2023-12-24 08:36:45
What can be done to combat brain aging? First of all, study, in any form (not necessarily at school). Learning a second language can significantly slow the rate of cognitive decline. People who speak two languages delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by an average of four years compared to people who speak only one language.
The more educated a person is, the slower the rate of decline in intelligence. However, the connection here is quite complex. The rate of cognitive decline is variable: at first the brain degrades relatively slowly, and then at a certain point the process suddenly accelerates. At the point of accelerated decline, your education protects the brain: the more you studied in your youth, the later the point of decline will occur. Perhaps education delays the point of decline, giving the brain a greater supply of cognitive resources to combat aging. People with low levels of education have fewer cognitive resources in their brains, so the rapid decline point occurs earlier.
Before reaching the point of cognitive decline, more educated and less educated people lose intelligence at about the same rate. However, as if by magic, after reaching this node, the rate of decline in mental abilities in the former is much higher than in the latter. James Freese, a professor at Stanford University, calls this phenomenon “disease compression”: the more education you have, the less time you have to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. But if you didn’t have the opportunity to get an education in your youth, don’t worry: early education is not the only opportunity to build up the cognitive resources of your brain, and an active life position in adulthood can also sometimes give you a few more years of “sanity.”
Find the meaning of life
Having meaning in life and clear goals and motives helps the brain fight degradation. Scientists followed 900 elderly subjects aged 70 to 90 for seven years and found that those who found some meaning in life were less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and their cognitive abilities declined more slowly. Another similar study showed that responsible, disciplined, goal-oriented people have an 89% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Active social life
Communication will also help slow cognitive decline. Social activity does not mean communicating on the Internet or liking friends on social networks, but real interaction: it is the full range of human activity in the real world that protects the brain. The better your social skills and the more active you are in communicating, the lower your likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. My grandfather’s only hobby was playing mahjong, and I actively encouraged him to go outside more often to play and socialize with other people. This is because older adults who lead an active lifestyle experience a 70% lower rate of cognitive decline than those who live a reclusive life. Interestingly, only positive social interaction has this protective effect, and those who regularly interact with their children but are dissatisfied with this interaction are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
Keep your mind open and your heart young
An open mind gives you the opportunity to keep your brain young. Research has shown that creative personality traits help reduce metabolic risk, making a person physically and mentally healthier and better able to respond to stress, thereby reducing the risk of death.
Open-minded people have a higher-than-average number of nerve fibers in their brains, which provides some protection. These people perceive stress as a challenge rather than a threat or obstacle, which allows them to cope better with it.
Thus, by keeping an open mind and not making too many subjective judgments and limitations, one can keep the mind and brain young.
Changing the internal social role also has an anti-aging effect. In a bee colony, the young are first responsible for caring for the larvae, and then, after reaching a certain age, they go out to collect honey, after which their body and brain quickly age. When older bees were reintroduced into larval management in the lab, it resulted in increased production of anti-aging proteins in their brains, a dramatic increase in learning ability, and brain rejuvenation. We can learn from the experience of bees: older people try to do what young people do, or what they themselves did when they were younger. Intentional role changes can make older adults’ brains and bodies appear physically younger. For example, walking more or taking on childcare responsibilities will rejuvenate your brain.
Exercise helps slow brain aging
Active physical exercise can significantly slow down brain aging. During exercise, muscle cells release irisin, which not only promotes the breakdown of fat for weight loss, but also enters the brain, increasing the expression of neurotrophic factors, improving cognitive abilities and reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Aerobic exercise can slow down the rate of brain aging, and regular walking can also improve cognitive abilities. In one study, neuroscientist Aron Buchman asked 1,000 participants to wear motion sensors on their wrists to track their daily physical activity levels. The sensors recorded not only normal movements (running and walking), but also other everyday activities (for example, cooking or playing mahjong). The study found that the least active 10% had twice the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease as the most active 10%. So, if you move instead of sitting still all day on your phone or working on a computer for long periods of time, you will reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
You don’t have to do high-intensity exercise to improve cognitive performance in older adults’ brains. Short bursts of moderate-intensity exercise can instantly improve memory in middle-aged and older adults, ranging from healthy older adults to those with mild cognitive impairment.
Sabrina Segal, an employee of the Center for the Study of Memory at the University of California, Irvine, recruited a group of people aged 50-85 to participate in the experiment. The subjects were shown several pictures, then some rode a bike in the gym for six minutes, while others did no additional exercise. An hour later, they took the test, and it turned out that those who rode a bike performed significantly better than others on the memory task.
Why does exercise improve memory? Dr. Segal conducted another experiment to find out why. It showed that exercise increases norepinephrine levels in the brain, which helps improve memory. Unlike exercise, staying at home increases the likelihood of cognitive decline in older adults. Demographer Brian James recorded the daily routines of 1,300 healthy people, including whether they left their bedrooms, went outside the house, or left the city where they lived. After four years, those who stayed at home were twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease compared to those who walked more often. Did they go outside more often because their brains were working well, or did high levels of activity have a protective effect on their brains? These two factors may be interrelated.
