How a healthy lifestyle improves brain power

New research highlights how a healthy lifestyle can ward off dementia. Photo: Thinkstock

New research provides further proof that lifestyle can preserve brain function.

Regular exercise, a healthy diet, brain training and social activities were found to help prevent the onset of dementia. It is great news for the disease that currently is the second leading cause of death of women in Australia and is otherwise incurable.

The study, from University of Eastern Finland, the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, assessed 1,300 people between the ages of 60-77, splitting the participants in two groups. The first group was given basic health care information, whilst the other received specific nutritional and exercise guides, cognitive training and social exercises. Their diet included diet included high amounts of fruit and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy and meat, less than 50g sugar a day and fish at least twice a week. Cognitive training included sessions with psychologists and regular computer-based exercises at home.

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At the end of the two-year trial, the healthy group’s overall scores in brain tests were 25 percent higher than the other group. Whilst most of us are aware that a healthy lifestyle is beneficial to the body, this is the first large-scale human trial that substantiates a definitive correlation between healthy living and brain function.

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Also interesting is the effects the study had on the brain’s ability to organise thoughts, with the group on the lifestyle program coming in 83 percent higher than the other group. They were also 150 percent better at processing information and instructions.

While the results are a promising discovery in delaying the onset of the incurable disease, leading experts say there is still more work to be done. Dr Doug Brown from the Alzheimer’s Society’s said the next step after this latest discovery will be to find a way to ‘protect the brain in the longer term’.

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