A new study from the University of California in Los Angeles suggests that piling on the pounds can shrink brains of older people, making them more vulnerable to cognitive problems.

According to Paul Thompson, brains of elderly people looked 16 years older than the brains of leaner peers.

The research involving 94 people in their 70s showed that people with higher body mass indexes had smaller brains on average, with the frontal and temporal lobes – important for planning and memory, respectively – particularly affected.

While no one knows whether these people are more likely to develop dementia, a smaller brain is indicative of destructive processes that can develop into dementia.

The team also found that the brains of the 51 overweight people were 6 per cent smaller than those of their normal-weight counterparts, on average, and those of the 14 obese people were 8 per cent smaller.

“The brains of overweight people looked eight years older than the brains of those who were lean, and 16 years older in obese people,” New Scientist quoted Thompson as saying.

Thompson suggests that as increased body fat ups the chances of having clogged arteries, which can reduce blood and oxygen flow to brain cells, the resulting reduction in metabolism could cause brain cell death and the shrinking seen.

He said that exercise protects the very brain regions that had shrunk.

“The most strenuous kind of exercise can save about the same amount of brain tissue that is lost in the obese,” he said.

The findings appear in journal Human Brain Mapping.

Two studies published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association add to evidence that long-term lifestyle habits may reduce the risk of mental decline in old age.

The first study, a long-term look at 1,880 elderly people in New York City, found that a Mediterranean-type diet and physical activity each were linked to less risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center released the data as part of a larger research project on aging.

The second study, a shorter-term observation of 1,410 patients in France, found some correlation between a Mediterranean-type diet and slower cognitive damage.

Nikolaos Scarmeas, the author of the first study, grew up eating fish and vegetables in Athens, Greece. Now the neurologist suggests more people take up his mother’s cooking. Marked by high consumption of foods such as vegetables, legumes and cereals, served with olive oil, in addition to moderate fish and alcohol intake, the traditional diet has long conferred better cardiovascular health.

Starting in 1992, researchers at Columbia University monitored elderly patients every 18 months for diet, exercise and mental health, in addition to a number of controls including age, sex and education. “This is one of the first studies to tease apart the independent contributions of diet and exercise for dementia prevention,” says Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the research. “It suggests that aging need not be a passive process.”

These studies are observational and not definitive, but they hint at what might reduce the chances of Alzheimer’s or dementia. In the Columbia research, those who adhered most closely to the diet reduced their risk for Alzheimer’s by 40%, while those with the highest physical activity decreased their risk 33%, compared with people who didn’t adhere closely to the diet or were not physically active.

The French study found that subjects who adhered to the Mediterranean-type diet experienced a slower rate of mental decline than those who did not eat the diet, but did not prove a link for dementia, which requires a clinical assessment of a variety of mental and social functions.

Doctors in the field are careful to note that none of these findings demonstrate a causal relationship, but instead reflect the advantages of a continual healthy lifestyle. “The benefits don’t just occur at age 70 when you suddenly stop eating McDonald’s and start eating Brussels sprouts,” says David Knopman, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who wrote the editorial accompanying the studies in JAMA and wasn’t involved in either study. His editorial highlights confounding variables in the studies. “Healthy diet and exercise is part of a package of lifelong healthy living.”

Zaven Khachaturian, a senior science adviser to the Alzheimer’s Association, agrees. “This offers interesting insight but we need to turn it now into clinical trials,” says the former director of the Office of Alzheimer’s Disease Research at the National Institutes of Health.

These findings arrive a few weeks after new research identified a gene that could help predict who will develop Alzheimer’s—the leading cause of dementia—and at what age. The report, given in mid-July at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, concentrated on DNA surrounding the ApoE gene. Researchers say more studies are needed before the findings can be confirmed.

For now, Dr. Scarmeas says his studies strongly suggest that a Mediterranean diet and exercise both confer independent and positive health benefits. But together, they are even better.

“The relative risk reduction for Alzheimer’s is about 60% when you combine the diet and exercise,” he says.

Original Article by carrie.porter@wsj.com

Who would have thought that one could improve brain health? I mean, if I go to the gym and do biceps exercises, or squats, there is a way to measure my progress.

Muscles grow and can be measured or I can move more resistance, lift a heavier weight, and I feel better, (because of the endorphins released when I resistance train) but if I go read classical literature or research in a field I am unfamiliar with, I cannot measure my brain’s health or growth in the same way as I can a muscle’s growth or health.

(When was the last time anyone complimented you on your axon definition? See?)

If I am still thinking, creating words in my brain, then it must be healthy, right?

Not necessarily. Changes in my brain’s health are subtle and cumulative, and we are not sure that once things like Alzheimer’s disease have begun that cognitive function can be regained.

It turns out that I need to take care of improving my brain’s health just like I do my musculature and skeletal health.
Continue reading about how to improve and keep your brain healthy at: Brain Health

DECATUR, Ga. (MarketWatch) — Consumers and retirement homes have made brain-fitness games and exercises a commercial hit, but now some insurers and employers are incorporating them into wellness programs that promote health not just for the body but also for the mind.

When OptumHealth, Inc., a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group Inc., which develops wellness programs for 2,500 U.S. employers, launched an in-house pilot study of a Web-based cognitive function test in January, Danna Lipton, a care advocate, was quick to sign up. Lipton’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at age 62, and while she is just 31 she was looking for ways to start early to maintain her brain health.

If you’re interested in learning more about Lipton’s experience and the importance of brain games, continue reading this article at: Open Mind

What if I told you that the most important muscle you will ever need to improve your health and fitness is the one encased inside your skull?

Yes, our ability to flex our brain power when the going gets tough is what separates the fit from the unfit, and the fit from the really fit. Yet it is the one area of training many active people – and even personal trainers – neglect the most. Indeed, the psychological aspects of training are just as important as the physical ones.

Read more of this article by Devon McGregor, National Post.