The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy | Episode 7

There are a lot of studies that have shown that deficiencies in B12 accelerate a variety of diseases. Heart disease is the major one but also dementia ... I think what's going on is that aging is being accelerated when you don't have enough of these B vitamins.

In an elderly cohort, they had 451 people, just 10 weeks of strength training increased the level of factors that grow new brain cells, new nerves. This marker is called BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

It's very clear in over a dozen studies that a Mediterranean-type diet protects the brain from aging and can even reverse aspects of aging in the elderly with mild cognitive impairments.

There was a second study that I found fascinating ... There was a 10% reduction in dementia risk for people on the Mediterranean diet.

Often your doctor, but not all the time, measures homocysteine levels because it's been shown to go up as a predictor of heart disease and dementia. And high levels are particularly dangerous. Most doctors would want you to have <10 mmcol/L; some people go as high as 100. If you're that high, you're certainly going to die in the next few years of cardiovascular events.

What you do in your 20s and 30s will impact how healthy you are in your 70s, 80s, and 90s.

mTOR responds to insulin signaling and fasting. And in response, it mobilizes proteins to be recycled and made into new proteins when you're hungry, and that's called autophagy—the garbage collection and trash recycling system of the cell.

In the mouse, in 2008, we published that just upregulating the SIRT1 gene in the nerve cells of a mouse's brain was sufficient to slow aging and prevent those loops and bundles from changing. And that was the first evidence you could even slow down a mouse's brain age.

What is really important to understand if you start to lose the function of SIRT1 and have low NAD levels, you're probably not going to sleep well, but also, you're going to age prematurely.

What they found was that, in people that had very little sleep, the risk of dying was 30% higher than those that got a natural, normal night's sleep.

The volume of the brain after the age of 40 reduces about 5% per decade, and that's got cognitive implications for all of us as we enter what used to be called our middle years.

In dozens of studies, it's been shown that if you do aerobic exercise or even just walk, that'll improve your chances of having a better memory and cognition as you get older.