Staying healthy is more than just not getting cancer or having a heart attack, we need to keep our mental faculties as well. With this in mind I asked Dr Laurence Eyres to write a summary article on brain health nutrition. As you can see from his more technical article, there is a lot to it – and this is really just an introduction.
People live a lot longer now (in the last 10 years our life expectancy increased by 3!), and with that increased lifespan we have seen a massive increase in the diseases of aging and the associated cognitive decline. This is only going to become more of a concern as the new field of longevity research really takes off and we can add 5, 10 even potentially several decades to our normal lifespan. If you think longevity research is ‘pie in the sky’, well, it’s not anymore. Even as recent as the 1990’s research into longevity was a career killer. You couldn’t have managed much work through the snickering. But people have stopped laughing. Many of you will recall the reason that resveratrol was initially famous was due to its longevity effect on the lifespan of a variety of organisms. An ancient gene (common to virtually all life) called Sirt1 is thought to be responsible for this effect, and resveratrol activates this gene in animal studies. Beyond longevity, the activation of this gene was also associated with a reduction in the risk of getting many of the diseases of aging as well. Glaxo Smith Kline paid a billion dollars for a company focussed on researching this area in the hope of developing a patentable drug that could do the same thing, and the business of longevity was firmly established. For longevity to be of any benefit, we really need to ensure that we not only live longer, but we are healthy and active into old age as well. Of particular concern, and the focus of today’s articles is brain health and memory. A quick summary of Laurence's nutritional recommendations include marine sourced Omega-3’s (with daily requirements based on age). Don’t be fooled into thinking plant based Omega-3’s (such as ALA,) are as good, most of the research into the benefits of Omega-3’s are from marine not plant sources, and they are different. He also recommends certain vitamins and minerals at various life stages, such as pregnancy, and singles out antioxidants such as vitamin E as well as polyphenols as playing important roles in brain health and memory retention. Polyphenols are a group of antioxidants common in plants, and found in high quality olive oil (good for drizzling on salads) as well as products like our Res-V. Lecithin is a very important substance, as it contains the phospholipids phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylserine. Without getting technical (for more detail read Laurences article), it is thought that phosphatidylcholine is more important for the developing brains of children while phosphatidylserine is more important as we get older. In fact, studies of phosphatidylserine suggest that supplementation in humans supports concentration and memory retention in aging brains.
Beyond nutrition…what can we do to keep our brains young?
Brain plasticity and blood supply are two key areas for looking after brain health into old age. Plasticity is our brains ability to modify itself in response to its environment. Simply by doing new things we can create changes in our brains, this occurs at the molecular level in a matter of hours and at the cellular level, via the connections (synapses) between our neurons (brain cells) in a matter of weeks. The second part is called ‘neurogenesis’. It used to be thought that you had a certain number of brain cells – and that was it. In the 1990’s we learned that this is not the case, neurogenesis is the process by which new brain cells are created. This process takes weeks to months. So, to maintain a healthy brain into old age- we need plasticity. We can achieve this though mental and physical exercise. Much of this research is recent, and comes from studies on mice. In 2009 neuroscientist Daniel Blackmore discovered that exercise makes a big difference in in the decline in the number of neural stem cells as mice age (stem cells can turn into other types of cells, as needed). Quite remarkably, he demonstrated that physical exercise could bring a 1 year old mouse’s neural stem cells back to the level of a 6 month old mouse. That’s a massive difference when you consider that mice generally only live two years or so. I doubt humans can achieve the same percentage increase, but physical exercise is likely highly beneficial for aging brains, increasing blood flow alone is thought to be beneficial. The amounts of time spent doing physical and mental exercise is not too excessive. While any such activity will have benefits, the amounts I have seen used in a very recent human study amounted to just 3 hours of each per week. Human longevity is now a bona-fide area of research. Initially, gains will be a few years, but eventually …who knows? What we know for sure is that there is no point living longer if we can’t remain healthy and active. I hope the brain nutrition advice from Laurence, as well as the advice in this article gives you something to think about. I should probably have ended with a Sudoku puzzle… to get you started.
