Category Archives: Mental Exercise

Lifestyle Affects Both Alzheimer’s & FTD

Posted on by

Alzheimer’s disease (60-80%) and Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) (10-20%) make up the two largest populations of dementia sufferers (Dementia with Lewy bodies comprises another 5%). Two fairly recently published studies have examined the effects of lifestyle changes on both Alzheimer’s and FTD. Both studies considered the participants’ physical and cognitive activities to create a definition of “active lifestyle” for the participants. For both the Alzheimer’s and FTD studies, participants with the greatest activity scores showed the greatest resistance to cognitive decline (for those not already showing mild cognitive impairment) or the greatest reduction in rate of cognitive decline (for those already showing some mild cognitive impairment).

Here are links to three media articles on lifestyle & Alzheimer’s:
People at Risk of Alzheimer’s May Improve Brain Function With Individualized Treatment
Lifestyle changes improved cognition in people at risk for Alzheimers, study shows
Could Regimented, Prescribed & Individualized Lifestyle Changes Improve Cognition in People at Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease?

Here is a link to the research article on lifestyle & Alzheimer’s:
Individualized clinical management of patients at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia

Here are links to three media articles on lifestyle & FTD:
Lifestyle changes may combat a dementia that strikes people in their 40s and 50s
Lifestyle Choices Could Slow Familial Frontotemporal Dementia
Active lifestyle may slow inherited frontotemporal dementia

Here is a link to the research report on lifestyle & FTD:
Active lifestyles moderate clinical outcomes in autosomal dominant frontotemporal degeneration

All links have been added to Health > Physical Exercise and Alzheimers > Mental Exercise.

Once Again, Lifestyle Counts

Posted on by

Another new study, involving 196,383 UK adults age 60 and older, has re-confirmed the importance of following healthy lifestyles for lowering your dementia risk — even if you have a high genetic risk for dementia. The study results showed a statistically significant difference: 1.13% of those with a healthy lifestyle developed dementia later in life compared with 1.78% of those with a less healthy lifestyle. The definition of healthy lifestyle included the following:

  • avoid smoking tobacco
  • be physically active
  • drink alcohol in moderation, or not at all
  • healthy diet: following recommendations on dietary priorities for cardiometabolic health

Here are three media articles on the study:
Your lifestyle can lower your dementia risk, even if you have high genetic risk, study says
Healthy lifestyle may offset genetic risk of dementia
Is healthy lifestyle associated with lower risk of dementia regardless of genetic risk?
The study was simultaneously presented at the 2019 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference together with JAMA publication here:
Association of Lifestyle and Genetic Risk With Incidence of Dementia

Another study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association Conference looked at similar issues. It tracked 2,765 individuals over about 10 years, rating them 1 point for maintaining each of the following healthy behaviors:

  • a low-fat diet
  • did not smoke
  • exercised at least 150 minutes each week at moderate-to-vigorous levels
  • drank moderately
  • engaged in some late-life cognitive activities

Those who rated 4 or 5 (i.e., participated in 4 or 5 of the healthy behaviors) were were 60% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s compared with participants who rated only 0 or 1 (i.e. participated in none or one of the healthy behaviors). The results did not vary by race or gender.
Here are two media articles on the work (formal publication is not yet available):
It May Be Possible to Counter Some of the Genetic Risk of Alzheimer’s With These Lifestyle Changes
Doing these five things could decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 percent, new study says

All links have been added to Alzheimers > Amelioration/Prevention, Alzheimers > RiskFactors, Alzheimers > Mental Exercise, Health > Diet, and to Health > Physical Exercise.

