If you become more forgetful as you age, who among us is not? - There are two things you can do this Memorial Day weekend.
Take multivitamins. And walk 30 minutes.
Then continue with these two practices.
That's according to a scientific study published last week that showed that regular vitamin intake and walking can slow or even reverse the effects of cognitive decline on the aging brain.
According to a study by researchers at Columbia and Harvard Medical Schools and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the average effect of taking a daily multivitamin on an aging brain is equivalent to looking three years younger.
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"We found that the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance compared to placebo, equivalent to a 3.1-year age-related change in memory," the researchers report in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
It is based on a three-year study of over 3,500 older adults. Participants were randomly assigned to either a Centrum Silver multivitamin (Centrum is a brand name owned by Pfizer) or a placebo each day. Each year, they took a series of standardized brain tests, such as tests that asked people to remember as many words as they could from a random list.
The benefits were more pronounced in people with heart disease, the researchers said.
The researchers report that the benefits of daily vitamin supplementation were evident at the first annual review and continued in subsequent years.
These findings support similar findings from a parallel study published last year that found that taking a daily multivitamin benefits the entire brain, not just memory. This study also showed that the effects were more pronounced in people with heart disease.
Meanwhile, another independent study from the University of Maryland found that walking for 30 minutes 3-4 times a week also has significant beneficial effects on the brains of older adults.
The study involved 33 participants aged 71 to 85 who trained on the treadmill for 12 weeks under supervision. Verbal memory tests and MRIs showed improvements in brain function and memory, albeit quickly.
There is now so much scientific research on age-related cognitive decline and in general that it is easy to get used to it. But cognitive impairment and dementia are themselves already a larger epidemic than COVID-19, even at its worst. Alzheimer's disease currently kills more than 6 million Americans (six times as many Americans as die from the disease transmitted by the coronavirus), and the number is growing.
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And scientific discoveries in the field of treatment, not to mention treatment, are rare and expensive.
So the good news is that there are things we can do ourselves. This includes not only taking vitamins and walking, but also eating right, avoiding mistakes, studying, doing crosswords and meditation.
We can hardly do them all at once. But anything is better than nothing.
The next challenge is for those of us who are growing up. Don't forget to take your multivitamin every morning. And remember where we put them.