Researchers highlight the benefits of a balanced lifestyle on the brain to ward off the risks of dementia associated with age.
- Eating well, sleeping well, exercising, drinking little alcohol and avoiding cigarettes: this would be, unsurprisingly, the lifestyle that best helps prevent the risk of dementia with age, to begin with. by Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.
- Researchers found that people who had led very healthy lifestyles were “much more likely to maintain their sanity as they approached the end of their lives.” And for good reason, it “provides a cognitive reserve” which protects against the negative changes that occur in the aging brain.
- This reserve would allow the brain to function better at the end of life, even in the presence of brain changes generally associated with dementia, such as the accumulation of amyloid plaques. “If you take two people with the same amount of this bad protein in their brain, the person with the healthier lifestyle will be more likely to have better cognitive function.”
Eating well, sleeping well, exercising, drinking little alcohol and avoiding cigarettes: this would be, unsurprisingly, the lifestyle that best helps prevent the risk of dementia with age, to begin with. by Alzheimer’s disease. This is what a new study published in the journal reveals JAMA Neurology, confirming what other work here and there had already shown. But how can healthy living have such a crucial impact on the brain?
Healthy living provides a “cognitive reserve” that protects against dementia risk
To be clear about it, researchers from Rush University Medical Center from Chicago (United States) examined the autopsies of the brains of 586 people who had donated them before dying at an average age of 91 years. After following them over a period of 24 years, they compared the lifestyle habits and cognitive abilities of the participants during the last years of their existence with the classic neurological signs of dementia. Namely the accumulation of amyloid protein plaques in the brain, or changes in cerebral blood flow which would have been caused by stroke-type events.
As expected, the research team found that people who had led a very healthy lifestyle were “much more likely to retain their spirits as they approach the end of their lives”, we can read in a press release. In detail, each increase of one point in a person’s “lifestyle score” was thus associated with an increase in their “global cognitive score” at the end of life. And for good reason: a healthy life – in terms of diet, sport, sleep, excess, etc. – can “provide cognitive reserve” which protects against negative changes that occur in the aging brain, allowing older people to “maintain their cognitive abilities” over time.
Lifestyle may deceive brain changes associated with dementia
On the other hand, the link was not so obvious with the brain changes observed during autopsies: even if plaques of amyloid proteins or alterations in cerebral blood flow could appear in the brain of someone who had lived a healthy life, the scores cognitive abilities of this person remained high. “The only effect, very slight, was observed for the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain: reductions in plaque could account for 11.6% of the lifestyle/cognition relationship.”
In other words, this cognitive reserve provided by a healthy life would allow the brain to function better at the end of life, even in the presence of brain changes generally associated with dementia. “If you take two people with the same amount of this bad protein in their brain, the person with the healthier lifestyle will be more likely to have better cognitive function,” summarize the researchers. Conclusion : “You can almost fool biology a little bit.”