Aug
17
2024

Exercise for healthy Aging and a young Brain

By | andropause, Cancer, Cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, Diabetes, diet, e-cigarettes, exercise, Fitness, Health, heart attack, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, lifestyle, Menopause, sleep, Smoking, stress, Stroke, sugar, Weight loss

This article is about exercise for healthy aging and a young brain. A review article in Medical News Today states that several research papers showed that exercise greatly improves brain health, cognition and mood. It also reduces the risk of neurodegenerative diseases.

The benefits of regular exercise 

Here is a list of the beneficial effects of regular exercise:

  • Increased muscle strength
  • Improved heart health
  • Lower blood sugar
  • Improved mood
  • Alleviates stress
  • Improvement of cognitive function

Researchers from Stanford Medicine have examined in a rat model how exactly exercise influences various tissues. Unfortunately, such experiments in humans are not possible and results of rat experiments do not readily translate into the human context. In 8 weeks of regular exercise rats experienced stimulation of the immune system, a reduction of the stress response, an increase of energy production and stimulation of the metabolism. From indirect measurements we know that in humans the same findings likely also hold true. The mitochondria, the area in cells where energy production occurs, are stimulated in muscles, the heart, liver, kidneys, and white adipose tissue.

Effect of exercise on the immune system

Researchers showed in a mouse model that exercise stimulated the T cell response and rejuvenated aging microglia in the brain. The result is a strengthening of the immune system and rejuvenation of the supportive microglia. In the aging human regular exercise rejuvenates microglia in the hippocampus. This can prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Exercise strengthens brain cell connections

How does exercise affect the functioning of the brain?

Ryan Glatt is a senior brain health coach and director of the FitBrain Program at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica. He said: “Exercise enhances synaptic plasticity and blood flow while reducing inflammation and increasing the expression of neurotrophic factors like Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). These effects can synergistically improve memory, learning, and overall brain health.”

The best forms of exercise for brain health

Glatt said: “Activities combining physical and cognitive challenges, like dance or tai chi, can be especially effective for certain aspects of brain health.”

Brisk walking is a simple method of exercise. However, we also need isometric exercises, which helps muscle strength and endurance. A good way of combining the two forms of exercise is to regularly go to a gym. Use a treadmill for 30 minutes and then use 30 minutes of a workout with 10 weight machines. Mix this with tai chi or ballroom dancing several days per week. This keeps you mentally and physically fit.

Slow your biological age through the use of the “Essential 8”

Research identified 8 factors that determine how long you live. These 8 factors are what can lower your biological age by 6 years. Here are the 8 factors:

  • Diet

    A diet high in fruit, vegetables and lean meats helps you to lower your cholesterol level. In addition, avoid trans fats, fried foods and sugary foods. This helps you to lose weight and prevents Together with regular exercise eating a healthy diet prevents heart attacks and strokes.

  • Activity

    The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week. Alternatively, 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity achieve the same thing. Examples of moderate aerobic activity are a brisk walk, jogging, biking, social dancing and water aerobics. Vigorous aerobic activity involves spinning, running, swimming laps or jumping rope. Exercise reduces blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. It also helps people to reduce weight.

  • Quit smoking

    Smoking cigarettes, vaping or using e-cigarettes causes your  body to develop higher blood pressure and damages your blood vessels because of circulating toxins. You also develop shortness of breath from narrowed airways. On the other hand, when people quit smoking, their risk of coronary heart disease drops to half after 1 year.   

  • Getting enough sleep

    People who don’t get enough sleep at night tend to have higher blood pressures, higher cholesterol and higher blood sugar values. This leads to weight increase and obesity. Sleeping at night for 7 to 9 hours improves cardiovascular health.

  • Body mass index (BMI) 

    An elevation of your body weight occurs when you eat the wrong foods and combine this with a sedentary lifestyle. Increased weight causes heart and joint problems as well as diabetes. Eating the right foods and exercising regularly gets your BMI into the normal range. This reduces your biological age.

  • Cholesterol

    An increase of cholesterol can cause heart attacks and strokes. But when you watch your fat and cholesterol intake you can reduce your cholesterol level. Make healthier choices with foods like reducing saturated fats, reducing refined carbohydrate intake, eating more vegetables and leaner meats. This reduces inflammation in the arteries and plaque deposits with much lower risks of heart attacks and strokes.

  • Blood sugar

    Increased blood sugars lead to diabetes. In this case there is accelerated hardening of the arteries in the heart, brain, eyes, and kidneys. This leads to premature heart attacks and strokes. People need to avoid eating refined sugars, carbohydrates (bread, pasta, rice) and sugary drinks. This normalizes blood sugars and your biological age reduces. Regular exercise is also important to burn off any excess sugar in the system.

  • High blood pressure

    An elevated blood pressure strains the arteries and the heart. If you don’t pay attention to this you are at a high risk of getting heart failure, a heart attack or a stroke. Sticking to a heart healthy diet, avoiding salty foods, and exercising regularly allows you to lower your blood pressure and avoid the above mentioned complications. If these measures alone do not reduce your blood pressure to normal, ask your doctor to prescribe blood pressure lowering medications for you.

  • Bioidentical hormone replacement

    What was not contained in the 8 factors was bioidentical hormone replacement. As you can see from the illustration, testosterone in males reduces more slowly in males (with a delay of 10 years) in comparison to estrogen reduction in menopausal women. Several authors describe that men and women in andropause and menopause live longer when bioidentical hormones are administered compared to those that do not use hormone replacement therapy.

