Tag Archives: youth

June 2, 2023 · 11:10 pm

Could a better diet make your brain younger?

Switching to a Green Mediterranean Diet positively affects brain health, according to new research from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Weight loss attenuated brain aging in a sub-study of the DIRECT-PLUS trial.

DIRECT PLUS was a large-scale, long-term clinical trial over 18 months among 300 participants.

Photo by Viridiana O Rivera on Pexels.com

The sub-study was conducted by Prof. Galia Avidan of the Department of Psychology and Dr. Gidon Levakov, a former graduate student at the Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

Their findings were published recently in eLife.

The larger study was led by Prof. Iris Shai of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, an adjunct Professor from the Harvard School of Public Health and an honorary professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, along with her former graduate student Dr. Alon Kaplan, and colleagues from Harvard and Leipzig Universities.

Obesity is linked with the brain aging faster than would normally be expected. Researchers can capture this process by calculating a person’s ‘brain age’ – how old their brain appears on detailed scans, regardless of chronological age. This approach also helps to check how certain factors, such as lifestyle, can influence brain aging over relatively short time scales.

Pages: 1 2

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as aging brain, brain, brain health, diet, green diet, youth

March 21, 2022 · 11:19 pm

Memory formation influenced by how brain networks develop during youth

As our brains mature, two key memory regions’ precise communication boost formation of lasting memories
Study suggests how ‘your brain is learning to multitask as you get older’
‘By understanding how something comes to be — memory, in this instance — it gives us windows into why it eventually falls apart’

In a new, rare study of direct brain recordings in children and adolescents, a Northwestern Medicine scientist and colleagues from Wayne State University have discovered as brains mature, the precise ways by which two key memory regions in the brain communicate make us better at forming lasting memories. The findings also suggest how brains learn to multitask with age.

The study was published Feb. 15 in Current Biology.

Historically, a lack of high-resolution data from children’s brains have led to gaps in our understanding of how the developing brain forms memories. The study innovated the use of intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) on pediatric patients to examine how brain development supports memory development.

Pages: 1 2

Feeling young could mean your brain is aging more slowly

As a plus 80-year-old writing blog on diet, exercise and living past 100, I am keenly interested in everything that reflects on the brain and its part in aging, as well as the actual aging of the brain itself. Remember, I have three cases of dementia in my family including one certain one of Alzheimer’s.

Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 11.15.58 AM.png

This is a shot of my dog and me riding on the Chicago Lakefront.

While everyone gets older, not everyone feels their age. A recent study finds that such feelings, called subjective age, may reflect brain aging. Using MRI brain scans, researchers found that elderly people who feel younger than their age show fewer signs of brain aging, compared with those who feel their age or older than their age. Published in open-access journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, this study is the first to find a link between subjective age and brain aging. The results suggest that elderly people who feel older than their age should consider caring for their brain health.

We tend to think of aging as a fixed process, where our bodies and minds change steadily. However, the passing years affect everyone differently. How old we feel, which is called our subjective age, also varies between people—with many feeling older or younger than their actual age. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Filed under aging, aging brain, aging myths, Exercise, exercise benefits, successful aging, summer biking, Uncategorized, youth

Tagged as aging brain, Exercise, Exercise Benefits, successful aging, youth

November 9, 2015 · 12:08 am

More Fruits, Veggies in Youth Linked to Healthy Heart Decades Later – AHA

• Young adults who ate more than five daily servings of fruits and vegetables were less likely to have developed plaque deposits in their coronary arteries 20 years later.
• This study’s findings reinforce the importance of increasing fruit and vegetable intake as part of a healthy eating pattern in early adult life.

Eating more fruits and vegetables as a young adult may keep your arteries free of heart disease 20 years later, according to research in the American Heart Association (AHA) journal Circulation.

Researchers found that eating more fruits and vegetables as young adults was associated with less calcified coronary artery plaque 20 years later. Coronary artery calcium can be measured by a CT scan to detect the presence and amount of atherosclerosis, a disease that hardens arteries and underlies many types of heart disease.

The researchers divided data from 2,506 study participants into three groups, based on their daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. Women in the top third ate an average of nearly nine servings of daily fruits and vegetables and men averaged more than seven daily servings. In the bottom third, women consumed an average 3.3 daily servings and men 2.6 daily servings. All servings were based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.
Researchers found that people who ate the most fruit and vegetables at the study’s start had 26 percent lower odds of developing calcified plaque 20 years later, compared to those who ate the least amount of fruits and vegetables.

Previous studies have shown a strong association between eating more fruits and vegetables and reduction in heart disease risk among middle-age adults. However, this is the first study to examine whether eating more fruits and vegetables as young adults could produce a measurable improvement in the health of their heart and blood vessels years later.
“People shouldn’t assume that they can wait until they’re older to eat healthy—our study suggests that what you eat as a young adult may be as important as what you eat as an older adult, ” said lead author Michael D. Miedema, M.D., senior consulting cardiologist and clinical investigator at the Minneapolis Heart Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Continue reading →