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. Are you a woman?
. Do you sit most of the day?
. Is your diet mostly composed of processed, sugary, and high-fat foods, with very little fish, grains, or fresh fruits?
. Will you try to avoid strenuous exercise?
. Are you overweight or obese?
. Living under tight pressure for a long time?
. Are there cases of high blood pressure , diabetes , high cholesterol ?
. Do you have a history of depression ?
. Do you smoke or have a history of smoking?
0. Do you have a history of alcoholism?
1. Does formal education end at high school or earlier?
2. Does the work lack persuasion, guidance or supervision and other complex tasks?
3. Haven’t tried anything new for a long time?
4. Experienced a traumatic brain injury, such as head trauma due to an accident? Diagnosed with concussion ?
5. Are you over 65 years old?
6. Have you ever had hearing loss?
7. Does anyone in your family have Alzheimer’s disease?
8. Care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease?
If you answered yes to 5 or more of the 18 questions above,
then your brain may be declining.
This conclusion comes from the new book "The Aging Brain" by doctor Sanjay Gupta ,
he is a well-known neurosurgery expert,
and the chief medical reporter of the television station.
He once appeared on the Allen talk show,
is also a good friend of Bill Gates .
html In June, I interviewed Dr. Gupta via email,
conducted a discussion on "how to train our brains."
Readme: Sanjay Gupta
Editor: Chen Weiqin
Editor: Chen Ziwen
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Gupta interviews Bill Gates
Why should I write a book about the brain? book? I think of my own experience as a war correspondent.
At that time in Iraq, a young lieutenant was shot in the back of the head and his life was at stake. I was the only neurosurgeon in the camp and I didn’t have any suitable tools. I had to take an electric drill, briefly sterilize it, put a layer of sterile gloves on the drill bit, use it to open his skull, and carefully remove a ball of clotted blood. and a piece of shrapnel.
The amazing thing is that when I opened my brain, I found that it was so soft and defenseless; but at the same time, it was so strong that an ordinary person could survive a craniotomy in an environment full of bacteria.
In my opinion, the brain is like a black box.
We may have thought of many ways to strengthen our body, including protecting the heart and protecting various organs, but in fact few people would think of protecting and exercising our brains. Then in old age, we find that dementia occurs more and more frequently... I became confused about the study of the brain.
A few years ago I met an old couple who actually gave me guidance.
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Short-term memory area of the brain Long-term memory area
The old man was a 93-year-old patient who was sent to the emergency room. The tomography scan showed that there was obvious bleeding in his brain, but his advanced age made me very worried that he could not perform Operation.
I came to the waiting area, and a capable lady who looked to be in her 60s was pacing nervously. I learned that she was the patient's wife, and they had just celebrated their "70th" wedding anniversary. This deeply impressed me. Feeling shocked.
"Actually, I am older than him. I am an old cow eating young grass." She was 94 years old at the time, and her health was almost perfect. She did not take any medicine at all, and she even drove her great-grandson to school that morning.
The patient's 63-year-old son explained that the patient was an avid runner and also worked part-time as an accountant. "He is very proficient in numbers." This cerebral hemorrhage occurred because he fell off while climbing to the roof to sweep fallen leaves.
In the end, according to the family’s request, I took the old man into the operating room for craniotomy. Before closing the dura mater (the outer layer of the brain), I spent some time looking at his brain. Considering how active and responsive he is at 93 years old, I expected to see an unusual, A brain that beats powerfully should look very healthy. But his brain looks like a 93-year-old brain, withered and deeply wrinkled, a true reflection of his age.
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Gupta (right) communicates with Dr. Walham, who was the first to practice heart surgery in the world.
"The training channels of the brain and the heart are almost identical."
This may sound frustrating, but it is not. His brain does age, but perhaps more than other organs in the body, the brain becomes stronger through training throughout life.
He recovered quickly. Later I went to see him and he was recuperating in the intensive care unit. I asked him what impact this accident had on him. He smiled and said: "The biggest lesson is to stop trying to sweep away the leaves on the roof."
We will all grow old, and one day, we will all rely on a An aging brain gets by, but that doesn't mean it loses sharpness.
If trained properly, the brain may be the only organ that gets stronger with age.
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Gupta and friend Bill Gates
I was chatting with Bill Gates recently, and he said that he personally funded research into a cure for Alzheimer's disease because losing his memory is one of his biggest fears. The same goes for
for most people.
A diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease inspires greater fear in people than any other life-threatening illness, such as cancer and stroke, according to a Public Opinion Research Institute survey. People fear dementia, to some extent even more than death.
What actually happened to us? The number of people living with chronic diseases for a long time continues to grow, and the number of disabled elderly people is gradually increasing.
