- Lowering your biological age could have a big impact on your brain health.
- Lifestyle factors that are already considered healthy can help.
- More research needs to be done to learn which have the most impact.
Biological age, and doing what you can to lower yours, has been a hot topic for years. But it can be tricky to know what having a low biological age actually means beyond bragging rights. Now, preliminary research suggests that lowering your biological age could have a big impact on your brain health.
The preliminary study, which will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 78th Annual Meeting in April, analyzed data from nearly 259,000 people who participated in a healthcare research database. The researchers measured 18 biomarkers in the participants’ blood, including cholesterol, average red blood cell volume, and white blood cell count to determine the participants’ biological age at the start of the study and again six years later. The researchers also took note of the study participants who had a stroke over an average of 10 years.
Some study participants took tests to measure their memory and thinking skills, and had brain scans to look at signs of damage in the brain.
When the study began, the participants had an average biological age of 54 compared to their actual (chronological) age of 56. Six years later, they had an average biological age of 58, which was still lower than their actual age of 62.
Meet the experts: Cyprien Rivier, M.D., lead study author and an instructor in the Department of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine; Dung Trinh, M.D., internist at MemorialCare Medical Group and chief medical officer of the Healthy Brain Clinic in Irvine, CA; Clifford Segil, D.O., a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA.
But the researchers discovered that people with a biological age that was older than their chronological age had worse scores on cognitive tests than their biologically younger counterparts. They also had a 41% higher risk of stroke.
Participants who improved the gap between the start of the study and the follow-up were 23% less likely to have a stroke during the follow-up period. These participants also had a 13% lower volume of white matter hyperintensities, which are a sign of damaged white matter tissue. (White matter improves the speed and transmission of electrical nerve signals in the brain.)
“White matter hyperintensities accumulate progressively and are strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia,” says Cyprien Rivier, M.D., lead study author and an instructor in the Department of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine. “So, the benefit we observed extended beyond stroke prevention to the structural integrity of the brain.”
What’s behind this and, more importantly, how can you lower your biological age for brain health, too? Here’s what doctors suggest.
How can improving your biological age support brain health?
It’s important to point out that the study didn’t prove that lowering your biological age will improve brain health. Instead, it found a link between those who were able to lower their biological age and a lowered risk of stroke and white matter tissue damage.
But there are a few theories on what could be behind this. “The behaviors most likely to influence biological aging—blood pressure management, physical activity, diet, sleep—are the same ones we already know support cardiovascular and brain health,” Dr. Rivier says. “Our findings suggest these behaviors may exert their protective effects, at least in part, by slowing biological aging.”
But this is slightly tricky to navigate, according to Clifford Segil, D.O., a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA. “There are no such ‘routine’ labs test agreed upon to determine a person’s biological age,” he says. “There are no ‘biomarkers’ which are agreed upon to be risk factors in old age to cause neurological disease.” However, Dr. Segil says that aging is a known risk factor for developing neurological diseases. With that, it’s reasonable to think that having younger-seeming biomarkers would suggest a younger biological age.
Dung Trinh, M.D., internist at MemorialCare Medical Group and chief medical officer of the Healthy Brain Clinic in Irvine, CA, agrees. “It’s important to emphasize this is an association—this study doesn’t prove that changing biological age directly prevents stroke,” he says.
How to lower your biological age
Again, there’s no set test to determine a person’s biological age, making it tough to know for sure if your body is younger than your chronological age. But doctors say that healthy lifestyle moves should help to lower your biological age.
Those include:
- Eating a healthy, varied diet
- Exercising regularly
- Keeping your brain active
- Staying on top of routine medical care
- Managing your blood sugar levels
- Trying to lower high cholesterol
- Prioritizing sleep
- Avoiding smoking
- Limiting alcohol
- Staying socially engaged
“They may not only reduce individual risk factors in isolation but also slow a broader process of systemic aging that has downstream consequences for the brain,” Dr. Rivier says. “The encouraging part is that these are modifiable and accessible to most people, and our data suggest that even incremental improvements are associated with meaningful differences in outcomes.”
Something else to consider, per Dr. Trinh: “What’s good for the heart and blood vessels is generally good for the brain.”
Is there a point where you can’t lower your biological age any more?
If you’re already doing your best to live a healthy lifestyle, it’s understandable to wonder if you’ve done all you can at this point. “We don’t yet have a definitive answer,” Dr. Rivier says, noting that his study didn’t look into whether there is a ceiling for these efforts.
“It’s important to note that biological age reflects the state of multiple organ systems—cardiovascular, metabolic, renal, hepatic—so the potential determinants extend beyond conventional lifestyle factors,” he says. Still, Dr. Rivier says that someone who is already following standard recommendations for a healthy lifestyle may still have room to optimize their biological age.
It’s also important to keep up efforts to lower your biological age so that you’re consistently working to enhance your health, Dr. Rivier says. Dr. Segil agrees. “There is a never a point in your life when lifestyle modifications lose benefit,” he says. “As we age, these healthy living habit benefits actually increase.”
Read the full article here