The study is part of ongoing research on British civil servants and is usually called Whitehall II.The researchers are following more than 6,000 men and women who were first evaluated in the early 90’s. Eleven years later whether they had died from a heart attack, had a heart attack but survived, or had significant pain from their hearts (angina). People who regularly worked an extra 3 to 4 hours had 1.6 times the risk of having coronary heart disease than were those who did not.

I’ve written in the this blog and said in my talks that more and more evidence shows that the things that are heart healthy are probably also brain healthy. If you think about how many blood vessels are in your brain, it makes sense that the same things that can have a bad effect on the blood vessels of the heart can also hurt the ones in your brain.

I would say the message is clear: maintain a balance between work and the rest of your life. If you do have to work more than may be good for you, be sure to have a clear strategy for stress management. Close your eyes once or twice a day and just breathe. Maybe you can picture yourself on a beach or sitting by a mountain lake. Doing this regularly can have a surprisingly big impact on your stress levels, even if you are working until 10:00 a night.

Reference:

Virtanen M et al. (2010) Overtime work and incidence coronary heart disease: the Whitehall II prospective cohort study. European Heart Journal advance access, published online May 11, 2010.doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehq124

In giving talks to community groups about brain fitness, I emphasize that a number of elements go in to brain fitness. And one of these key elements has nothing to do with high-tech computer training. For optimal brain fitness, a sense of purpose is crucial. You have to have a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

The evidence for my proposition is there, if you look for it. Dan Buettner, in his book Blue Zones, shows that purpose and social engagement are present in areas of the world where people routinely live into their 80s, 90s, and 100s. Other studies have shown that people who have a sense of purpose in life are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Several recent studies support the view of sense of purpose may be an important factor in maintaining physical and psychological well being. A study reported in The Gerontologist shows that people involved in volunteer activities during midlife had better mood and physical health 20 years later.

Another study explicitly investigated purpose in life. The study reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry showed that people who reported a greater sense of purpose in life had reduced risks for developing Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment.

References:

Pillemer K, et al. (2010). Environmental volunteering and health outcomes over a 20-year period. The Gerontologist, published on line February 19, 2010. Click here.

Boyle PA et al. (2010). Effect of a purpose in life on risk of incident Alzheimer disease and mild cognitive impairment in community-dwelling older persons. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67, 304-310.

A recent study in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that strength training can improve executive functions. Executive functions are important because they are a mental ability that helps us make decisions and do several things at once (like driving). Executive functions get worse as we get older, so finding a way to maintain or improve them may be a way to keep your brain fit as you get older. This study evaluated the effects of resistance training compared to balance and tone training on older women’s abilities on several cognitive measures. The researchers evaluated whether weight training (generally thought to improve muscular strength) or balance training (thought to improve balance, but also such things as walking ability and risk of falls) also had an effect on participants’ mental functioning.

Compared to the balance and toning group, the strength training group showed small but significant gains in their performance on the Stroop Test. The Stroop measures a person’s ability to deal with conflicting stimuli – someone’s tendency to read a word (a habit) compared to their ability to resist the habit and say the color of the type used to print the word. Performance on this measure is often interpreted as an aspect of executive functions, a group of mental abilities that includes such things as coordinating two mental activities at once (think about driving).

The study only included older women (average age about 70 years), so it’s not clear how strength training would affect younger persons’ or men’s functioning. On the other hand, the study adds to the growing body of research that shows that strength training may be important for  maintaining your brain fitness.

Reference:

Liu-Ambrose T et al. Resistance training and executive functions. Archives of Internal Medicine, 170, 170-178.

Brain fitness may help you avoid the risk of being bored, and that’s almost undoubtedly a good thing. In an ongoing study in the UK, researchers found that those who reported the most boredom when they were evaluated in the late 1980s were two and a half times more likely to die by 2009.

But it’s not clear exactly why boredom might increase someone’s risk of death. The authors of the study in the International Journal of Epidemiology suggest that a report of boredom probably represents some other problem. Bored people may be depressed or anxious, for example, factors that have already been related to disease risk in a number of studies. They may be more likely to drink excessively or smoke and less likely to exercise, all factors that might increase risk for cardiovascular disease.

An important part of any brain fitness program is staying actively engaged with friends and the community. Other studies have shown, for example, that having friends or being involved in a volunteer program can reduce the risk of cognitive decline. This finding underlines the fact that your thoughts, feeling, and behavior can have significant effects on your health.

Reference:

Britton A, Shipley MJ. Bored to death? International Journal of Epidemiology, available online February 1, 2010.

Available online (free) at the journal website.

An interesting research study in this month’s Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences looks at what people think about their mental abilities and how old they feel. Researchers Schaefer and Schippee at Purdue University asked people how they felt about their thinking and memory as they got older with questions like “As I get older, my mental sharpness is bound to get worse.” They also asked people in their study how old they actually felt.

Then they looked at how well these persons’ actual ages and how old they actually feel predicted what they thought about how their minds would work as they get older. For women, both their actual and their perceived ages predicted what they thought about how their mental abilities would change over time. For men, neither perceived nor actual age made a difference, but their physical health did. Men who said their physical health was worse were also more pessimistic about their mental abilities.

For both groups, mood and self-efficacy were significantly related to what they thought about their mental abilities over time. This once again emphasizes how important mood and a feeling of being able to control things is for how you feel about your brain’s functioning.

The authors note that their results may have been affected by their sample size, but they raise the possibility that men and women may view their mental abilities differently as they get older. Women’s perceptions of their age seem more important for how they feel about their mental aging, while for men their physical health might be an index of how they view it. For both groups, self-efficacy and mood are important.

Reference:

Schafer MK, Shippee TP. (2010). Age identity, gender, and perceptions of decline: Does feeling older lead to pessimistic dispositions about cognitive aging? Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 65B(1), 91-96.