Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How to Improve Your Brain Health as You Age | Dr Tommy Wood #390

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

In the UK, one in 14 people over 65 will develop dementia, with that figure rising to one in six once we’re over 80. But there are plenty of simple, enjoyable things that we can all start doing right now to improve our brain health and stave off age-related dementia. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart.  Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.   Today’s clip is from episode 316 of the podcast with Dr Tommy Wood. In this clip, Tommy explains why cognitive decline in later life is not inevitable and the steps we can take now to keep our brain healthy at any age. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/316 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

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10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 316 of the podcast with medical doctor and neuroscientist Dr. Tommy Wood. In this clip, Tommy explains why cognitive decline in later life is not inevitable, and the simple steps that we can take now to keep our brain healthy at any age. I think that the common view in society is that as we get older our brain function has to decline what's your view multiple large population studies show that pretty much every cognitive function that you can measure decreases fairly linearly over time. However,

I don't think it needs to be that way. Function will decline over time in anybody, but you can change the trajectory quite dramatically. We can make new brain cells in some areas of the brain, particularly in some areas of the hippocampus, which is associated with memory. But even then, even if you're not making new cells, the cells you have can make new connections. You can change the structure around those cells in the brain, which is what helps support their function. And you can see that in multiple studies. Even as people get older, you give them a new challenge of some kind. You challenge their brain, and then they'll make new connections. Those areas area of the brains will get bigger you can see it on an MRI scan so what I find interesting is that just like the muscles of your body which is easier to think about because

you can visibly see it if you train it it gets bigger you can see strength much more easily but the brain is is very similar if you challenge it and you ask it to do new things, it can adapt pretty much any time in life. So part of it is getting over this thought, you know, I'm old, my brain doesn't work anymore, there's nothing I can do about it. So stop telling yourself that story and then introducing things to ask more of your brain and then it will function better. That's really empowering for us to realize that there are actually things that we can do. Age-related dementia is what many people are quite scared about.

Let's say people get a diagnosis in their 60s. When does it actually start in their brain? So it probably starts right after your brain finishes developing. So after you've built the brain, you've built the connections, you've put down the final parts of white matter in your prefrontal cortex that maybe happened in your mid-20s, early 30s, that's when the decline starts. So you build the brain, you increase its function, and then it starts to decline. I don't mean that in a negative way, that is just when the decline starts so you build the brain you increase its function and then it starts to decline i don't mean that in a negative way that is just when the process starts and part of that i think is driven by societal pressures um rather than some process that we

have no control over yeah and what i mean by that is to try and think about what a brain needs to maintain its function. Because I'm a neonatal neuroscientist, that's my day job. So I think about what does it take to build a brain in the first place? And obviously you need the actual structure, so you need the nutrients and the fats and the things that make up your brain. But you also need the kind of stimulus that it takes to build connections. And so think about babies and toddlers. They're continuously exploring, trying new things,

failing, building motor skills, right? Tripping over, trying to stand, trying to climb trees. But they do the same with language. They do the same with social skills. They're constantly pushing themselves, trying new things. And sometimes they fail, they laugh it off, and they just keep going. And then they do that for a period of time. And then they they sleep, they rest and recover, they need that for what we call consolidation in the brain for that period of plasticity, where you're sort of building new connections. Adults don't do that. Yeah yeah we do the same things again and again and again and part of what i think happens in your 20s and 30s is that you leave formal education you leave that period of trying new things learn new things you know learning how to drive all that's done and then you become

increasingly good at the things that you do every day, which isn't stimulating your brain in the same way. So I think we can build those things back in. But part of the reason why that decline happens at that period of time is because that's the time when you stop challenging your brain to develop new connections and to maintain the structure that it has. We know that from the age of 30, we start to lose lean muscle mass unless we do something about it. So there really is a very strong similarity, isn't there, between muscles and brain? The more I think about this and look at this

from the societal down to the biochemical level, I think they mirror one another almost exactly. The structure and function of a tissue is directly proportional to the demand you put on it, right? The more you challenge your muscle, the more muscle you grow. But in order to grow, you need a period of rest and recovery. And the brain is exactly the same. And you can think about that in terms of building new connections, building new cells, but also processes of repair. So autophagy is this thing that people are really interested in now where you start to break down

the accumulation of damaged proteins and other things within cells. And in muscle tissue, the best thing to do if you want to increase autophagy and muscle tissue is you exercise it, you move it, and it seems that the brain is the same that stimulating the brain is protective because it upregulates these repair processes you know if you've broken your ankle and then you put your leg in a cast when you take that cast off the muscles on that leg have gotten smaller if you don't stimulate that tissue it will reduce in both size and function and the brain seems to be seems to be the same i think one of the most interesting lines of evidence that supports the idea is based around retirement. There are multiple studies in

multiple populations that suggest that the earlier you retire, the earlier you get cognitive decline and dementia. And this is particularly in people who have cognitively stimulating jobs. And that's because work is the thing that's most cognitively stimulating for most people. And then you remove that and you don't replace it with other stimulus, that's when you start to see the sort of faster decline in cognitive function. So what practical advice would you give to them as to how they can make up for that lack of cognitive stimulus? So what's nice about this is that it seems that there are many different ways to overcome this, all of which are very likely to be effective.

