Keeping a healthy blood pressure makes it possible to have a brain at a younger physiological age than the actual age of the person.
- People with high blood pressure see their brains age at a faster rate and have a much higher risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia.
- Even those with only mildly elevated blood pressure showed signs of accelerated brain aging and an increased risk of disease.
- The number of people over the age of 30 with high blood pressure worldwide has doubled.
There’s a new reason to add to the long list to prioritize healthy blood pressure levels. Australian researchers report that maintaining optimal blood pressure helps the brain stay at least six months younger than a person’s actual age. They published their results on October 5 in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
More and more hypertensives
Researchers assure that people with high blood pressure see their brains age at a faster rate. They have a much higher risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia. Even those with only mildly elevated blood pressure showed signs of accelerated brain aging and an increased risk of disease, the researchers note.
These results have been called “worrying” by the researchers as the number of people over the age of 30 with high blood pressure globally doubled. “It is important that we introduce lifestyle and diet changes early in life to prevent our blood pressure from rising too high, rather than waiting for it to become a probleminsists the cardiologist and co-author of the study, Professor Walter Abhayaratna. Compared to someone with a high blood pressure of 135/85, someone with an optimal reading of 110/70 was found to have a brain age that looks more than six months younger by the time they reach middle age..”
Monitor your blood pressure before the first signs
The researchers looked at more than 2,000 brain scans taken from 686 generally healthy patients between the ages of 44 and 76. They then measured each person’s blood pressure four times over a 12-year period. All of this data helped calculate each person’s “brain age,” an indicator of overall brain health.
For the study authors, it is important to start monitoring blood pressure in early adulthood, even if the consequences of poor blood pressure are not visible until years later. “In detecting the impact of increased blood pressure on the brain health of people in their 40s or older, we must assume that the effects of high blood pressure must accumulate over many years and could begin in the around twenty. This means that a young person’s brain is already vulnerableassumes Walter Abhayaratna.
Below, the program Questions aux Experts on the theme: hypertension, a silent but dangerous disease:
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