Science News on brain "fitness"

By David Pescovitz at 11:03 am Tuesday, Mar 7

Science News magazine has published a two-part series on how lifestyle choices affect brain "fitness." The first article is about how physical exercise actually increases the number of nerve cells, strengthens their connection, and can slow the progression of neurological disorders. From the article:

While evidence is soaring for exercise's brain benefits, physical fitness in the United States is plummeting. According to a report issued recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost one-fifth of people 18 and over exercise for less than 10 minutes a week. Only 46 percent of adults performed the recommended 30 minutes or more of brisk walking or other moderate exercise 5 days a week.

Whereas public health experts worry about the effects of a sedentary lifestyle on rates of heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems, (UCLA neurobiologist Fernando) Gómez-Pinilla is concerned that a lack of physical exercise could also foretell a wave of decreasing brain health for the United States.

"Locomotion played a very important role in evolution. Animals had to move to find food and run away from predators. Exercise had a direct action on brain regions related to cognition," he says. "Normally, when two functions evolve in this way, you can't separate them." Link

The second article in the series surveys research on brain food, specifically how certain diets affect brain health. From the article:

(UCLA neuroscientist Greg M. Cole) says that both fish oil and curcumin may eventually become widely used in preventing neurodegenerative diseases, while causing few side effects. On the other hand, recently created drugs for treating neurodegenerative diseases are expensive and often have troubling side effects.

Cole notes that people have been eating fish and curries safely for centuries. "We're interested in these approaches that have cost-effectiveness and safety built into them," he says...

Since taking in calories generates damaging free radicals, some researchers have hypothesized that simply eating less may protect the brain from harm. Recent studies support this hypothesis. For example, teams led by neuroscientist Mark Mattson of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore have shown that cutting back calories in lab animals can reduce the symptoms seen in Huntington's- and Parkinson's-like diseases. Link