no way to restore those lost memories or those vanished cognitive abilities. Dead neurons don’t return to life.
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies are just hoping these medicines slow down the progression of the amyloid plaques.
Conclusion: Anything you can do to prevent or at least delay the onset of dementia, will not only help you, but all your family and friends, and the entire healthcare system as well.
What Causes Alzheimer’s
Science can’t say precisely. But there are specific factors associated with it.
1. Aluminum
The theory of Alzheimer’s being caused by aluminum, especially from deodorants, goes back to 1965.
Both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients do tend to have a lot of aluminum in their brains. However, the scientific evidence for causation remains weak.
Yet, aluminum is a harmful metal. Aluminum can damage your kidneys. People who prepare food using aluminum cookware suffer significantly more DNA damage than those who don’t.
Therefore, it only makes sense to avoid aluminum as much as possible.
Avoiding both deodorants containing aluminum and aluminum cookware and serving utensils would be prudent.
Aluminum also comes in a wide variety of processed foods.
But the largest source of aluminum in human bodies comes from over-the-counter antacid medicines. If you must take such medicines, avoid consuming them with acidic beverages such as tomato and orange juice.
2. Buildup in brain of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tau tangles
This is the most clear-cut symptom of Alzheimer’s.
These waste proteins kind of choke off the brain, killing cells so your brain shrinks. They stick between and inside nerve cells, killing neurons and destroying synapses. That’s what destroys memories and erodes the power of Alzheimer’s patients to learn and think.
But do these sticky clumps of proteins cause Alzheimer’s?
The brains of people who died from Alzheimer’s do usually contain large amounts of amyloid plaque.
But so do the brains of many older adults who died from other causes. That is, despite having lots of amyloid plaque, they never suffered from memory decay or cognitive decline.
About 30% of older adults have the amyloid plaque and tau protein tangles – but NO Alzheimer’s. In fact, 39% of people in their 90’s and over 100 meet the criteria of Alzheimer’s, but without displaying any symptoms of dementia.
Part of this seems to reflect patients who have greater cognitive reserve. That is, they can lose some brain cells but still function because they have more brain cells to fall back on. Alzheimer’s patients with higher educations decline mentally at a slower rate than those with less education.
Some people have genetic abilities to resist Alzheimer’s. Pharmaceutical companies are now studying them, hoping to find ways to make medicines to stop the disease in all of us.
To make the situation even more confusing, some people who die with dementia diagnosed as Alzheimer’s have brains that appear perfectly healthy, with no amyloid plaque.
3. Cardiovascular disease
After the first woman to be diagnosed with his name died, Dr. Alzheimer autopsied her brain, finding the distinctive amyloid plaques and tau tangles we now associate so closely with the disease.
But he also found the arteries in her brain were nearly completely clogged with regular arterial plaque – the same stuff that causes heart attacks.
See, plaque doesn’t deliberately choose to line the insides of your coronary arteries just so it can cause heart attacks, but leave the rest of your arteries clean. Plaque lines the interiors of all our blood vessels – including those leading to the brain.
Arterial plaque clogs all your blood vessels at once. Outside of the coronary arteries, it doesn’t cause heart attacks – but it impairs your blood circulation. That means your cells can’t get the oxygen and nutrition they need. They slow down. They die. Your entire body seems to slow down.
None of this is dramatic. Restricting blood flow to your right foot won’t get you sent to the ER.
However, it does impact your overall health.
And it only makes sense that restricting blood flow to your brain hurts it, certainly in the long run. Older brains need plenty of oxygen, but clogged blood vessels can’t bring enough.
Autopsies of people with Alzheimer’s clearly prove that AD patients have on average much more artherosclerotic plaque within the intercranial arteries. That’s especially true of arteries leading to the brain’s memory center, the hippocampus.
This lack of oxygen can also causes strokes and brain atrophy – accounting for many Alzheimer’s symptoms.
