Getting a good night鈥檚 sleep and other healthy habits could slow the biological ageing of your brain, potentially protecting against conditions like dementia.
These habits, known as the Life鈥檚 Essential 8 checklist, were originally intended to help people boost their cardiovascular health. They include getting the equivalent of at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, per week and eating a healthy diet rich in nuts, fruits, vegetables and whole foods.
also recommends maintaining a healthy weight, sleeping at least 7 hours per night, not smoking and keeping your cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure levels in check.
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We already know that following this list has been linked with , but few studies have looked at how doing so affects the brain鈥檚 white matter, which is crucial for learning and memory. White matter has been shown to , which in turn has been linked with a raised risk of dementia.
To explore this, at the University of Maryland and his colleagues analysed MRI brain scan data from nearly 19,000 people, aged between 40 and 69, from the UK Biobank. They used half of this data to train an AI model to predict participants鈥� actual age based on features of their white matter, such as its size and shape. The predictions for the other half of the data set were accurate to within 2.7 years of participants鈥� actual age, on average.
To link this to the eight healthy habits, the team then looked at survey data gathered from the participants. The researchers scored each person on a scale of 0 to 100, with higher numbers corresponding to a closer adherence to all eight habits.
Putting this together, the team found that people who followed the eight healthy habits more closely seemed to have less aged brains. For every 10-point increase in the survey score, a person鈥檚 white matter seemed to be 113 days younger than their actual age. This was true even when accounting for factors that might affect the results such as someone鈥檚 sex, physical activity levels, whether they had brain and heart conditions, and their actual age.
It is worth noting that participants completed the surveys five to 10 years before their brains were imaged, says at the University of S茫o Paulo in Brazil, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the study. But previous research has shown that people鈥檚 lifestyle habits , and that it is also , says Ma. This suggests that adherence to the habits, even years earlier, really is having an impact on people鈥檚 brains, he says.
One limitation is that the participants were mainly white and of European ancestry, so further studies should explore whether the findings apply to people of other ethnicities and ancestries, says Suemoto. Still, the results give another reason to encourage people to make healthy choices, and for policymakers to make such choices easier, she says. This could include requiring healthier foods to be put at eye-level in supermarkets, putting more warnings on unhealthy foods and improving neighbourhoods to promote exercise.
鈥淭here鈥檚 lots of things that can be done to make these decisions of being healthy more accessible, so you don鈥檛 have to think 100 times about that, the environment makes it happen,鈥� she says.
medRxiv