Learning languages, even late in life, have been shown to improve cognitive function and be protective for certain areas of the brain. Physical movement does it. Randomized controlled trials that show that resistance training improves the structure and function of certain areas of the brain. So just going and starting to lift something if you've never done that before. With respect to movement, it seems that you get more benefit if you do a movement that has some kind of coordination component. So you might think Tai Chi or yoga. One of the modalities that's best researched is dancing. So if you have older adults in their 60s and 70s

and you make them do some kind of circuit training at the gym or the same amount of effort of activity but in a dance class instead, they'll get more cognitive benefit from the dancing. And actually, you can even see that on an MRI scan. hippocampus gets gets bigger more than the other group and what's nice about something like dancing is that there's a music component there's a social component there's a movement component all of these things we know support health both you know physically and mentally so all of those things I understand in isolation would be helpful. Music, social connectivity, very, very good for the brain, physical movement. All these things

individually, I think, have benefits, but you chuck all three together and mix them up at the same time, then it's almost like a three-dimensional stimulus for the brain rather than just a one-dimensional one. Yeah, exactly. And there is some specificity in terms of what are you asking your brain to do versus what does it get better at? So when they've done studies of individuals that did a very challenging learning stimulus, the best example that I know of is taxi drivers who are learning the knowledge. So for those who don't know, I guess people don't need to learn the knowledge anymore, but it's 25,000 streets, a six-mile radius around Charing Cross Station in London.

You have to learn to be a taxi driver in London. So it's a huge amount of things you have to do. I mean, just the memory component is incredible. And it took two years. So people who did brain scans before and after, and those who learned the knowledge and passed, they saw an increase in the size and some of some measures of intensity of connection of the hippocampus, which is the area related to memory in the brain. And these are adults in their 30s and 40s. Those who didn't manage to pass didn't see that. And then also they had a control group where they didn't see any change.

So this is specifically in those people who managed to do this huge learning task, saw benefits in that area of the brain. So if you take something that gives you all of those at the same time, so you mentioned like social connection, the benefits of physical activity, plus the coordination component, plus music. I think there's multiple aspects of stimulus, so it's multiple parts of the brain, but they seem to come together in a way that's, it's difficult to say if it's true synergy, which is that it's more

than the sum of its parts, but definitely seems to be more beneficial than doing any of those things individually. Let's say we're trying to reduce the rate of decline in our brain function. Something that I've been thinking a lot about over the past couple of years, maybe influenced by our first conversation as well, if I'm honest, Tommy, is what am I doing in the next five years of my life or in this decade of my life that is different and new and something I couldn't do in the last decade? And I think about this, I have this thing inside me that at some point in the near future, I'm going to take up martial arts because I'm

fascinated by it. I've never done it before. I'll probably be pretty poor at it when I start. But for my brain function, that's probably a good thing, is it? Yeah. And specifically related to martial arts. So there are multiple different Yeah, and specifically related to martial arts. So there are multiple different sports where they've looked at this. But if you match the exertion level during learning martial arts versus some other thing like running, we can get the same cardiovascular workout, but there's no movement or coordination challenge or having to think about not being punched in the face or kicked in the face if you're actually sparring you get a greater measurable benefit from the martial arts than you do from the running in terms of cognitive function right because there's the additional challenge um doing things that

you're bad at then allows you to figure out the things that you might want to do in order to increase the sort of stimulus prevent the cognitive decline that we talked about earlier and one of the best examples that i have of that is a study that was done in musicians and they looked at how old their brains look on a brain scan so you can do an mri scan of the brain and then there's this machine learning algorithm called brain age that basically says how old does this brain look you know nothing about this person but how old does their brain look and they had professional musicians and amateur musicians and compared to the average population all the musicians had brains that looked younger on the scan than they were in terms of their actual age and years so being a musician seemed to be

beneficial regardless of what type of musician you were. But the amateur musicians had a greater benefit. Statistically significantly younger looking brains compared to professionals, because it's harder, right? If you're an amateur and you're not very good at it, then it's more of a challenge. That's what the conclusion that the authors came to. Yeah, so that's super practical for all of us. What are we doing in our lives currently that is challenging and that we enjoy yeah in the context of brain health and for people who want to

optimize their brain health reduce how much it declines as they get older have you got any final words for them the the function depends on the demands you put on it and i mean that in a good way so do things that are difficult and then give yourself a period to to rest and recover um that's it really it's fairly simple and it can you know anything that you enjoy you know if you can do it in a social situation maybe that's even better right there are benefits from social interaction. So a few times a week, spend 20 minutes doing something that's difficult. What you choose to do that, I think matters a lot less because of all the things we've talked

about language, we've talked about movement, you know, it could be like knitting, it could be video games, it could be online brain training. All of these things have been shown to have benefit. And so, yes, just doing something that's hard is going to be beneficial to a certain extent. But if it's not something where you can continuously go back to it because you enjoy it, then you're not going to stick to it. So it's the thing, it's a combination of something where you're learning over time and getting better, but also something that you enjoy because that's the thing that you're going to do more of. And that's probably by far the biggest change

that you can make to really change the trajectory of your long-term brain health. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.