There are ways to ward off dementia and the ill effects of brain ageing,say Alexis Willett and Jennifer Barnett
Sorry to shatter it to you, but there’s unfavorable news. Your brain is shrinking (probably). None of us is getting any younger and time is increasingly taking its toll on our brains; our neurons are getting smaller and we’re losing connections between them. But should we accept this sample of degeneration as inevitable? Is there anything we can carry out now to optimise our brains and protect them against the ravages of ageing?When we talk approximately healthy brain ageing we are really discussing one of two things: how to minimise ongoing damage to the hardware of the brain, and mostly by keeping its blood supply as good as possible; or how to improve the operation of the brain’s software. Many ways of doing this have been suggested,but few have scientific weight behind them. There is currently no magic bullet to protect the brain, but one area that has been best researched, and approximately which we can say with reasonable confidence,“this will help”, is mental activity.
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Source: guardian.co.uk