Cognitive Reserve: The IRA of Your Brain

We are all familiar with IRA's and other retirement accounts and their purpose: to keep our financial livelihood stable as we age. Financial planners always recommend for us to save a little for our future and always have a emergency reserve account, just in case something catastrophic were to happen. 

Well building up a financial savings aren't the only type of reserves you should care about. Cognitive reserves are the cognitive skills accumulated over a lifetime and protect your brain from disease and the typical aging process. Cognitive reserves keep your mind stable as you age.

Building this resilience is necessary to protect your mind from harmful diseases like Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer's. Two recent articles on these debilitating diseases have caught my attention:

Early Cognitive Problems Documented Among Those Who Eventually Get Alzheimer's from Science Daily discusses new studies showing that even those suffering from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) show difficulty processing basic knowledge questions like "Which is bigger, a key or an ant?" 

Cognitive Impairment in Multiple Sclerosis from the Dana Foundation discusses the cognitive decline in MS patients. It is a lengthy article with a great deal of important information. The need for a building a cognitive reserve is also discussed:

Intelligence and education history contribute to the formation of cognitive reserve, which affects the brain’s resilience in the presence of injury. Previous studies in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have shown that individuals with higher cognitive reserve are less likely to develop dementia. As with AD, MS patients with high levels of cognitive reserve are less likely to experience cognitive impairment. A study following patients with MS over a five-year period showed that those with a high cognitive reserve at baseline experienced no loss of cognitive function, while those who started with a low cognitive reserve suffered a significant cognitive decline.

Brain training is a great way to build this cognitive reserve. It builds your neurological functioning and keeps you mind fit as you age. Because what good is that IRA if you don't have the brain power to spend it?

Warning Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's

To conclude September's focus on healthy aging I wanted to post a few great resources I found on the Alzheimer's Association website about possible warning signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's and should be checked further by a doctor. 

WARNING SIGNS from www.alz.org

1. Memory loss that disrupts daily life.
2. Challenges in planning or solving problems.
3. Difficulty completing familiar tasks at home, at work, or at leisure.
4. Confusion with time or place.
5. Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships.
6. New problems with words in speaking or writing.
7. Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps.
8. Decreased or poor judgement.
9. Withdrawal from work or social activities.
10. Changes in mood or personality.

Here is one nice chart showing the difference between what would be a sign of Alzheimer's vs a typical change in cognitive skills brought on by aging.

Signs of Alzheimer's	Typical age-related changes
Poor judgment and decision making	Making a bad decision once in a while
Inability to manage a budget	Missing a monthly payment
Losing track of the date or the season	Forgetting which day it is and remembering later
Difficulty having a conversation	Sometimes forgetting which word to use
Misplacing things and being unable to retrace steps to find them	Losing things from time to time

If you or a loved one is showing signs of cognitive skill loss definitely check out our LearningRx Resources for aging adults. And if the warning signs are more severe than typical aging please call your family physician for more Alzheimer's information.

National Healthy Aging Month

Throughout the month of September, designated as National Healthy Aging Month, we are hoping to raise awareness about the advantages of brain training at all ages.

As we age our cognitive skills can become weaker and have an impact on our quality of life. These cognitive skills include tools like processing speed, attention, logic and reasoning, visual and auditory processing and both working/short term memory and long term memory. A cognitive skill assessment will give results that can help seniors decide what steps to take in strengthening certain cognitive skills. 

Not ready to call it an epidemic? Consider this: the Alzheimer’s Association cites that about 14 million (approximately 18 percent) of the 79 million American baby boomers will develop the disease (or some form of dementia) in their lifetime. And if no cure is found, the U.S. will be faced with nearly a million new cases a year by the middle of the century.

In the meantime, there is help. A just-released study of LearningRx adult clients shows that brain training can improve brain function and raise IQ, even for people well into their 70s.

"The right type of brain training can help anyone get smarter," says Dr. Ken Gibson, founder and president of LearningRx. "This shows that adults and seniors don’t have to ’settle’ for their current mental capacity. At any age, they can use brain training to boost their IQ to get an advantage in a competitive job market, or to slow and reduce some of the mental effects of aging."

The study of adults aged 20 to 80 who underwent LearningRx brain training in 2009 showed significant increases in every cognitive skill trained and in every age bracket. On average:

• Executive processing speed increased an average of 46%
• Long-term memory jumped 66%
• Short-term memory jumped 39%
• IQ jumped 11.4 points

"An 11-point jump in IQ is substantial," says Dr. Gibson. "It’s thrilling proof that even seniors can see huge benefits from the mental exercise of brain training, just as they can from physical exercise."

Want to know more about how your brain is responding to aging? Call me to book a cognitive skill assessment no matter what your age is. The great thing about this assessment is it gives important information about your brain whether you are 21, 35, 60 or 99!

9 Year Olds and Alzheimer's

A story in a Florida newspaper, "Link emerging between young football players, Alzheimer's," caught my attention today. It explores the connection between young football players who have had multiple concussions and their likelihood of dementia including Alzheimer's as they age. The news has been buzzing over the past several years about what may or may not need to be done about making sports like boxing, football, and rugby more safe for the participants.

This article was especially though-provoking because it is looking at the little guys who play, not those players making a millions who decide to take a chance with their health. Doctors are also looking at the connection between children that have Alzheimer's in their family already compounded with multiply concussions and the outlook is not good.

Doctors say there's another concern for young football players, although research remains inconclusive: If they carry the Apolipoprotein E, or ApoE, gene that research has shown is connected to Alzheimer's, will they be even more likely to get the disease if they have had repeated concussions?

Dr. Kester Nedd, co-director of UHealth's concussion program, says yes. "I absolutely think, when you add brain injury on top of it, those [carriers] are more at risk."

Florida is one state that is looking at bills that would add safety measures and parent education when it comes to youth sports and concussions. As a parent, I often have to weigh many options in what is best for my kids. Brain injury in any form, including concussions, can have serious long-term effects. I guess I should be thankful that my son hasn't asked me to play football yet! 

To you parents out there--is football okay? How do you keep your kids safe from head injuries?

Gender and Cognitive Decline

I just read a new article at Health.com and study done at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota related to the differences between men and woman and how their cognitive skills decline with age. What is interesting is that while there is a highly likelihood of having dementia and Alzheimer's if you are a female, there is a higher likelihood of having Mild Cognitive Impairment if you are male. What causes the differences in the genders is what is being explored. I've pulled out a few of the most interested points.

• Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) can be reversed and is not necessarily permanent. Things like can reverse the effects or sometimes the brain seems to heal itself.
• Exercise seems to help men's brains and might be what is causes the repair. Exercise doesn't affect women's brains, instead it prolongs women's lives.
• Health risk factors like obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes all factor into MCI and also tend to strike men more often, possibly leading to the higher rates of MCI in men.
• Both men and women who are married and have higher education levels have lower risks of MCI.

From the Mayo Clinic, here are some symptoms of MCI: 

• Difficulty learning and remembering new information
• Difficulty solving problems or making decisions
• Forgetting recent events or conversations
• Taking longer to perform complex or difficult mental activities.