Healthy eating
Restricting calorie intake, or dieting, can significantly increase life expectancy. It is also the most practical and effective anti-aging method that the medical community has discovered to date. Scientists have found that restricting calorie intake can increase the lifespan of many animals, including worms, fruit flies, mouse-like rodents and primates.
The diet can increase the lifespan of mice by 50%. Long-term calorie restriction can also prevent and delay many diseases associated with aging, including Alzheimer’s disease. What is the reason? Scientists in their experiments found that if the mouse ate only 70% of the portion, mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) in the body was suppressed, while the processes of removing biological waste from the body were accelerated. In this process, the body recycles and cleanses out old, destroyed cellular components and becomes less reactive oxygen species, which in turn reduces the likelihood of DNA and other organ damage from reactive oxygen species attack, helping the organs and body live longer. A recent human study found the same results: More than two years of a moderate diet (reducing daily caloric intake by 15%) resulted in significant improvements in biomarkers associated with aging, and participants’ mental well-being and quality of life improved significantly.
To live longer, you need to not only reduce your calorie intake, but also change your diet accordingly. Numerous studies have shown that the Mediterranean diet helps prevent vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
What is the Mediterranean diet? It involves eating less saturated fats (lard and beef fat), more unsaturated fats (such as fish and avocado) and vegetable oils (such as olive), more non-starchy plants and low-sugar fruits, and milk to reduce the amount of sugar in food. A study published in 2013 found that the Mediterranean diet significantly reduced the incidence of cardiovascular disease. In addition, demographer Martha Claire Morris invented the MIND diet, a super diet rich in berries, vegetables, whole grains and nuts, which can also prevent this disease.
The phytoestrogen resveratrol helps prevent and reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, and its safety has been clinically tested in phase II studies in the United States. It is found in red wine, red grapes, raspberries and dark chocolate. Resveratrol restores the barrier between the blood and brain in people with Alzheimer’s disease by preventing harmful immune molecules from crossing from the blood into the brain, thereby reducing the death of nerve cells caused by the inflammatory response and slowing the rate of cognitive decline.
The physiological effects of resveratrol are similar to those of diet because it activates the sirtuin proteins. In 2015, neuroscientist Scott Turner conducted a phase II clinical trial on 119 patients and found that long-term use of high doses of resveratrol helped patients restore the blood-brain barrier, preventing immune molecules from entering the brain and thereby slowing the death of nerve cells caused by brain inflammation. This reduces the immune response in the brain and keeps nerve cells intact. However, it is important to note that resveratrol cannot be used alone to treat Alzheimer’s disease, and the effects found to date suggest that it should only be used as an adjuvant treatment, and a phase III study will be required to determine the actual clinical effect.
Why older people feel happier
The brain compensates for aging by selectively eliminating bad memories and becoming “happier.” Researchers at the University of California, Irvine found that older adults with memory problems remember more positive information than neutral information, and those with better memory are more likely to remember neutral information. This may be a way to compensate for memory loss in old age. Researchers suggest that over time, changes in the brain’s neural networks associated with memory, emotion and reward cause people to selectively remember positive information and increasingly focus on positive things and happy feelings.
Brain imaging studies have shown that when older people focus on happy events, activity in the brain circuits connecting the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions, and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, is stronger than in younger people. This indicates that older people are more focused on joyful events. In another study looking at photographs, older adults were more likely to pay attention to positive pictures and look away from negative ones. The tendency to embellish one’s memories of events ten years ago is known as the “positive aging effect.” This effect is observed not only in older people, but also in young people suffering from incurable diseases. In general, when people feel that life is fragile, they tend to focus on positive events and memories and selectively forget negative information.
Time passes faster for older people. If you are now over forty, you may feel that it drags on slowly as a child, but rushes through adolescence and adulthood. Why such a difference in the subjective perception of the same period of time?
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Our brain perceives time from two different points of view: perspective (when we experience what is happening) and retrospective (when everything is already behind us). Our retrospective perception of time depends on how many new memories were encoded in the brain’s memory centers during that time. In other words, a short weekend trip full of excitement should stay in your memory much longer than a boring weekend. This phenomenon is called the vacation paradox, and it explains why time seems to pass faster as we age. From childhood to early adulthood we have many new experiences and skills that we must learn, but in adulthood life becomes more and more static and there are fewer opportunities to experience new emotions. Therefore, childhood, full of new impressions, always seems long and slow in our autobiographical memory, and adult life, with its constant routine, seems fleeting.
Therefore, to extend the subjective time of your life, you can try to break the routine and have new experiences. At work, try to learn new skills, read a lot, see things from a new perspective, come up with new ideas, or even try to find new places to eat. While on vacation, try to make new friends, get acquainted with new values and worldviews, and go to new places with loved ones. Fresh experiences that keep your brain active will help you feel like an adult much longer and, as a result, live longer.
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