How to protect your brain from aging

By staying physically active as you age, your risk of developing dementia for a lifetime is greatly reduced and you don’t have to do it for a long time. exercise.. Instead of sitting, you can strengthen your brain simply by walking and moving around. A new study of Chicago octets may help explain why.

In this study, which tracked how often older people moved or sat, and looked deeper into the brain after death, the brains of active older people differed in the functioning of certain important immune cells compared to their sedentary companions. I found out. Physical activity seemed to affect their brain health, their thinking ability, and whether they experienced memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease. Findings show that as we move, there is increasing evidence that we can change our minds, no matter how old we are.

Already, much scientific evidence shows that physical activity is making our brains bigger. For example, older sedentary people who start walking for about an hour most days usually add volume to the hippocampus, the center of memory in the brain, and otherwise commonly occur over the years. Reduces or reverses the contraction. Active people over the middle age also tend to perform better on memory and thinking tests than people of the same age who rarely exercise, and are nearly half as likely to eventually be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. is. In much the same way, active people who develop dementia usually show their first symptoms a few years later than those who are inactive.

But while scientists have hints from animal experiments, exactly how movement reconstructs our brain is still almost mysterious. For example, when adult laboratory mice and rats run on wheels, they produce geese, a hormone and neurochemical that stimulate the creation of new neurons, as well as synapses, blood vessels and other synapses, blood vessels and other that connect and nurture their young brain cells. It is an organization.

Rodent movements also slow or stop the aging-related decline of the animal’s brain, studies have shown in part by strengthening special cells called microglia. Little understood until recently, microglial cells are now known to be immune cells and whole monitors present in the brain. They monitor the signs of neuronal health deterioration and release neurochemicals that initiate an inflammatory response when declining cells are discovered. Inflammation helps to get rid of problematic cells and other biological debris in the short term. Microglia then release other chemical messages that calm inflammation, keeping the brain healthy and tidy and keeping the animal’s thoughts intact.

However, as animals grow older, recent studies have shown that microglia begin to malfunction and begin to become inflamed, but then do not subside and can cause persistent brain inflammation. This chronic inflammation can kill healthy cells, cause memory and learning problems, and is sometimes severe enough to induce rodent Alzheimer’s disease.

Unless the animal is exercising. In that case, postmortem examination of their tissues shows that the animal’s brain is usually flooded with deep, healthy and useful microglia in old age and shows few signs of continuous brain inflammation, but the aged rodents themselves It shows that it retains a young ability to learn and remember.

We are not mice, but we have microglia, but scientists have never found a way to study whether physical activity with age affects the internal workings of microglial cells. bottom. Therefore, in a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in November, scientists at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. University of California, San Francisco. And other agencies look to data from ambitious rush memory, aging plan. For that study, hundreds of Chicagoers, most initially in their 80s, completed extensive annual thought and memory tests and wore activity monitors for at least a week. Few officially exercised, but monitors showed that some moved and walked much more often than others.

As the study continued, many of the participants died, and researchers examined conserved brain tissue from those 167 looking for protracted biochemical markers of microglial activity. They effectively slow down inflammation by dialing back activity at the right time, whether people’s microglia appear to be permanently overexcited and cause brain inflammation in the last few years. I wanted to see if I could do it. Researchers have also looked for common biological features of Alzheimer’s disease, such as amyloid plaques and tangles that riddle the brain. We then matched this data with information from people’s activity trackers.

They found a strong link between exercising and healthy microglia, especially in the parts of the brain involved in memory. The most active older male and female microglia contained biochemical markers that showed that cells knew how to be quiet when needed. However, microglia from sedentary participants showed signs of being stuck in an unhealthy overdrive during their last year. Those sluggish men and females also generally scored the lowest on cognitive tests.

Perhaps most interestingly, these effects were greatest in people whose brain showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease at the time of death, whether or not they had severe memory loss during their lifetime. When these people were inactive, their microglia tended to look quite dysfunctional and their memory tended to be uneven. However, if people were moving around frequently in their later years, their microglia usually looked healthy after death, and many did not experience significant memory loss in their later years. Their brains may have shown signs of Alzheimer’s disease, but their lives and thinking abilities did not.

Kaitlin Casaletto, assistant professor of neuropsychology at the UCSF Memory Aging Center, who led the new study, suggests that physical activity may delay or alter memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly. ..

Encouragingly, the amount of activity required to confirm these benefits was not significant, said Casalet. In the year of dusk, none of the participants ran the marathon. Few people formally exercised. “But there was a linear relationship between how stationary they were and their brain health,” she said. “The less you sit, the more you stand, the more you move around, the better the results.”

Mark Gluck, a professor of neuroscience at Rutgers University in New Jersey who was not involved in the study, said the study was important. “Using postmortem analysis of brain tissue, activation of microglia, a marker of brain inflammation, physical activity reduces brain inflammation, Alzheimer’s disease,” the findings said, but living people. Further research is needed.

Moreover, no one believes that microglia are the only aspect of the brain affected by exercise, Casalet said. Physical activity alters a myriad of other cells, genes, and chemicals in the brain, and some of those effects may be more important than microglia to keep us mentally sharp, she said. .. This study also does not prove that activity makes microglia work better, only that healthy microglia are common to active people. Finally, it’s unclear if physical activity at the age of 80 or older will bring extra benefits to the brain. However, 36-year-old Casalet said the results of the study continued her movement.