People with total cholesterol of 225 or higher have up to 25 times the odds of having amyloid plaques in their brains in the next ten to fifteen years.
The media doesn’t ever mention it, but this connection between high cholesterol and amyloid plaque buildup makes sense. Electron microscopes reveal that amyloid plaques cluster around tiny cholesterol crystals.
Therefore, we may benefit from preventing or treating Alzheimer’s the same as we’d treat any heart problem – especially by getting blood cholesterol levels down.
In 2022, a panel of experts made recommendations on the prevention of cognitive decline. The first one? “Brain health equals heart health.”
4. APOE4
Back in the 90’s, we learned of the close association between this gene and increased risk for Alzheimer’s.
It’s the strongest genetic risk factor for developing late-stage Alzheimer’s.
If you’re one of the 15% to 20% of Americans who have received one APOE4 gene (from either your mother or father), your risk of getting Alzheimer’s is three times that of people without the APOE4 gene.
If you’re one of the 2% of Americans who have received two APOE4 genes (that is, one from your mother and one from your father), your Alzheimer’s risk goes up 9X. You have a 60% risk of having Alzheimer’s by age 85. Although just 2% of the total population, you make up 15% of all Alzheimer’s cases.
What does this gene do? It’s the principal carrier in the brain of cholesterol. It packages and transports LDL “bad” cholesterol throughout your body. Therefore, lowering your overall cholesterol may help stop or slow Alzheimer’s. Remember – it’s closely associated with arterial plaque: including cholesterol.
But, I must repeat, genetics is not destiny.
Look at Nigeria. This country in Africa has the highest percentage of people carrying the APOE4 gene.
If genetics were destiny, Nigeria would have a large number of people coming down with Alzheimer’s – but it doesn’t.
Despite all the APOE4 genes, in Nigeria Alzheimer’s is a rare disease.
The probable explanation is that, due to Nigerians eating a lot more plant-based than Americans, their cholesterol is a lot lower, offsetting the APOE4 genetic risk.
5. Parkinson’s
This is another common brain disease. It gets progressively worse, and is irreversible.
Around a million Americans are currently living with Parkinson’s. Another 90,000 are diagnosed every year. It strikes 1 in 50 of us over age 60.
The basal ganglia of the brain deteriorate, getting worse over time. Symptoms begin once about 70% of the basal ganglia cells are gone.
This causes a major shift in your brain chemistry. The primary symptoms associated with Parkinson’s are a constant quivering of the hands and other motor problems.
Parkinsons kills neurons that produce the brain chemical messenger dopamine. Consequently, many people with Parkinson’s suffer from a deficiency of dopamine.
As with Alzheimer’s, the “cause” is not clear, but probably includes various related factors.
Genetics does account for around 10% to 15% of cases. The others are “sporadic.” We don’t know the cause.
But Parkinson’s does include clumps of protein in the brain, called Lewy bodies.
People with Parkinson’s also have altered mitochondria.
Parkinson’s is a little more specialized than Alzheimer’s, and has different symptoms.
But both are forms of dementia caused by brain damage. Science has yet to figure out all the specific factors.
Therefore, lacking a specific reason why someone might develop Parkinson’s instead of Alzheimer’s, your safest bet is to do whatever you can to protect your brain, to avoid both conditions.
Adult drinks-related dementia or adult drinks-related brain damage
Up to 24% of dementia cases may be caused by excess consumption of adult drinks.
Adult drinks directly damages your brain cells, killing them. This of course leads to brain shrinkage, especially the white matter of your brain. The part of the brain that’s most vulnerable is the hippocampus, which is your memory center. Therefore, the old joke about killing brain cells by drinking is true.
If you consume adult drinks in moderate amounts – currently defined as 14 units per week, or two per day – you are unlikely to suffer from this form of dementia.
However, that doesn’t mean adult drinks is harmless. Even small amounts can affect other factors that put you at risk, including: weight, blood pressure, sleep quality and blood circulation.
