A healthy brain is defined as one that can pay attention, receive and recognize information from our senses; learn and remember; communicate; solve problems and make decisions; support mobility and regulate emotions. Cognitive impairment can affect any or all of those functions.
According to a new advisory from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, a healthy lifestyle benefits your brain as much as the rest of your body — and may lessen the risk of cognitive decline (a loss of the ability to think well) as you age.
Life’s Simple 7 outlines a set of health factors developed by the American Heart Association to define and promote cardiovascular wellness. Studies show that these seven factors may also help foster ideal brain health in adults.
The Life’s Simple 7 program urges individuals to:
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Manage blood pressure
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Control cholesterol
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Keep blood sugar normal
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Get physically active
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Eat a healthy diet
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Lose extra weight
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Don’t start smoking or quit
Vascular neurologist Philip Gorelick, M.D., M.P.H., the Chair of the Advisory’s writing group and Executive Medical Director of Mercy Health Hauenstein Neurosciences in Grand Rapids, Michigan, noted that elevations of blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar can cause impairment of the large and smaller blood vessels, launching a cascade of complications that reduce brain blood flow. For example, high blood pressure — which affects about 1 in 3 U.S. adults — is known to damage blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to the heart and the brain. The damage can lead to a buildup of fatty deposits, or atherosclerosis as well as associated clotting. This narrows the vessels, reducing blood flow to the brain, and can cause stroke or “mini-strokes.” The resulting mental decline is called Vascular Cognitive Impairment, or Vascular Dementia.
Previously, experts believed problems with thinking caused by Alzheimer’s disease and other similar conditions were entirely separate from stroke, but “over time we have learned that the same risk factors for stroke that are referred to in Life’s Simple 7 are also risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and possibly for some of the other neurodegenerative disorders,” Gorelick added.
Dementia is costly to treat, estimates have shown that direct care expenses are higher for cancer and about the same for heart diseases. The value of unpaid care-giving for dementia patients may exceed $200 billion a year.
As lives stretch longer in the U.S. and elsewhere, about 75 million people worldwide could have dementia by 2030, according to the advisory.
Gorelick advised that “Policy makers will need to allocate healthcare resources for this”. Monitoring rates of dementia in places where public health efforts are improving heart health could provide important information about the success of such an approach and the future need for healthcare resources for the elderly”.
The action items from Life’s Simple 7, which are based on findings from multiple scientific studies, meet three practical rules the panel developed in pinpointing ways to improve brain health — that they could be measured, modified and monitored, Gorelick said. Those three criteria make it possible to translate knowledge into action because healthcare providers can access Life’s Simple 7 elements — like blood pressure — easily; they can encourage proven, health-promoting steps and they can gauge changes over time.
The AHA advisory provides a foundation on which to build a broader definition of brain health that includes other influential factors, Gorelick said, such as the presence of ‘atrial fibrillation’, a type of irregular heartbeat that has been linked to cognitive problems; education and literacy; social and economic status; the geographic region where a person lives; other brain diseases and head injuries.