China is entering a deep aging process. Currently, there are 15 million people with dementia and 38 million people with mild cognitive impairment. In the future, 1 in every 4 households will have an Alzheimer's disease patient. . Globally, by 2050, the number of Alzheimer's patients will increase to 152 million, a 200% increase from the number in 2018.
However, scientists and researchers have conducted more than 400 clinical trials since 2002, but still have not found a new treatment method. This huge gap is called the "Valley of Death."
There is currently no cure for Alzheimer's disease, and it has been 15 years since any new drug to treat dementia has been approved, and 99.6% of drug trials have cost billions of dollars and ended in failure.
At the same time, there is growing scientific evidence that related declines in the brains of patients begin decades before symptoms develop.
Faced with the overwhelming negative news about cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, ordinary people will fall into a strong anxiety.
I interviewed and collected opinions from scientists, medical professionals, academics and policy experts from around the world on how to prevent and treat brain decline.
At the same time, I also want to send a positive message to the public: Our brain cells are not fixed in nature and will decrease with use! Through training, we can have more brain cells and our brains can become more developed.
Myth 1: Dementia is an inevitable result of old age
Brain changes caused by old age are different from brain changes caused by diseases. The former can be slowed down, while the latter can be avoided.
Myth 2: We only use 10% of the brain
This seems to have become everyone's default "truth", but from the perspective of evolution , it is too ridiculous. Carrying extra brain tissue is meaningless. . I think the brain is like a city, and important structures like houses and shops are almost always in use, accounting for 10%-20% of the brain; however, the rest are streets connecting shops and houses, not so Often used, but really necessary.
Myth 3: Men and women differ in learning levels and IQs
Some of the most poorly designed, least replicable, and most biased studies in the history of science have provided biological explanations for differences between the sexes. However, from a strict perspective, there is no evidence that one side is "stronger" than the other.
But it is worth noting that the number of women suffering from Alzheimer's disease is about twice that of men. We still don't know why this happens.
What is clear is that women do have an advantage over men in language skills, so when they have symptoms of cognitive impairment, they can often use their excellent language skills to cover it up. As a result, they cannot be diagnosed early.
Myth 4: The number of brain cells is fixed when you are born, and the brain is born constant, but brain damage is permanent
We have always believed that the number of neurons we are born with is limited. Damage to one , cannot be replaced. But now our cognition is different. The brain is plastic throughout life. It can adjust itself according to human experience. Under appropriate conditions, it can also produce new brain cells. For example, the hearing advantage of blind people is a kind of advantage. Compensation.
Brain plasticity works both ways. In other words, it's just as easy to damage or strengthen.
Many people like to attribute the development of the brain to before birth, that is, to our genes. But a new study published in Genetics in 2018 shows that our spouses have a greater impact on our lifespan than our genes, and that the happiness of our marriage has more impact on our brains than our genes. , much larger!
Another study shows that waist fat has been shown to be particularly harmful to the brain. The higher the waist-to-hip ratio, and the heavier you are, the smaller your hippocampus (the hippocampus is the brain's memory center). looked at the waist dimensions of 6,000 people aged 40-45 over a 27-year period and found that those with the highest levels of belly fat and had a nearly three times higher risk of developing dementia than those with the lowest levels of belly fat.
So don’t blame genes, developing a healthy brain mainly depends on your lifestyle.
"Take exercise as medicine"
In 2018, the American Academy of Neurology (American Academy of Neurology) where I work, carefully reviewed 8 types of drugs that may help alleviate cognitive impairment from developing into full-blown Alzheimer's disease. drugs, the panel agreed that none were effective.
Scientists even recommend exercise: "For patients with mild cognitive impairment, exercising twice a week may be of great benefit.” Even if you talk to the most senior scientists who have devoted their lives to studying the brain, their answer is: “ is just a quick step away from !” ”
It’s scientifically proven that exercise can serve as a “first aid kit” for damaged brain cells, speeding recovery after an injury, stroke, or major emotional stress.
Ideally, you should do at least 30 minutes of active exercise a day, five days a week. Aerobic exercise can increase your heart rate by at least 50% compared to your resting heart rate baseline. Exercise content includes aerobic exercise (swimming, cycling, jogging, boxing, participating in team sports classes, etc.) and strength training (free weights). Training , Resistance Bands Training, Pilates, Squats) and regular exercise to improve flexibility and balance (stretching and yoga)
No matter how much you weigh, simply not exercising will kill you. The rate is already twice that of obese people (but they insist on exercising). The news will exaggerate that "sitting is a new way of smoking."
We spend 25 years of our lives sleeping for 7 hours a day. How can what you do be useless?
About 2/3 of the people in contemporary society are chronically sleep-deprived. Even "sleeping 4 hours" has become a trend among celebrities and entrepreneurs. But in fact, unless you are gifted with a rare gene, each of us needs 7-8 hours of sleep every night
Dr. Matthew Walker, a professor of psychology at Berkeley, California, is the current researcher. One of the pioneers of the role of sleep. He once said that sleep is the third pillar of health, after diet and exercise.