The Alzheimer’s Society wants you to know moderate drinking does NOT protect you from dementia. They say if you don’t already drink, don’t start.
If you drink now, and quit, you can recover lost brain volume and function.
What Your Brain Needs to Thrive
1. Plenty of Blood – at a Healthy Pressure
Even though it uses 20% of all your energy, your brain has no stores of it. Your brain depends on blood circulation to continuously bring it the oxygen, blood glucose and other nutrients it requires to function. That makes it extremely vulnerable to even short interruptions in blood supply.
For instance, a stroke lasting just a few minutes can double your risk of dementia – and speed it up by a decade.
Intercranial arteries jammed nearly full of artherosclerotic plaque clearly block the free flow of blood.
But they also cause secondary damage as well. Because of their location in your brain, your intercranial arteries absorb the shock of your blood as it’s pumped by your heart. This is normal.
However, when your artery walls are stiff with age and plaque buildup, the pressure can damage small blood vessels in your brain, causing microbleeds.
In a comparison of fifteen cross-sectional studies, fourteen found that arterial stiffness was correlated with impaired cognitive performance.
Six out of seven studies found arterial stiffness predicted cognitive decline.
Closely related to cholesterol is saturated fat. So it’s no surprise that eating a diet high in saturated fat is associated with poor memory, and the acceleration of cognitive loss.
This was true of the Harvard Women’s Health Study. The women who ate the most saturated fat had 60% to 70% higher risk of cognitive decline. The women who ate the least saturated fat had the brain function of women six years younger.
Meta-analyses of all the relevant studies found higher consumption of saturated fat increased risk of cognitive impairment by 40%, increased risk of Alzheimer’s by 46% and doubled the risk of general dementia.
Saturated fat disrupts your blood brain barrier.
Also, saturated fat increases your production of the amyloid plaque precursor protein. A single meal high in saturated fat can cause the amyloid protein levels in your blood to increase 7X.
Saturated fat also suppresses brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), which helps your nerve cells remain healthy. A high-fat meal reduces your BDNF within a few hours.
Butyrate also increases your production of BDNF. Butyrate is produced by good bacteria lodging in your intestines. How do you encourage your good bacteria to produce more BDNF? Simple. Just feed them lots of fiber.
Your microbiome also influences inflammation – another important factor in the development of Alzheimer’s. Feed your intestinal bacteria more fiber, and your inflammation goes down.
WHAT TO DO:
* Control your cholesterol, eating more plant foods such as whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables and nuts. Plant foods contain fiber, so this also encourages your microbiome to produce more butyrate – which produces more BDNF.
* Get moderate exercise on a regular, frequent basis. Move frequently, even if it’s just to stand up and stretch your legs – at least every half an hour.
* Quit smoking. Avoid secondhand and even thirdhand tobacco smoke.
2. Protection from Inflammation & Oxidation
Again, your brain is your body’s most sensitive organ. That makes it the most vulnerable. That’s why it’s protected by your thick skull on the outside and by the BBB on the inside.
Inflammation weakens the blood brain barrier, which leads to harmful substances getting past the BBB and into your brain itself, causing even more damage.
Researchers have calculated the inflammatory scores for many foods. Foods with a score of 1 to 10 are pro-inflammatory, and those with a negative score are anti-inflammatory.
Studies show that people eating pro-inflammatory diets have a worse memory, and up to six times the odds of developing cognitive impairment compared to those who don’t.
WHAT TO DO:
* Eat less inflammatory foods (meat, dairy, eggs, salt, oils) and more anti-inflammatory foods from plants.
* Related to the above, eat lots of plant foods with many antioxidants and polyphenols (the more colorful the food, the more antioxidants). Beans, berries and green leafy vegetables contain the most nutrition, but all are healthy.
* Quit smoking. Avoid secondhand and even thirdhand tobacco smoke.
