Chapter 2: Staying Sharp: Giving Your Brain a Workout 19
Looking at recent research
In the late 1980s, a study published in the Annals of Neurology raised questions
about why some people develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and others
don’t. Autopsies were conducted on 137 nursing home patients. As expected,
the brains of those who had demonstrated symptoms of Alzheimer’s were filled
with plaques (brain deposits made up of dead cells and proteins) and tangles
(nerve cells that had become tangled together) — characteristic physical signs
associated with the disease.
Here’s the unexpected part: The brains of ten patients who didn’t show any
symptoms of Alzheimer’s contained the same levels of plaques and tangles. If
the physical reasons for the disease were present in those people, why didn’t
they get the symptoms?
There was another twist: The ten patients in question had heavier brains and
more neurons than they should have had given their age. What made these ten
people different from their peers?As a result of this study, a new theory emerged: the cognitive reserve theory. It
essentially says that people who have a larger reserve of neurons and stronger
cognitive abilities can tolerate some brain deterioration without showing symp-
toms. In other words, the more you use your brain, the greater your chances of
avoiding symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Strong stuff, huh?
Obviously, no one is offering guarantees here. I can’t promise that anything I sug-
gest in this book will add X number of years to your life, and that those years will
be free of any symptoms of memory loss or other mental decline. But study after
study in the past two decades has shown that mental activity can have a positive
effect on your quality of life in the long run, and I can’t argue with that.
How do you build a cognitive reserve? The same ways that you keep your syn-
apses happy and healthy. Keep reading — I offer specific suggestions starting in
the next section of this chapter.
The key to a strong cognitive reserve seems to be to start as early as you can.
The younger you are when you begin actively pursuing brain fitness, the greater
the reserve you can accumulate. But assuming you’re already past “early,” don’t
panic — just make the commitment to start now. Some studies have shown that
even people well into their 70s can improve their cognitive health by making life-
style changes and increasing their mental stimulation.