Have High Blood Pressure? Weekly Workout May Lower Risk to Your Brain

Dennis Thompsonwrote . . . . . . . . .

Vigorous exercise more than once a week can lower the risk of dementia for people with high blood pressure, a new clinical trial shows.

People who engaged each week in vigorous physical activity had lower rates of mild cognitive impairment and dementia despite their high blood pressure, according to results published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Examples of vigorous activity include hiking uphill, running, fast bicycling, swimming laps, aerobic dancing, jumping rope and heavy yardwork, according to the American Heart Association.

“We know that physical exercise offers many benefits, including lowering blood pressure, improving heart health and potentially delaying cognitive decline,” said lead researcher Dr. Richard Kazibwe, an assistant professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.

This new study offers an idea of how much exercise is needed to reap these benefits, Kazibwe added.

The clinical trial involved more than 9,300 participants with high blood pressure aged 50 and older, recruited from about 100 hospitals and clinics throughout the United States.

Early results published in 2019 showed that tight control of blood pressure significantly reduced the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, a precursor of early dementia, researchers said.

For this new report, researchers analyzed the effect of exercise on brain health in these folks.

Nearly 60% of study participants reported vigorous physical activity at least once a week, even among those 75 and older, Kazibwe noted.

“It is welcome news that a higher number of older adults are engaging in physical exercise,” Kazibwe said in a Wake Forest news release. “This also suggests that older adults who recognize the importance of exercise may be more inclined to exercise at higher intensity,”

However, the protective impact of vigorous exercise on brain health was more pronounced for those younger than 75, results showed.

Source: HealthDay

 

 

 

 

What Is a Cerebral Aneurysm? What Are the Signs?

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

Cerebral aneurysms: For most people, the word signals a sudden, fatal brain bleed that seemingly comes out of nowhere.

However, an expert at Penn State Health says that in many cases these brain blood vessel ruptures are spotted early, before they rupture. And even when they do occur, they are not uniformly fatal.

What is a cerebral aneurysm?

“An aneurysm is like a blister on a water hose,” explained Dr. Scott Simon, a neurosurgeon at Penn State Health’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. “They can happen on any blood vessel in the body.”

The trouble is, as they form in the brain in their earliest stages, most people have no idea they’re in any danger. Sometimes, a doctor may spot one in a brain scan conducted for other reasons, Simon said.

If a cerebral aneurysm does rupture, about half of the time the event proves fatal, Simon said. Among those who survive, 68% will experience permanent neurological damage. According to Simon, cerebral aneurysms take the lives of half a million people around the world each year.

Cerebral aneurysm causes and risk factors

According to Simon, the simple answer as to what causes a cerebral aneurysm is, “We don’t know.”

Certain risk factors do seem to come into play, however.

“We know that they can run in families,” he said in a Penn State news release. “We know that they happen more frequently in smokers. But we see plenty of patients without a family history who do not smoke. Some combination of genetic and environmental factors that we have yet to fully elucidate.”

According to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, the bulk of people who suffer a cerebral aneurysm are between the ages of 35 and 60, but these ruptures can occur at any age, even in childhood.

Gender does seem to matter, with aneurysms more common in women than men, especially after the age of 55.

Black Americans and Hispanic Americans tend to be at higher risk than white Americans.

Cerebral aneurysm symptoms

Unfortunately, in many cases there are no warning signs or symptoms, because these ruptures can occur suddenly, Simon said. Most of these breaks in a blood vessels are about 1/8 of an inch to just under an inch in size, and most often they affect an artery at the base of the brain.

However, as an aneurysm slowly grows, warning signs can occur. According to the National Institutes of Health, these include:

• pain above and behind the eye
• numbness
• weakness
• paralysis on one side of the face
• a dilated pupil in the eye
• vision changes or double vision

Still, symptoms do not often lead to a diagnosis, Simon noted.

“The vast majority of patients get a head scan for some other reason, like a stroke or a TIA [transient ischemic attack] and their aneurysms are discovered incidentally,” Simon said.

If an aneurysm does rupture, internal hemorrhage occurs, often bringing on what feels like a severe headache. At this point, symptoms can include:

• double vision
• nausea
• vomiting
• stiff neck
• sensitivity to light
• seizures
• loss of consciousness (either brief or prolonged)
• cardiac arrest

In many cases, “we worry it can cause a subarachnoid hemorrhage,” Simon added. “Subarachnoid is the space in the brain where the blood goes. Unfortunately, it carries with it a 40% mortality rate.”

In many cases, a ruptured aneurysm can trigger an ischemic stroke. According to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, up to 5% of strokes might be triggered in this way. Fifteen percent of people who experience this type of event die instantly or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Cerebral aneurysm treatment

According to Simon, if a brain aneurysm is spotted prior to rupture, there is often little that is done except bring the patient in for regular monitoring.

That’s because “often aneurysms don’t rupture, grow or cause problems, and doctors opt to keep them under surveillance to make sure they stay that way,” according to the news release.

