Work That Challenges Your Brain Helps You Stay Sharp With Age

Dennis Thompson wrote . . . . . . . . .

Jobs that challenge your mind could help your brain age more gracefully, a new study suggests.

The harder your brain works on the job, the less likely you are to have memory and thinking problems later in life, researchers reported in the journal Neurology.

“We examined the demands of various jobs and found that cognitive stimulation at work during different stages in life — during your 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s — was linked to a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment after the age of 70,” said researcher Dr. Trine Holt Edwin, of Oslo University Hospital in Norway.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on 7,000 people in 305 occupations across Norway.

Researchers measured the degree to which each job taxed the brain and the body, based on the different skill sets required for the work.

They then divided the study subjects into four groups, based on their work routine and whether the job required more manual skill or brain power.

Teaching wound up being the most common job with the highest demands on a person’s brain, while mail carriers and janitors had the most common jobs with the least demands on brain skills.

After age 70, participants completed memory and thinking tests to judge how well their brain was aging.

About 42% of people with jobs involving little brain work had developed mild cognitive impairment, the first step on the path to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

But only 27% of those with jobs demanding lots of brain power had developed mild cognitive impairment, results show.

The group with jobs demanding the least of their brains had a 66% overall higher risk of mild cognitive impairment, compared to the group with jobs requiring lots of brain work.

“These results indicate that both education and doing work that challenges your brain during your career play a crucial role in lowering the risk of cognitive impairment later in life,” Edwin said in a journal news release.

“Further research is required to pinpoint the specific cognitively challenging occupational tasks that are most beneficial for maintaining thinking and memory skills,” Edwin added.

Source: HealthDay

 

 

 

 

Infographic: Tips to Reduce Stress Fast

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Calories, Not Meal Timing, Key to Weight Loss: Study

Ernie Mundell wrote . . . . . . . . .

A head-to-head trial of obese, pre-diabetic people who ate the same amount of daily calories — with one group following a fasting schedule and the other eating freely — found no difference in weight loss or other health indicators.

So, despite the fact that fasting diets are all the rage, if you simply cut your daily caloric intake, weight loss will occur no matter when you eat, the study authors concluded.

“Consuming most calories earlier in the day during 10-hour time-restricted eating did not decrease weight more than consuming them later in the day,” wrote a team led by Dr. Nisa Maruthur, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

Her team presented its findings Friday at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians (ACP) in Boston. The study was published simultaneously in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Intermittent fasting has become very popular among weight-conscious Americans in recent years.

In an ACP news release, the researchers noted that “evidence shows that when adults with obesity limit their eating window to 4 to 10 hours, they naturally reduce caloric intake by approximately 200-550 calories per day and lose weight over 2-12 months.”

But what if people simply cut their daily calories by the same amount, without shifting their eating schedules?

The new trial involved 41 people with obesity and pre-diabetes, mostly Black women averaging 59 years of age.

Participants were assigned to one of two eating regimens.

Twenty-one of them engaged in time-restricted eating, where they ate only between the hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and consumed most of their calories before 1 p.m.

The other 20 participants ate in more regular pattern, eating anytime between 8 a.m. and midnight and taking in most of their daily calories after 5 p.m.

However, all of the participants “received prepared meals with identical macronutrient and micronutrient compositions” and identical daily calorie counts.

The bottom line: After 12 weeks, there was no significant difference in weight loss between the two groups, the Hopkins researchers found.

Folks on the fasting regimen lost an average of just over 5 pounds, while folks who ate on a regular schedule lost a bit more, about 5.7 pounds.

The team also saw no significant difference in blood sugar changes between the two groups.

Their conclusion: Obese, pre-diabetic people may lose just as much weight by cutting daily calories without adhering to a fasting diet that cuts calories by the same amount.

Drs. Krista Varady and Vanessa Oddo, nutrition researchers at the University of Illinois, wrote an editorial accompanying the new study.

They applauded the new research, but believe there are still good reasons for overweight folks to try fasting regimens.

“The rising popularity of time-restricted eating is most likely due to its sheer simplicity — it does not require a person to count calories to lose weight,” they pointed out.

The Hopkins study shows that a fasting diet is “effective for weight loss, simply because it helps people eat less,” they said.

So, if you find it a hassle to constantly track your calories each day, a fasting diet could still be right for you, since fasting naturally reduces calories to levels that can trigger weight loss, Varady and Oddo reasoned.

“Although time-restricted eating is no more effective than other diet interventions for weight reduction, it offers patients a simplified approach to treating obesity by omitting the need for calorie counting,” they concluded.

Source: HealthDay

 

 

 

 

Chart: Which Countries Are Diligent About Medical Check-Ups?

Source: Statista

 

 

 

 

Blinking: It’s About More Than Moistening the Eye

Ernie Mundell . . . . . . . . .

Most folks think of blinking as the eyes’ version of windshield wipers, clearing the eye of debris and maybe lubricating it, too.

But blinking is much more than that, researchers report: It also helps the brain process what it’s seeing.

That’s perhaps counterintuitive: Wouldn’t it make sense to not blink, so eyes are receiving an uninterrupted stream of information?

Already, scientists have long known that people blink far more often than is needed just to moisten the eye.

Investigating further, a team led by Michele Rucci, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, tracked the eye movements of folks looking at different types of stimuli.

They combined that data with computer modeling and found that blinking enhances a person’s ability to track “big, gradually changing patterns” in a visual field, according to a university news release.

Blinking does so by altering light patterns as they strike and stimulate the eye’s retina. It creates a different kind of ‘visual signaling’ than would occur if eyes simply remained open at all times, the researchers explained.

So, “contrary to common assumption, blinks improve — rather than disrupt– visual processing, amply compensating for the loss in stimulus exposure,” said study first author Bin Yang, a graduate student working in Rucci’s lab.

The findings, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, bring sight more in line with what science has learned about the other senses, the team said.

For example, when people smell or touch something, body movements that happen during these encounters help the brain understand the space around them.

According to Rucci, blinking is another form of movement that helps create the “big picture” of what is being seen.

“Since spatial information is explicit in the image on the retina, visual perception was believed to differ,” Rucci said in a university news release. “Our results suggest that this view is incomplete and that vision resembles other sensory modalities more than commonly assumed.”

Source: HealthDay