* Avoid head injuries.
* Cut down or quit adult drinks.
3. Sleep
While you sleep, your brain remains surprisingly active, though in a different way than when you’re awake and conscious.
In fact, as mentioned, your brain actually washes itself.
While we’re in slow-wave sleep, fluids clean out waste proteins and toxins.
To make room for this nightly housekeeping chore, your brain actually compresses itself in size – as much as 60%. Your glymphatic system then uses the opened space to remove neurotoxic waste proteins, including amyloid plaques.
If you think about it, that’s amazing. While you’re awake, you certainly wouldn’t want your brain squeezed into such a small space.
But when you’re asleep, it happens automatically.
That may explain why people who get less than seven hours of sleep every night have increased risk of cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s. They don’t give their glymphatic systems enough time to thoroughly clean out amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
Unfortunately, as we age, we may spend less time in that non-REM sleep.
PET scans verify that staying awake even just one full night causes significant accumulation of amyloid plaque.
This process appears to decline with age, however. This may be affected by both arterial stiffening and high blood pressure. Both of those conditions limit the ability of your brain to completely compress itself.
WHAT TO DO:
* Sleep longer – at least 7 to 9 hours every night. Go to bed earlier if you have to. Stay in bed later if you can and want to.
* Sleep on your right side. That position maximizes the outflow of blood from your brain. Sleeping on your left side is also good, just not as much as on the right side. Do not sleep on your back or stomach. People with neurocognitive impairments tend to sleep more on their backs.
4. Exercise
Obviously, if what’s good for your heart is also good for your brain, that must include exercise.
Therefore, you want to exercise for all the usual reasons for how it strengths your heart and your circulatory system.
You also want to exercise for weight control. Overweight people have a 33% higher risk of developing dementia.
In the words of one guru, as your waist expands, your brain shrinks. Probably both inflammation and oxidative stress play a role.
In experiments on mice, giving them a wheel to run on improved the ability of their brain glympathic systems to clear out protein wastes and amyloid plaques. It also improved their ability to solve mazes.
The American College of Sports Medicine has found much evidence that higher amounts of physical activity reduces risk for dementia, including Alzheimer’s.
People who’re highly physically active have a 38% reduced risk of cognitive decline – and a 39% lower risk of Alzheimer’s. Every extra 500 calories burned during a week produces a 10% reduced risk of general dementia and 13% reduced risk for Alzheimer’s.
That means: as many as 20% of all cases of Alzheimer’s can be attributed to lack of physical activity.
Aerobic exercise helps maintain cognitive function better than resistance training (though that’s important for other reasons).
Walking is most popular. Though, if you can run, swim or ride a bike, have fun.
Have fun anyway. Join a pickle ball or softball team if you prefer group sports.
Also: spend brief periods in intense physical activity, of just a minute or so. That include walking fast for the time. Using the stairs instead of an elevator. Just one to four such periods every day is extremely beneficial – and far faster and easier than orthodox workouts.
I believe exercising outside – when it’s safe and weather permitting – is better than inside, especially for your brain.
Gyms are boring. You’ll get far more sensory stimulation by dealing with traffic, other pedestrians, the trees and plants and weather, and so on.
Not to mention, fresh air.
Exercise likely helps us retain cognitive function simply because it benefits our health in so many related areas. Exercise helps us lose or fail to gain weight. It also helps our hearts and arteries remain strong. It lowers inflammation.
However, it also does something quite brain-specific. It increases brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF). That’s a neurotrophin or growth factor that promotes the development of our neurons, our nerve cells.
BNDF is the most abundant of these neurotrophins. Levels of BDNF correlate with the structural integrity of your hippocampus, the memory center of your brain.
Studies show that people with Alzheimer’s have lower levels of BDNF than people who don’t have AD. The Framingham Heart Study, the largest health study ever run, found that having higher levels of BDNF reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s within the next decade by 50%.
