Little mistakes, forgetting an appointment … these are situations that generate a certain fear and that lead us, almost inevitably, to think about how we can better take care of that mental capacity of ours so important in our lives. Well, in addition to keeping the brain active or controlling our stress levels, cardiovascular health has been shown to be a relevant factor to take into consideration. A recent study published in the journal Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders (2015) has examined the relationship between cardiovascular risks in middle age and later memory loss associated with aging.
In their work, Apar Gupta of the Boston University School of Medicinee and his team of collaborators, took several measures of cardiovascular health to calculate a final risk index that they called “Framingham Stroke Risk Profile” in a group of 1755 people with a mean age between 45 and 63 years during the years between 1991 and 1995. Years later, from 2005 to 2008 they evaluated the verbal memory (of stories) and the visual memory of the participants. In addition, they considered in their statistical analyzes the role that the presence of the ApoE4 allele, associated with Alzheimer’s disease, could play.
The results showed the relationship between poorer performance in memory tests and the cardiovascular risk index. A relationship was also observed between memory performance and age, sex, and smoking. Among the cardiovascular risk factors analyzed, a specific finding was that participants with diabetes made more errors in the story memory task, while those who had smoked failed more in the visual memory task.
When data from smokers were analyzed and compared with non-smokers, the authors found that those smoking participants who possessed the ApoE4 allele experienced more long-term verbal memory loss than those smokers who did not possess the allele in their analyzes. genetic
Science once again shows us that taking care of our current health can be vital to our future well-being. In addition, it teaches us that the heart and the brain are closer than we think, and that both have to be as healthy as possible to perform at their best in our lives.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
