Live Well, Think Well: Research Shows Healthy Habits Linked to Brain Health

The eight cardiovascular and brain health factors, known as the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, are: being active; eat better; maintain a healthy weight; do not smoke; maintain healthy blood pressure; get enough sleep; and control cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

“Brain health is critical to every person’s optimal well-being, allowing us to function at our highest level and constantly adapt to the world,” said study author Santiago Clocchiatti-Tuozzo, MD, MHS, of Yale University in New Haven. Connecticut and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “Our study found that making these healthy lifestyle choices in midlife can have significant impacts on brain health later in life.”

For the study, researchers evaluated data from 316,127 people with an average age of 56 years. They were followed for five years.

The researchers analyzed participants’ scores on the eight essential factors of cardiovascular health and organized them into three categories: ideal, intermediate and poor.

Of the total group, 64,474 people had excellent scores, 190,919 people had intermediate scores, and 60,734 people had poor scores.

The researchers then evaluated health records to identify who developed any of the following neurological conditions: stroke, dementia or late-life depression. Poor brain health was defined as the development of any of these conditions during the years of follow-up.

A total of 1.2% of participants met the definition of poor brain health, with a total of 3,753 conditions. Of those with great Life’s Essential 8 scores, 0.7% met the definition of poor brain health, compared to 1.2% of those with intermediate scores and 1.8% of those with poor scores.

After adjusting for factors that could affect the risk of these three neurological conditions, such as age, sex, race and ethnicity, researchers found that people who scored low on healthy lifestyle factors were twice as likely to develop any of the three neurological factors. conditions compared to those people with ideal scores. The researchers also found that people who had an intermediate score had a 37% higher risk of having one of the three neurological conditions than those who had a great score.

“Because the risk factors we analyzed are ones that people can work to improve, our findings highlight the potential brain health benefits of using these eight cardiovascular and brain health factors to guide healthy lifestyle choices,” said Clocchiatti. -Tuozzo. “More research is needed to understand this link between lifestyle habits and brain health, as well as how social factors such as race and ethnicity may influence this link.”

To confirm their findings, the researchers repeated the study on a group of 68,407 participants followed for a total of five years and found similar results.

One limitation of the study was that participants’ scores were only measured once at the beginning of the study, so it does not take into account possible lifestyle changes during the five years of the study.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.