Lack of sleep appears to cause a nearly universal state of "brain fog" that makes it difficult to concentrate. or remember important things. If you take sleeping pills because you can't sleep, although they will help you fall asleep quickly, they will not give you the benefits of natural sleep
Eat foods that are good for your brain
In 2019, I was. I went to Wyoming and lived with the local Chamorro people for a while, because the Chamorro people are 100 times more likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
After a period of investigation, local ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox told me that the Chamorro people were poisoned by their own eating habits. In their favorite food, fox In bats, there is a neurotoxin called BMAA.
Bats aside, when we talk about how daily eating patterns are good for our brains, it doesn't actually mean "don't eat this, don't eat that", but a structure ABC.
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Swipe left and right to see more
Don’t retire or learn for life
Retire as late as possible, or even find something to do for yourself even after retirement. Epidemiology Evidence shows that people with high IQs, high levels of education, high professional achievements, or non-professional hobbies have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
There has even been a saying in academic circles that "having a higher IQ and better education can avoid dementia." But today's research goes further, If you don't keep reading, learning, and socializing to "keep learning," you can't count on your college or graduate degree to save you.
We also know that lifelong education is a luxury that can only be enjoyed by those with stronger economic status, professional status and social interaction circles.
So for your brain, going to the library to borrow a book and read it is an education. You don’t necessarily have to do a PhD.
I also know the chief scientist of a venture capital company. He said that his dream is that one day, in order to make the aging brain younger, doctors will prescribe video games approved by the Food and Drug Administration instead of drugs. .
Intimate social interaction
The health of one spouse is important to the health of the other. The risk of death for a widowed wife or husband increased by 41% in the first six months after losing a spouse.
Researchers at Michigan State University found that married people are less likely to develop dementia as they age, while divorced people have about twice the risk of dementia as married people The risk for widowed and unmarried people is between among married and divorced people.
Harvard psychiatry professor Robert Waldinger’s TED talk “What Makes Life Better?” has been viewed 29 million times, and what I learned from it is that Health and happiness have nothing to do with wealth, fame, or hard work, but to be well-connected with others. There are relationships.
He said: "Being able to maintain a reassuring relationship with another person when you are in your 80s is protective."
By the way, a good relationship does not always have to be sunny and sunny. Some couples are 80 or 90 years old and still quarrel every day, but as long as they feel that the other person can be relied on when life is difficult, these quarrels will not have a significant impact on their memory.
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Dementia Village in the Netherlands
I have been to more than a hundred countries in the world, and I am often asked a question: "Of all the places, which one is the best and why?" AmsterdamIn the small city of Weesp, only a few minutes away, there is a 4-acre Hogewe Village with a government investment of more than 25 million US dollars. Here's an experiment that's been going on for more than a decade, completely changing the lives of dementia patients in their later years.
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Schematic diagram of Hogeway Village
Hogeway Village has only one entrance and one exit, and a glass door isolates it from the outside world. It feels a bit like a university campus, with its own streets, squares, dormitories, cafes, theaters, restaurants and salons, and tulips surrounding the gurgling water. There are a total of 23 two-story apartments in
. Each building has a different style, representing people's different interests and backgrounds. There are 6-7 people per household, and each household is equipped with a staff member responsible for daily living. They even use an internal currency that allows residents to buy groceries in supermarkets.
There are no security guards here, but the barbers, waiters, and postmen working in the village are all well-trained medical professionals. Compared with dementia patients living in other places, patients here are being allowed to actively participate in social activities.
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I went to interview an old man living in the village
I noticed a couple, Corrie and Theo, with different degrees of dementia, holding hands. Theo was the healthier of the two. He said that when the wife saw She would squeeze his hand if something was familiar. They locked hands with each other all day long, and the time they lived in the village was the best of his 60 years of marriage.
When I left Hogeway , I couldn't help but ask myself: Would this work in other parts of the world? But I really believe that if we don't correct the mistakes of people with dementia, let them live in a place where they feel safe and happy. Place is the best destination.
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In a familiar environment, two old people play the piano together every day
In pursuit of a vibrant brain, I hope I have put forward many things worth thinking about and implementing.
I like a saying I heard in Okinawa, Japan: "I want to live my life like an incandescent lamp . The whole life is always burning brightly, and then one day it suddenly goes out." Our understanding of the brain The requirements should also be like this. We don't want to see fluorescent lamps flickering just before they go out.
So from now on, eat more vegetables and exercise regularly. These long-tested habits will eventually lead to the best life - a life that we want to remember and can remember. Stay sharp!
This article is the original work of "Yiyi". It may not be deleted, modified or misappropriated to any platform without permission, otherwise legal responsibility will be pursued.
