Dementia and Super Agers

While Dave and I both want to age well, we don’t know how much is out of our hands or how much damage has already been done. We’ll discuss two studies on brain health to show that you can improve it - but only up to a point.  

The first study links our brain health to the health of our blood vessels.  The study followed nearly 8,000 people for 30 years to see how much their risk for dementia at the age of 80 was determined by diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking. They found that 20 percent of that risk could be linked to how healthy people were in their 40s and 50s. And 40 percent of the risk came from those in their 60s and 70s.   This means 20 to 40 percent of dementia cases by the age of 80 had to do with the state of their vascular health earlier in life, which should motivate us to be more aware of our health.   

The second study focused on the brains of people known as super-agers. Even though they’re also 80 years old, their memories resembled people 3 decades younger.  Norbert, I want to be a superager!   

I’m not sure that’s one we get to control. Superagers have a different brain, the key being that they retain the ability to regrow neurons. For years, we had thought this wasn’t possible for adults.   

Autopsies of superagers who donated their bodies showed that in the hippocampus, new neurons were being made, remarkably up to two and a half times more than even young adults.  We don’t know why they have this regenerative capacity, but could it help restore brain health for those with dementia? We hope so.