Feed Your Brain - Keep Your Mind

Feed Your Brain - Keep Your Mind
For some time now, we've been promoting the role of a
healthy lifestyle in maintaining brain fitness. Another new
study lends more support, but before we get into that we
thought we'd focus on some common-sense topics as to why
this is true.

One simple concept to understand that doesn't require a PhD
is the fact that any organ in your body, including your
brain, needs a healthy blood supply to access nutrients and
oxygen. This is one reason why heart disease and mental
health problems, including dementia are so often related.
If you tied a tourniquet around your leg to cut-off the
blood supply, you shouldn't be surprised when your foot
stops working to well.

The same is true for your brain. If you continue to do
things that are bad for your cardiovascular system, like
sit around all day and eat chips, your vascular system will
eventually have a problem, and this is not good news for
your brain. In fact, your brain uses about 20% of the
oxygen that you breathe and the calories that you eat. Your
blood supply is responsible to get that stuff to the right
place in order to keep your brain in good working operation.

The benefits of life-long learning and continually
challenging your mind to keep it sharp are well
established. But if you don't couple that effort with doing
what's necessary to maintain a healthy neurovascular
system, you cannot fully realize the benefit. You may have
read a lot about neurogenesis and synaptogenesis, which is
the constant rewiring of your brain that occurs when you
stay mentally active and helps to keep your mind agile.
However, this process can only work well if the blood
vessels near all this rewiring are healthy enough to do
their job. Otherwise, where is the energy, nutrients and
oxygen necessary for the remodeling job going to come from?

Think of neurogenesis as a new housing subdivision going
into an existing community and the roads as the blood
supply to service the houses. If you were the builder
constructing this new development you wouldn't get very far
if you didn't first attend to the new roads. Not only are
the roads needed for the new owners to get in and out of
their homes; but they are needed for delivering all the
lumber and concrete, enabling the different crews to come
in and construct the new houses, and take all the trash
away. Similarly, new brain cells or new brain cell
connections need healthy roads (neurovascular system) to
work right.

Related to this, a recent large study, just unveiled this
month (April 2008) by Dr. Thomas Montine from the
University of Washington, reports that 33% of the risk of
dementia stems from disease of small blood-vessels in the
brain. In this 12-year study, 3,400 men and women over age
65 volunteered for periodic cognitive testing and a brain
autopsy upon their death. In the 221 autopsies performed,
researchers discovered that small blood vessel disease
accounted for about 1/3 of the risk for dementia.
Importantly, this type of small blood vessel disease may go
unnoticed for some time. We're not talking about big events
like a stroke or blood clot blocking a large vessel.
However over time these small problems can add up, and
result in cognitive impairment.

Admittedly, this study comes from the Pacific Northwest,
the origin of grunge-rock and Starbucks coffee. We can't be
sure that all these people aren't suffering from some kind
of post-angst cognitive disorder, or a latent flannel shirt
allergy! We also can't rule out suffering from some sort of
post-tramautic stress after invading the world with
high-priced coffee, equivalent to about $18.00 per gallon;
slightly more than we're currently paying for gas. In fact,
one of us (Evans) was raised in Seattle and may be showing
some early symptomology.

However, with these potential confounds aside (unless
Austin Powers was right, and during the time that Dr. Evil
was cryogenically preserved his faithful cronies invested
heavily in Starbucks), this study is an incredibly
important step that illustrates the diversity of factors
that can lead to dementia. Even more importantly, it
suggests that you can substantially decrease your odds of
developing dementia by attending to life-style factors that
can protect against vascular disease.

The beauty is that we have a good idea of how to do this
since blood vessels serve to supply active areas of the
body with nutrients! So if your brain is active (which
requires energy), and you're maintaining your overall
vascular health by eating right and exercising, odds are
that you will be greatly reducing your risk of developing
dementia from small vessel disease. Now it should be noted
that research is ongoing on this subject, but common sense
would suggest that this will hold true.

Taken together this highlights some very important reasons
as to why exercise and nutrition play such a crucial role
in brain fitness. Attending to both of these lifestyle
factors is necessary to maintain a healthy blood supply and
the creation of new blood vessels, in order to feed new
brain circuits established by learning and mental activity.
If you neglect this aspect of brain fitness, you may
literally limit your ability to benefit from neurogenesis
and synaptogenesis induced by many of the 'brain-training'
programs designed to keep your mind young.

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