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Want a full sized brain for life? Avoid smoking, excessivedrinking, keep your weight, blood sugar levels and blood pressureall under control and you should be able to avoid brain volume massshrinkage over time a new study suggests. Persons with high blood pressure experienced a more rapid worsening of test scores of planning anddecision making, which corresponded to a faster rate of growth ofsmall areas of vascular brain damage than those with normal bloodpressure. Those study participants with diabetes in middle age experienced brain shrinkage in an area known as thehippocampus faster than those without, and smokers lost brainvolume overall and in the hippocampus faster than nonsmokers, witha more rapid increase of small areas of vascular brain damage. Finally, persons who were obese at middle age were more likely tobe in the top 25% of those with faster declines in tests ofexecutive function and were among the top 25% with a faster drop inbrain volume. Dr. Charles DeCarli, director of UC Davis' Alzheimer's DiseaseCenter explains how real a problem this can be with a pun: "We can't cure disease or cure aging, but the idea of a healthybody, healthy mind is very real. People should stop smoking,control their blood pressure, avoid diabetes and lose weight. Itseems like a no brainer...It could be so much worse in arepresentative group of Americans; the study certainly doesn'trepresent the growing obesity problem seen in the South." It is important to note that all study participants were white andonly 5% were diabetics, compared to a nearly 50% rate for Hispanicsover age 65. Participants were given blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes tests and had their body mass and waist circumferencemeasured. They also underwent MRI brain scans over the course of adecade, the first one about seven years after the initial riskfactor exam. Dr. Raj Shah, medical director of the Rush Memory Clinic in Chicagocomments: "I do think it's an important study and has practical importance inconfirming there are things we can do in middle age that can haveeffects 10, 20 and 30 years down the line to improve cognitivehealth. It may seem we're talking about things that are somewhatcommon knowledge, but really, we always hypothesize these thingscould happen, but to show they actually do in a study is veryimportant." DeCarli noted that the effects of the risk factors studied arelikely to be even more compelling in the general population, sincestudy participants were largely healthy individuals with normalblood pressure and cholesterol levels and a low diabetes rate. Catherine Roe, an assistant professor of neurology at WashingtonUniversity School of Medicine in St. Louis finalized: "We know smoking and being overweight are bad for other parts ofyour health," Roe said. "This is just one more reason to get thesethings under control." It has also been found that drinking heavy amounts of alcohol overa long period of time may decrease brain volume. A study that involved MRI scans of 1,839 people from the FraminghamOffspring study, ages 34 to 88, who were classified asnon-drinkers, former drinkers, low drinkers (one to seven drinksper week), moderate drinkers (eight to 14 drinks per week), or highdrinkers (more than 14 drinks per week). MRI scans were performedand used to measure brain volume, which can be thought of as ameasure of brain aging. The study found the more alcohol people drink on a regular basis,the lower their brain volume. Carol Ann Paul, MS, of Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA commentedon this: "Research has shown that there is a beneficial effect of alcohol inreducing incidence of cardiovascular disease in people who consumelow to moderate amounts of alcohol. However, this study found thatgreater alcohol consumption was negatively correlated with brainvolume." This cross sectional study found people who had more than 14 drinksper week had an average 1.6% reduction in the ratio of brain volumeto skull size compared to people who didn't drink. In other words,brain volume decreased .25% on average for every increase indrinking category (i.e. non-drinkers, former drinkers, lowdrinkers, moderate drinkers, or high drinkers). Written by Sy Kraft Copyright: Medical News Today Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today Additional References Citations. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Dimmable LED Light Bulbs , Indoor LED Spotlights for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Clear Candle Bulbs.
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