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According to a new study, engaging in aerobic exercise is one of 12 factors that may help lower your risk of developing depression in the future.
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The scientists announced in December Brain Care ScoreA tool to assess risk of dementia and stroke without medical treatment.
This score is determined by the patient and the doctor. Beneficial Lifestyle ChangesNew research suggests it may even be possible to predict a person’s likelihood of developing depression in the future.
of Brain Care Score of 21The BCS is an index of how healthy a person is based on 12 health-related factors across physical, lifestyle, social and emotional health components. The higher the BCS, the lower the risk of developing depression in “old age,” defined as age 60 and over. The study published Tuesday Published in the journal “Frontiers in Psychiatry.”
“The Brain Care Score is a simple tool designed to help anyone around the world answer the question, ‘What can I do to better care for my brain?'” said study author Jonathan Rosand, PhD, co-founder of the Mackens Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and lead developer of the BCS. In a news release.
“This paper provides compelling evidence that boosting BCS not only leads to a healthier brain and increased resistance to diseases like dementia and stroke, but also offers hope that it may protect against depression,” added Rosand, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The four physical components of the BCS are blood pressure, cholesterol, Hemoglobin A1c The five lifestyle factors are nutrition, alcohol consumption, aerobic exercise, sleep and smoking. The three socio-emotional dimensions are relationships, stress management and meaning in life. The higher participants scored, the lower their risk of brain disease.
More than a third of people aged 60 and over experience geriatric depression, and risk may depend on lifestyle choices, the authors say.
The research team used health data from more than 350,000 people who took part in the UK Biobank study between 2006 and 2010 and then took part in three follow-up surveys over nearly 10 years. UK Biobank Study The health of more than 500,000 people in the UK, mainly aged 40 to 69, has been followed for at least 10 years.
For participants in the new study, each 5-point positive difference in BCS was associated with a 33% lower risk of late-life depression and a 27% lower risk of the combined late-life depression, dementia, and stroke over an average follow-up period of 13 years.
“People think that the skull is like a dividing element of the brain, and that the brain is a separate entity,” said Dr. Richard Isaacson, a preventive neurologist at the Neurodegenerative Disease Institute in Florida, who was not involved in the study. “But based on this study and others, it’s clear that if we can stay physically active, eat a healthy diet, minimize smoking and alcohol use, maintain a healthy weight, and stay socially engaged, there are downstream benefits not only to vascular health and dementia, but also to mental health and emotional health.”
The authors also found a significant association between baseline BCS and depression risk in people under age 50. They found this surprising, as they would have expected that neurodegenerative and inflammatory changes leading to depression, dementia, and stroke would only occur in older people.
But the associations in young adults are consistent with the lifetime trajectories of other age-related diseases, Isaacson said.
“In our Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic, we see patients over the age of 25,” Isaacson says. “This finding is not surprising to me, because there are early-, middle-, and late-life risk factors for dementia. For example, with Alzheimer’s disease, pathology begins in the brain decades before symptoms of memory loss appear. If a 65-year-old is diagnosed with dementia, it means the disease began in the brain between age 35 and 45.”
The process is similar when older people who develop high cholesterol in their 30s go on to have heart attacks and strokes, he added. So the findings highlight the importance of looking after your brain throughout your life.
“There is still much to be learned about the pathways that lead to depression, dementia and stroke in later life,” Sanjula Singh, PhD, lead author of the study and a lecturer at the Mackens Center for Brain Health, said in a news release. “Our findings highlight the importance of looking at the brain holistically to further understand the connections underlying various brain diseases.”
For elderly people Experiencing depressionIsaacson said people should be aware that it’s important to be open and seek care.
“Older generations may have been wired to think that mind will triumph over substance and just fight it through,” Isaacson said, but that’s not always the case, so he added that people should accept they’re not feeling well and talk to their doctor about treatment options like therapy and antidepressants.
The latter may provide additional benefits to cognitive function as we age. Early studies are beginning to show that antidepressants such as escitalopram may slow the buildup of beta-amyloid protein in the brain, Isaacson added. Increased amyloid burden It is a hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s disease.
