Secrets of Brain Health

Is brain aging avoidable?  Lars Nyberg, from Umea University (Sweden), and colleagues report that it is what you do in old age that matters more when it comes to maintaining a youthful brain, not what you did earlier in life. For example, the team suggests that education won’t save your brain — PhDs are as likely as high-school dropouts to experience memory loss with old age. Don’t count on your job either. Those with a complex or demanding career may enjoy a limited advantage, but those benefits quickly dwindle after retirement.  Instead, the researchers submit that engagement is the secret to success: those who are socially, mentally and physically stimulated reliably show better cognitive performance with a brain that appears younger than its years. Submitting that: “we discuss a complementary concept, that of brain maintenance (or relative lack of brain pathology), and argue that it constitutes the primary determinant of successful memory aging, the study authors encourage for: ” interventions [that] may be designed to promote maintenance of brain structure and function in late life.”