Keep your heart healthy to keep your brain youthful, say scientists

Keeping your heart and blood vessels healthy is key to staving off decline in the brain, a study has found.

Scientists have compiled a list of conditions that lead people to have an “older-looking brain”, including high blood sugar, inflammation and strokes.

They found that any condition, such as diabetes or small vessel disease, that can be classed as “detrimental to vascular health” will also accelerate the rate at which your brain ages.

The link between exercise and better health is well established for a wide range of conditions and is further reinforced by the new study published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: the Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

It found that “physical inactivity, diabetes and stroke” were associated with an advanced brain age. It found that obese people could reduce the risk by boosting their exercise levels, finding that the negative impact on the brain was lower in “individuals with obesity who were physically active”.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden used artificial intelligence to analyse MRI brain scans from 739 “cognitively healthy” 70-year-olds, 53 per cent of whom were female and 47 per cent male.

It examined their lifestyle factors and vascular health and calculated a “brain age gap” by looking at the gap between their age and how old their brain looks. Some had brains that appeared almost a year and a half older than their true age, while others had brains that appeared six months younger.

Researchers used artificial intelligence to analyse MRI brain scans from 739 “cognitively healthy” 70-year-olds

GETTY

“A take-home from the study is that factors that adversely affect the blood vessels can also be related to older-looking brains, which shows how important it is to keep your blood vessels healthy, to protect your brain, by making sure, for instance, that your blood glucose level is kept stable,” said Anna Marseglia, lead author of the study, a researcher at the institute’s Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society.

“Despite the recent introduction of new Alzheimer’s drugs, they will not work for everyone with dementia, so we want to study what can boost the brain’s resilience against pathological ageing processes.”

If your brain looks old for its age, this can be linked to “poorer cognitive outcomes, particularly attention, speed and visuospatial abilities”, the study said.

In a surprising discovery, the study found that people with prediabetes, those whose blood sugar is elevated above normal but not high enough to qualify as diabetes, have a younger brain age than those with lower levels “suggesting that slightly elevated glucose levels could favour brain preservation”. However, it said that this link was not strong enough to be certain of the association.

The study concluded: “Lifestyle modifications, such as smoking cessation, adoption of healthy diets — such as low-fat and high fibre — regular physical activity, and weight loss, typically used to manage prediabetes, may improve glycemic control and positively impact brain health.”

It noted that “lifestyle interventions can offset the negative effects of vascular risk factors on brain health”.

“Next year, we’ll launch a study to understand how social health — including social engagement, connectedness, and support — in middle and older age, along with sleep and stress, influence brain resilience, with a focus on women’s health factors,” Marseglia said.