Recent research suggests five everyday lifestyle habits may help maintain a younger brain age
Five simple habits could help keep your brain “younger”, new research has suggested. The study found that following these lifestyle behaviours may keep your brain working as if it were “eight years younger” than your actual age.
This trend was notably evident among people living with chronic pain – a condition typically linked to cognitive decline. The new research, published in the journal Brain Communications, explored whether daily habits affect brain ageing in those with ongoing pain.
According to Medical News Today, scientists found that people who stuck to healthy lifestyle habits showed a younger brain age. In some cases, participants’ brain age was up to eight years less than their real age.
For the study, researchers from three American universities analysed data from more than 100 adults aged 45 to 85, who were followed over two years. These people were already taking part in a larger observational study into pain and osteoarthritis risk.
Each person’s chronic pain severity was scored on a scale of one to five, with one meaning little to no chronic pain and five indicating severe chronic pain. Their lifestyle habits and psychological traits, including smoking status, waist measurement, sleep quality, stress levels and optimism, were also evaluated.
This data was used to work out a “protective score”. At the beginning of the research, people with higher protective scores, including those living with chronic pain, had brain ages as much as eight years younger than their real age.
In contrast, those with lower protective scores showed brain ages older than their actual years. After a two-year period, those who maintained the healthiest lifestyle habits continued to demonstrate younger brain ages.
This suggests that positive behaviours may have enduring benefits for mental health. The five most important protective factors for brain age among those with chronic pain were found to be:
- Practising good sleep hygiene
- Maintaining a healthy body weight
- Avoiding tobacco
- Good stress management strategies
- Maintaining positive social ties
The research team wrote: “Our results indicate that while chronic pain is correlated with overall brain structure, socioenvironmental and behavioural/psychosocial factors appear to play a more significant role. Given that the behavioural/psychosocial factors correlate with brain age over time and are potentially modifiable, the protective factors provide a set of potential clinical targets (e.g. sleep, smoking, social support) for interventions that might reduce brain ageing in middle and old age within and without the context of chronic pain.”
This isn’t the inaugural instance where these components have been linked to brain health. A groundbreaking study, published in The Lancet, previously associated some of these factors with an increased risk of dementia.
The researchers pinpointed 14 lifestyle elements that could potentially escalate the risk of dementia in approximately 45 per cent of cases. These encompassed:
- Midlife smoking – a potential two per cent reduction in dementia cases if this risk factor is eliminated
- Midlife obesity – one per cent
- Late-life social isolation – five per cent
The remaining risk factors included less education in early life, hearing loss, high cholesterol, depression, traumatic brain injury, physical inactivity, diabetes, hypertension, excessive alcohol, air pollution, and visual loss.
