The Fight Against Dementia: Start Early at Age 40, Scientists Say

The fight against dementia should start at age 40, scientists suggest. Intervening earlier to improve brain health could help us maintain our brains as we age.

According to a growing number of researches, in mid-life, and not at 70 or 80 years old, brain changes begin to appear that can pave the way to dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and subsequent cognitive decline, according to News.ro.

Intervening earlier to improve brain health — and studying the midlife brain more closely — could help people stay sharper in later years, researchers say.

Regular exercise, getting enough sleep and activities that keep the brain stimulated are all measures that can help fight dementia later in life.

“Middle age is an opportune time to make lifestyle choices and get treatment that will have a huge return on investment in old age,” says Terrie Moffitt, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

More and more scientists are looking for clues in the middle-aged brain because efforts to target dementia in the elderly have largely failed, says Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke.

Nearly seven million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. This figure is expected to grow to nearly 13 million by 2050.

“A very reasonable interpretation of these failures is that the interventions were tried too late, after too much damage had accumulated in the brain,” says Hariri.

What happens to the brain in midlife

As the number of people predicted to develop dementia increases, many of us are concerned about our own risks later in life. Doctors and scientists focus closely on this aspect as well.

Some parts of the brain begin to change more quickly in middle age, particularly the hippocampus, which is important for remembering everyday events, says Sebastian Dohm-Hansen, a PhD student at University College Cork in Ireland and first author of a study looking at brain aging published in March in the journal Trends in Neurosciences.

In your 40s and 50s, the white matter in the brain – the connections between areas of the brain – decreases in volume, says Dohm-Hansen. This likely leads to slower processing speed, which could have additional effects on cognition, he says.

In addition, the proteins can build up in the blood, resulting in low-grade inflammation that can impair the hippocampus’ ability to encode and store new information, he suggests.

People retain their verbal language skills throughout their lives, says Moffitt. But the speed with which they process information and the ability to solve new logic and reasoning problems gradually decreases with age.

His research has found that certain groups of people lose cognitive functions more quickly during middle age. These include people who started using cannabis or tobacco in their teens and continued to use into their 40s, as well as people with high levels of toxic lead in their blood since childhood.

But even outside these groups, some people age faster in their 40s and 50s, which research suggests may be linked to developing dementia later in life.

Women in midlife face the added complications of the menopausal transition, during which sudden changes in hormone levels can affect the brain, says Jessica Caldwell, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Center for Women at the Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas. A woman’s brain can adapt to these changes by reorganizing itself, but scientists are still studying how this happens and what the ultimate impact is.

Not all of the scientific community believes that middle age is a sudden turning point in brain health. Processing speed is the cognitive function that declines the most as people age, but this slippage occurs gradually and varies from person to person, says Dr. David Knopman, professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

OK, so what to do?

Maintaining a healthy heart in midlife is the best way to avoid cognitive decline, Knopman says. Brain and heart health are closely related.

The same things that can block the arteries to the heart can also affect the arteries to the brain, impeding blood flow and oxygen delivery.

There are no guaranteed ways to prevent dementia, but steps that help both the brain and the heart include regular exercise, a healthy diet and not smoking, as well as trying to avoid or manage conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol , and obesity, as well as treating obstructive sleep apnea.

For middle-aged patients, doctors often focus on emphasizing lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise, to manage blood pressure and diabetes risk, Caldwell says. But these steps are just as important for continued brain health.

“A more nutritious diet, exercise, and adequate sleep are all associated with better brain health outcomes,” Caldwell says.

It’s also important to stay active and engaged socially and mentally, says Knopman.

“There are benefits to working in a challenging environment – ​​it stimulates the brain – and it seems to be associated with better outcomes,” he says.

There’s no reason to wait until midlife to start making these health improvements, notes Kristine Beate Walhovd, a psychology researcher at the Center for Lifetime Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo , Norway.

Many of the lifestyle changes that will put you on a better path to old age can begin before midlife, she notes.