Sometimes a developing aneurysm will pose an imminent threat, and in these cases doctors may recommend surgery to remove it. These procedures carry their own risks, however, so physicians will carefully consider the patient’s age, health and the lesion’s location in the brain.

How to prevent cerebral aneurysm

At this point, experts do not recommend testing for an aneurysm for most people.

If your family includes more than one person who’s suffered a cerebral aneurysm, however, testing once every five years might be recommended. This would involve CT scans or MRIs.

Cutting out smoking and keeping your blood pressure under control are two ways to help reduce your risk for an aneurysm, Simon said. But as of now, there’s no proven prevention strategy.

Source: HealthDay

 

 

 

 

Research: ‘Super Agers’ Have Incredibly Sharp Memories

Olivia Hebert wrote . . . . . . . . .

Super-ager octogenarians have been found to have incredibly sharp memories similar to people decades younger than themselves, say researchers.

According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the brains of super-agers indicate that they have less brain atrophy compared to many of their peers. The research was conducted on 119 octogenarians from Spain, specifically looking at 64 super-agers and 55 older adults with normal memory abilities for their age.

Each participant completed a variety of tests that assessed their memory, motor, and verbal skills. They also underwent brain scans and blood draws and were given questionnaires to complete about their everyday habits and lifestyle.

The super-agers and the control group both showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains, but the super-agers had more volume in areas of the brain important for memory.

The front of the brain also exhibited better connectivity between the areas that are key to cognitive recognition. Dr Bryan Strange – the lead researcher and a professor who studies clinical neuroscience at the Polytechnic University of Madrid – noted that although there were similarities between both groups, there were striking differences.

“By having two groups that have low levels of Alzheimer’s markers, but striking cognitive differences and striking differences in their brain,” Dr Strange told the New York Times. “Then we’re really speaking to a resistance to age-related decline.”

A separate study conducted by Northwestern that backs up Dr Strange’s teams’ claims showed that super-agers possessed more youthful brains than their peers. Their brains resembled that of 50- or 60-year-olds’ brains rather than those of their fellow octogenarians. After checking on the brains of super-agers for a couple of years, the researchers found that their brains deteriorated less than the average person their age.

Lead Northwestern study researcher Dr Emily Rogalski – a professor of neurology at the University of Chicago – noted that super-agers are easy to identify in person. She said, “They are really quite energetic people, you can see. Motivated, on the ball, elderly individuals.”

Super-agers tended to exhibit better physical health, with healthier levels of blood pressure and higher metabolisms. They also excelled at a higher rate when completing mobility tests compared to their peers. They also had noticeably better mental health.

Dr Rogalski added that one pattern she noticed among super-agers was that they tended to have a strong sense of community as well as boast healthy social relationships. However, members of her team stressed that there were variations in diet, exercise, substance use, and more that warranted more research.

“In an ideal world, you’d find out that, like, all the super-agers, you know, ate six tomatoes every day and that was the key,” assistant researcher Tessa Harrison from UC Berkeley said. However, she noted that there must be “some sort of lucky predisposition or some resistance mechanism in the brain that’s on the molecular level that we don’t understand yet.”

Whether it’s more or less exercise, to eat a Mediterranean or a keto diet, scientists have not cracked the code, but they are closer than ever.

Source : Yahoo!

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Study: Exercise Could Help Your Heart by Calming the Brain

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

You know exercise is great for your cardiovascular health, but new research suggests that your brain has a lot to do with it.

It’s all about physical activity’s ability to lower stress levels within the brain, explained a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.

Bolstering that finding, their study found that exercise brought the greatest heart benefits to people with histories of depression.

“Physical activity was roughly twice as effective in lowering cardiovascular disease risk among those with depression,” noted study lead author Dr. Ahmed Tawakol. He’s an investigator and cardiologist in the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center at MGH.

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

In the research, Tawakol’s team looked at a median 10 years of data on more than 50,000 people enrolled in the Mass General Brigham Biobank database. All of the participants kept records of their physical activity.

A subset of 774 also underwent brain scans and other tests measuring their stress-linked brain activity.

Over the decade of follow-up, almost 13% of the participants went on to develop heart disease, the researchers reported.

However, folks who met standard recommendations for physical activity were 23% less likely to receive such a diagnosis.

Those individuals also had markedly less brain activity associated with stress than people who exercised less, Tawakol’s team found.

Specifically, fitter folk tended to have greater activity in the brain’s decision-making, impulse-control center, the prefrontal cortex. This area is known to wield some control over the brain’s stress centers, the Boston team explained.

Overall, it appeared that lowered stress levels did have a big role to play in improved heart health, the researchers said. The fact that exercise seemed to especially help folks with a history of depression reinforced that notion.

“Effects on the brain’s stress-related activity may explain this novel observation,” Tawakol said in an MGH news release.

He believes that doctors should mention the brain-heart connection whenever they counsel patients about the benefits of exercise.

Source: HealthDay