Seniors may be able to slow down memory loss by exercising the brain, experts say.

Doing crossword puzzles, playing cards and other games might ward off a decline in memory or help us maintain “brainpower” as we age, reports a study by the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. The study found that more frequent participation in cognitively stimulating activities is associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The research looked at everyday activities such as reading books, newspapers or magazines, engaging in crossword puzzles or card games, and going to museums among aging participants. The 2002 study followed more than 700 dementia-free participants age 65 and older for an average of 4.5 years. The results indicated a one-point increase in cognitive activity corresponded with a 33 percent reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s.

“The brain is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it,” said Jim Hanekamp, founder of Glenview-based Web site www.myfitbrain.com. The Web site features a variety of cognitive games that are geared to exercising the mind.

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A large, 5-year study showed that the people in their 70s who were the most active and adhered the best to a Mediterranean-style diet were 61–67 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease compared with the least active and least Mediterranean-minded of the group.

Exercise
The most active in the study group got about an hour and a half of exercise weekly. That’s just a few 30-minute walks a week — a pretty manageable commitment. Better yet, aim to walk 30 minutes every day.

Diet
People with the lowest dementia risk ate the highest amounts of fruit, veggies, legumes, and fish, but less meat and dairy products. Monounsaturated fats, like olive oil, also accounted for more of their fat intake than saturated fats. All very typical ratios in a Mediterranean-style diet that doctors and health experts alike recommend for all sorts of reasons. These nutrient-dense, healthy-fat-focused foods could help protect brains against disease and cognitive decline and help protect the body from lots of other bad things, too.

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

Getting older is unavoidable, but falling apart mentally or physically is not. The biological mind-body connection becomes more important as you age. After all, a sound mind won’t do you much good if your body fails.

Loss of memory or cognitive decline shows up in the little things first. You have a harder time calling to mind the names of people and places, you have something at the tip of your tongue but just can’t remember what it is, you go into a room to get something and can’t remember what it was. The prefrontal cortex, which is your search engine for your memory, can’t call it up. Everyone has this happen at some point in their life. When this happens, the hippocampus kicks in to provide other associations to try to jog your memory, but those names and places which used to come easily become more difficult.

Brain-function research shows that as you age the cells throughout your body gradually lose their ability to adapt to stress. In the brain, when neurons get worn down from cellular stress, synapses erode, which eventually severs connections. Dendrites physically wither, and you start losing a signal here or there. Losing a signal here or there isn’t such a big deal at first, because the brain is designed to compensate by rerouting information around dead patches in the network and recruiting other areas to help with trafficking. The good news is your brain is a social network; it thrives on making new connections and is constantly rewiring itself and adapting – provided there’s enough stimulation to spur the growth of new neurons.

Memory is possible because of your neurons. Neurons are electrically excitable cells in the nervous system that process and transmit information. Neurons never actually touch each other. They reach toward each other across a gap (synapse) with their axons and dendrites (tiny hair-like filaments that project out).

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Exercise results in a healthier brain, prevents cognitive decline and in some studies has cut the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in half, says an eminent Harvard University professor of psychiatry.

A big study in the early 1990s showed exercise was one of three major factors – with low caloric content and continuous learning – that prevented the onset of the progressive brain disease, said Dr. John J. Ratey.

“It threw a little wrench into thinking because no one could explain it,” he said in an interview. “It was by far the most powerful of preventive factors.”

Want to know more? Click the following link and review the rest of this article: Exercise helps beat Alzheimer’s

The benefits of exercise:

• In children, college students and young adults, exercise or physical activity improves learning and intelligence scores.

• Exercise in childhood increases the resilience of the brain in later life resulting in a cognitive reserve.

• The decline of memory, cortex and hippocampus atrophy in aging humans can be attenuated by exercise.

• Physical activity improves memory and cognition.

• Exercise protects against brain damage caused by stroke.

• Exercise promotes recovery after brain injury.

• Exercise can be an antidepressant.

The brain needs certain ingredients to flourish or to life up to the expectations of every day problems. The brain has priority when it comes to certain ingredients. A variety of foods can be beneficial for learning. Positive effects on brain function have been reported for fish oil, teas, fruits, folate, spices, cocoa, chocolate and vitamins.

To read more about exercise and the brain,visit the following link: Exercise and the Brain

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.