Two More Ways to Improve Your Brain Fitness

One of the themes I see in much of what people write about brain fitness relates to the idea that doing something can improve how your brain works by actually changing how it works, whether it’s exercise, supplements, or computer games.

A lot of people are skeptical about this idea, perhaps because most of us are taught that the cells in our brains are pretty much fixed and don’t change over time, except for dying off as we get older.

More recent studies, though, now have shown that the brain can grow new cells. Other studies have shown that some kinds of brain training change how some of the chemicals in the brain work. And still other studies have shown that cognitive training can have long-lasting effects.

So what can you do to improve your brain fitness?

• Find a rut and get out of it. What habit are you in, and how can you get out of it? Do you collapse on the couch every night and watch TV? Try going for a walk. Record your favorite TV show and instead spend a half hour searching the Internet for something that interests you.
• Learn a little bit of a new language. Learning a new language may be one of the best ways to rewire your brain. Maybe you won’t learn enough to be fluent, but learning about the sounds in a new language may help your ability to pay attention to sounds, and learning new ways to express a concept may help you keep your thinking flexible. You could take a class, but more and more language resources are on the Web.

Although we still don’t know exactly how to improve brain fitness for everyone, research gives us some promising directions.

DHA for Brain Fitness? Mixed Results

A paper in last week’s JAMA reports on a clinical trial of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in preventing cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. DHA is a component of fish oil supplements that have been recommended for the prevention of heart disease and, possibly, to prevent aging-related cognitive decline.

Results of the overall study were negative – DHA at a dose of 2 grams a day didn’t slow how much patients’ cognitive abilities declined over 18 months.

One finding of the study has been largely ignored in media reports. In a planned subgroup analysis, though, patients treated with DHA and who did not have the ApoE 4 allele had slower cognitive decline. ApoE 4 is a gene that has been associated with greater risk for having Alzheimer’s disease. It may be related to how fatty substances in the body are used by the body.

Although the findings of the main trial are negative, one subgroup may have benefited from DHA treatment.

This study thus adds to a series of studies based on observations that people who take vitamins, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and fish oil supplements have lower risks for Alzheimer’s disease. The logic of the trials has been to evaluate things associated with lower risk as treatments, but none has turned out to be effective.

Click here to read the full article.

Reference:

Quinn JF et al (2010). Docosahexaenoic acid supplementation and cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease. JAMA, 304, 1903-1911.