If you have AD, having higher levels of BDNF appears to slow the cognitive decline.
Physical activity is the best-known way to increase BDNF.
Greater intensity increases BDNF the most, but even frail senior citizens can raise BDNF levels with suitable resistance training.
WHAT TO DO:
* Maintain a level of light activity throughout your day, moving at least every half an hour.
* On a regular, daily basis, perform some fairly intense physical activity – for a short time. One or two minutes.
* Also exercise on an organized basis. Walk. Run. Garden. Swim. Ride a bike. Play catch with your grandchildren. Join a pickle ball team, or tennis or golf or whatever you enjoy.
5. Sensory, Emotional & Intellectual Stimulation and Challenge
Too many people, especially after they retire, live lives of comfortable boredom – even though your brain craves novelty.
We’re intended to walk – barefoot! – on every imaginable surface from prairie grass to hot desert sands to rough rock.
Our brains are also hardwired to deal with the human beings around us. They’re also hardwired to investigate the world around us – and these days, that’s almost everything.
Yet, after we stop working, many of us stop learning. We don’t have to deal with large problems and threats.
Remember – scientists now believe having a cognitive reserve protects us from dementia.
What are you doing to expand your cognitive reserve? Learning to speak Spanish – or new words in English? Play a musical instrument? Advanced chess?
If not now, when?
If you have the attitude you’re not going to learn anything new unless forced to, you’re just a short step above AD patients. You want your life, and your brain with it, to remain static. That is, you wish to remain conscious of who you are and your family, but you’re failing to learn new things.
However, your life has always changed, and always will change. If you’re not learning new things, you’re little by little sliding backward.
How often do you meet new people? Go somewhere you’ve never been before?
Do you take classes to learn new things? Do you volunteer at your church? Visit your neighbors to see how they’re doing?
When you avoid new situations, new people, new places and new sensations, you’re allowing parts of your brain to atrophy.
If you wish to retain the cognitive function of thinking, THINK!
Read. Watch videos. From YouTube alone, you can learn how to use AI to create stunning artwork. And how the Russia/Ukraine war is changing everyone’s opinion of what makes for an effective 21st century military. And how Christopher Nolan makes his incredible movies.
NOTE: Studies of seniors taking online brain tests or otherwise being stimulated fail to prove this “you won’t lose it as long as you use it” concept. I suspect that seniors who study and learn what THEY choose to enjoy, will forestall or delay cognitive delay. Take some brain tests online and see how fast you get bored.
But do something that’s meaningful to you, and you’ll continue to put effort into it.
Also, do this long BEFORE you’re displaying symptoms of dementia. By then, maybe it will be too late.
Also, although taking a test feels active, it’s not really. You’re still reacting to questions or an environment designed by someone else – not you.
WHAT TO DO:
* What did you always want to learn, but couldn’t because of your job and family responsibilities? Start learning it. In a local class and online. You may be able to attend online classes of a local school. There’re also many sites where you can enroll in online classes to learn many new skills, from architecture to AI prompt engineering to how to make money on Instagram.
* Choose an activity that will get you out to meet new people. Volunteer for something at church. Or for a political organization. Your local library may know of nearby activities or host many itself.
* Read books. Read online. Watch videos. Yes, there’s far more information available than you can ever learn. So why are you watching the same old, same old daytime TV game and talk shows?
* Work puzzles, or play games that force you to think.
6. Express Yourself
Although experiencing lots of new input – sensations and information – is critical, we’re also not meant to be totally passive consumers.
Part of thinking – your cognitive skills – is giving back to the world.
All writers read, but reading doesn’t replace writing. It’s not the same as thinking your own thoughts and putting them into words.
Many people keep a private journal. Many others express themselves online, through blogs and social media.
Part of expressing yourself is getting feedback, both positive and negative. You need to put something out there, then see people point out its good points and bad points.
Or you may play a musical instrument. Or teach students how to run a business. Or start your own business.