Practical Mental Exercise For Brain Fitness

Posted on by

Studies about what affects the risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias are thick on the ground, and new ones pop up regularly. The things that turn up consistently for protecting your brain are:

  • Regular physical exercise (moderate to strong)
  • Staying mentally active (see articles below)
  • Staying social (from outings with friends to volunteer activities)
  • Good diet (tending towards the Mediterranean, Japanese, or Nordic diets)
  • No smoking (quit if you haven’t already)
  • Manage alcohol intake (from none to low)
  • Weight control and heart health (keep weight moderate and lower high blood pressure)

Here are three articles about keeping your brain fit by keeping mentally active in everyday life, by a memory champion, by an MD who runs a university memory clinic, and by a brain researcher about brain fitness in everyday life:

Keeping your brain fit, by a USA Memory Champion
Mind games: a mental workout to help keep your brain sharp
A brain scientist who studies Alzheimer’s explains how she stays mentally fit

All links have been added to Mental Agility

3 Good Things To Do For Your Brain: Exercise, Manage Blood Pressure, Brain Training

Posted on by

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) commissioned the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to create an expert panel to review the evidence for interventions to prevent age-related cognitive decline and dementia. The panel found promising evidence that cognitive training, managing your blood pressure if you have hypertension, and increasing your physical activity can do much to reduce the risk of decline or dementia, even though they could not call for a widespread public campaign yet — more evidence will need to be accumulated. The panel’s report was published June 22, 2017.

Here are links to three articles about the report:
Expert Panel: Three Things May Save Your Brain

These few things may help stave off dementia, scientists say

Cognitive decline may be prevented using interventions but may be inadequate says report

And here are links to the abstract of the report together with the full report:
Abstract:
Preventing Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Way Forward (Report At A Glance)

Published research (the complete report as pdf — upper right corner of page):
Preventing Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Way Forward

All five links have been added to Alzheimer’s > Amelioration/Prevention

Science and Exercise

Posted on by

Science is incredibly important.  Without it, we wouldn’t be very far out of the caves.   But one does not necessarily need formal science to make rational decisions and take sensible actions. Don’t get me wrong — formal medical and biological studies are immensely valuable and important. However, we don’t have to wait for a formal study to confirm many of the things we intuitively know from experience.  (And in fact, formal studies are increasing confirming the main points discussed below.)

High school coaches don’t need a collection of formal double-blind trials to know how to build school sports teams. At the beginning of fall (or spring) practice, they know that the young players will need strength and endurance, and that many of the players haven’t necessarily worked out (or worked jobs) over the summer or winter to build that strength and endurance. And so every day of practice typically begins with pushups, situps, kneebends, laps around the track, pushups, situps, knee bends, laps around the track, … you get the idea.

Coaches everywhere certainly get that idea, and their players initially ache and groan.  But then after a few weeks, the players tighten up and 50 pushups or two miles around the track, all in full gear, become simply a normal day’s event.

Other high school teachers have typically had similar ideas about strengthening their students’ minds, quite notably language teachers (say of Latin, French, German, Spanish, etc.) and math teachers, especially geometry teachers.  They and many other people in the education world have thought that mastering a language (yes, even Latin!) and/or  mastering geometry will strengthen thinking, never mind whether these things will directly help in getting a job later.

For a long period, those sorts of views of intellectual exercise — Latin and other languages, geometry, and all sorts of similar mental activities — fell out of educational favor, partly because they could not easily be subjected to formal controlled studies with  definable outcomes, whether those outcomes were functionally measurable behaviors or biologically-based measures — at that time it was just too hard to  get inside people’s skulls and count the neurons!.

But some surprising things have happened in the last 35 years. The development of sophisticated non-invasisve scanning techniques for soft tissue have effectively allowed researchers to open up our skulls and see at least a bit of what is going on inside. The biggest surprise is that the previous orthodoxy that  brain neurons are fixed by the end of adolescence and decline thereever after turned out not to be true. Neurogenesis is real! Under the right kinds of stimulus, the brain can and does regenerate neurons to replace others which may have been damaged. Sometimes it also appears to press other neurons (loafing nearby?) into such service. And part of the surprise is that our old Latin and geometry teachers have been vindicated: learning languages and acquiring intellectual and physical skills are the kinds of stimulae which push brains grow or rebuild themselves.  And so both mental and physical exercise turn out to be important throughout life.

We’ll return to all this in future posts.