Exercise for healthy Aging and a young Brain

Exercise for healthy Aging and a young Brain

Conclusion

Regular exercise even in older age keeps your brain free from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. But in addition to this other research showed that 7 more factors are important to reduce your biological age. They are a healthy diet, quitting smoking, getting enough sleep and reducing your body mass index. In addition, you need to keep your cholesterol and blood sugar levels normal. Control high blood pressure with a healthy diet, refrain from salty foods and if necessary, treat it with medication.

Life’s essential 8 factors

It is important to simultaneously control all these “Life’s essential 8” factors for optimal control. People who do this were found to consistently have a lower biological age than others who do not. They also tend to not get Alzheimer’s disease whereas controls do. Lifestyle factors matter for healthy aging and a young brain. Studies showed that the biological age of those who take care of their lifestyles is on average 6 years younger than that of controls. You can reduce your biological age even further with bioidentical hormone replacement in andropause and menopause.

Nov
28
2015

Diet And Brain Health

By | Alzheimer’s disease, Fitness, Nutrition, Prevention, Vitamins and supplements

The fact that the topic of diet and brain health keeps popping up in the medical literature, is significant. This year has not been any exception.

The Mediterranean diet in particular has been shown to have very positive effects on postponing Alzheimer’s disease by as much as 5 years.

A clinical study on 674 elderly patients (mean age 80.1 years) without dementia, was published in the journal “Neurology”. It examined the question whether adherence to the Mediterranean diet would affect the degree of brain atrophy. Researchers already knew that Alzheimer’s disease was less common on a Mediterranean diet.

The findings were interesting: a high adherence to the Mediterranean diet led to a higher total brain volume, total grey matter volume and total white matter volume as measured with high-resolution structural MRI scans.

Quality of diet influences cortical thickness of brain

Lower meat intake led to higher brain volume. In addition, more fish intake also caused the mean cortical thickness of the brain to increase. Parts of the brain in Alzheimer’s patients showed atrophy like in the cingulate cortex, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and hippocampus with good volumes on MRI scans when patients adhered to the Mediterranean diet. These volumes started to shrink when the diet was poor.

Those patients adhering to a Mediterranean diet have brains that on MRI scan look 5 years younger and are much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Physicians have known for a long time that people, who eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, don’t smoke and who keep mentally stimulated will generally have healthier brains than people who don’t do these things.

What is the Mediterranean diet?

It involves eating meals derived from plants: vegetables, fruit, cereals, beans and nuts. You can eat fish and poultry twice per week. You cut down the amount of meat and dairy you eat, but you can have a glass of wine per day. Instead of butter olive oil is used instead. Here is more information of what is included in the Mediterranean diet.

Because there is less fat and less high glycemic index carbs in this diet, it is also a diet that lends itself for weight management. You shed a few pounds and reach your ideal body mass index without paying much attention to it.

Apart from the Mediterranean diet the MIND diet has also been shown to prevent brain atrophy. This diet is a combination of the DASH, which physicians developed for controlling high blood pressure, and the Mediterranean diet.

The Mediterranean diet makes you live longer

The Nurses’ Health Study that has been going on since 1976 showed that telomeres, the caps on chromosomes, were getting shorter in nurses who lived on junk foods, but surprisingly nurses on the Mediterranean diet preserved their telomeres. Longer telomeres have an association with slower aging. And people with longer telomeres reach an older age without diseases like heart attacks, liver disease or cancer.

Exercise on top of the Mediterranean diet

In addition to relying on a healthy diet, like the Mediterranean diet, for your health, think about doing regular exercises. These two ingredients together will prevent heart attacks, strokes and other diseases. When you combine exercise with a healthy diet your abdominal girth shrinks as this study showed.

Another study showed that when a Mediterranean type diet is combined with regular exercise, adult onset diabetes occurrence could be reduced by 28-59%.

This is quite a significant effect of two simple interventions: a healthy diet and regular exercise.

Don’t smoke

It does not make sense to go on a healthy diet, exercise and then smoke! Interestingly an Iranian study showed that when people became health conscious, adopted a healthy diet and exercised, they also started to quit smoking. People who did all of this, quit smoking, eating healthy and exercising regularly, were also the happiest and most content.

Exercise your brain

The evidence shows that any stimulation of brain activity, particularly anything that requires active and abstract thinking will protect the brain from developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Another study showed that prevention of Alzheimer’s disease is achieved by quitting smoking, treating high blood pressure, stimulating the brain and treating diabetes.

Diet And Brain Health

Diet And Brain Health

Conclusion

us. This approach will be the most successful way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. It starts with quitting smoking. It goes on to starting a Mediterranean diet and staying on it. Regular exercise will take care of preventing heart attacks and strokes. But exercise also ensures that all of your brain cells continue to get oxygen and nutrients. This in turn prevents brain shrinkage.

Weight loss included in Mediterranean diet

The Mediterranean diet has a lower calorie content than the Standard American diet, there will be weight loss. The weight loss will continue until you reach your ideal body mass index. You can stimulate your brain by actively doing computer work, doing puzzles, playing a music instrument and phoning friends. In addition you may want to read reading books etc.. All this  will contribute to preventing Alzheimer’s. Watching TV or movies is not an active mental activity. This is passive thinking, which means it is not as valuable as the other activities. Pick a hobby that enhances your life, and your brain will thank you for it too!