This step is going beyond “brain tests” designed to keep your brain active with fancy lights and sounds. It’s YOU choosing to spend your time productively, according to your own agenda.
WHAT TO DO
* Keep a journal. Or a blog – or both.
* Start a YouTube channel.
* Engage in online discussions. There’re a zillion discussion boards for almost every kind of activity/subject people are interested in.
* Engage with people in offline discussions.
* Solve problems. If your own life is perfect, help someone in your family, or neighborhood or in a country far away. There’s no shortage of people in this world who need a helping hand.
What about Omega-3 Fatty Acids?
People with Alzheimer’s do on average have lower levels of the Omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA.
In one study, researchers checked the blood levels of these polyunsaturated fatty acids in thousands of older men and women. Five years later, they rechecked.
Those with higher levels of Omega-3, especially DHA, when first tested had healthier brains than those with lower levels of Omega-3s.
In another study, higher levels of Omega-3s was correlated larger brain volumes – eight years later.
However, many studies that looked at giving people DHA/EPA supplements showed no benefit from taking such supplements.
This puzzled researchers, but they discovered the solution.
The Framingham study found Omega-3 fatty acids in our blood seem to have a threshold. (4.4% on the omega index.) That is, if you’re below that threshold, you are at higher risk of cognitive decline – an extra two years of structural brain aging.
However, if you’re above that threshold, your brain functions normally – no matter how much above the threshold you are. The effect is the same.
Therefore, if you’re below that threshold, and then supplement with DHA and EPA, raising those levels will help you regain and retain cognitive function.
In one study, giving DHA/EPA supplements to older adults over six months did cause improvement in their executive function and reduced brain shrinkage.
In a similar trial that lasted a full year, cognitively-impaired elderly patients taking algae-based DHA showed significant improvement (including in their I.Q.s) and volume of their hippocampus (which, you must remember by now), is the part of the brain that controls memory.
If you’re already above that threshold, taking more DHA and EPA doesn’t help you.
Do you eat fish? If you eat fish on a regular basis, you are probably already over the 4.4% index, and so taking DHA/EPA supplements probably won’t help you. You’ve already got enough.
Your risk lies in eating too much fish, exposing yourself to mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals.
If you don’t eat fish, taking 100mg to 300mg of DHA/EPA to protect your brain is probably a good idea.
However, I did NOT write “take fish oil.”
DHA/EPA fatty acids are NOT produced by fish. They’re produced by algae. Fish contain the DHA/EPA fatty acids because they consume the algae.
But ocean fish also contain traces of all the toxic wastes such as mercury and PCBs we’ve tossed into the ocean.
Protect yourself by consuming only DHA/EPA supplements derived straight from algae grown in a pure, pollution-free environment.
Conclusion
Except for cases caused by an injury to the brain, dementia takes years to develop.
Therefore, you can’t afford to wait to make the lifestyle changes your brain needs to protect itself.
When you’re enjoying a healthy, active older adulthood, you’ll thank yourself.
Resources
https://studyfinds.org/brain-critical-point-secret-to-peak-performance/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloid_beta
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9795181/
https://medicine.washu.edu/news/decreased-deep-sleep-linked-to-early-signs-of-alzheimers-disease/
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/our-brainimmune-axis-gets-a-jolt
https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/11-fun-facts-about-your-brain
https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20350447
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_disease
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/heres-why-cooking-with-aluminium-cookware-is-considered-dangerous/photostory/95382044.cms
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/27/alzheimers-brains-but-no-symptoms/
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-aluminum-cause-alzheimers-disease/
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/flashback-friday-alzheimers-atherosclerosis-of-the-brain/
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-alzheimers-gene-controlling-apoe/
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/study-defines-major-genetic-form-alzheimers-disease
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/parkinsons-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20376055
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/8525-parkinsons-disease-an-overview
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/should-vegans-take-dha-to-preserve-brain-function/