Computer games aren’t just for kids–at least they shouldn’t be. A Mayo Clinic study to be published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that older adults who spent an hour a day in front of a challenging brain-boosting game significantly improved their memory.

One big surprise from the findings is that the computer game wasn’t specifically designed to improve memory. Rather, the exercises were developed to improve the speed and accuracy of mental processing. “What’s unique in this study is that brain-processing activities seemed to help aspects of memory that were not directly exercised by the program,” explained Mayo Clinic neuropsychologist Glenn Smith, PhD, who led the research.

The Mayo researchers used a computer game created by the San Francisco-based company PositScience, which supported the study. Previous research has shown that older volunteers who used another of the company’s computer exercises improved their driving skills, reducing their risk of automobile crashes by half. Drivers trained on the brain-boosting programs were also able to hang onto their driver’s licenses longer. You can try out PositScience’s brain challenging programs yourself–and buy them if you’re willing to fork out $400 and $900–on their website.

The scientists asked a group of offspring of people who had reached the ripe old age of 100 or more to fill out a standard psychology questionnaire and then compared their answers to those of the general public. Children of centenarians were much more extroverted and much less neurotic than their counterparts, the analysis showed.

“It’s likely that the low neuroticism and higher extroversion will confer health benefits for these subjects,” said senior author Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, director of the New England Centenarian Study. “For example, people who are lower in neuroticism are able to manage or regulate stressful situations more effectively than those with higher neuroticism levels. Similarly, high extroversion levels have been associated with establishing friendships and looking after yourself.”

What the study doesn’t show, unfortunately, is whether any of us can hope to become less neurotic and more extroverted than we naurally are. Nor does it offer evidence that achieving those elusive changes would add years to our lives. In the end, the results may simply prove that the offspring of centenarians are blessed both by great longevity genes and a generally affable and cheerful outlook on life.

Lucky them.

© 2009 PDQhealth

The findings confirm what many other studies have shown: that moderate consumption of alcohol has important health benefits. This research, which involved 12,000 people who were followed for four years, found that those who consumed a drink a day cut their risk of dying by 28 percent compared to nondrinkers. Drinking just one drink or less a week conferred no benefits. Drinking more than three drinks daily increased risk by 11 percent.

As is often true when such results are announced, researchers are reluctant to recommend that people who don’t drink start tippling. “There are other things you can do that we know are helpful and have a lower chance of harming you, like getting more exercise,” said Sei J. Lee, MD, lead author of the new study and a geriatrician at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Still, if you enjoy a drink or two of wine with dinner, it’s good to know you may be gaining yourself even more time for enjoyment.

© 2009 PDQhealth

To test age-related differences in alcohol effects, University of Gainesville researchers compared to groups of adults, one aged 50 to 74 and the other aged 25 to 35. Participants were randomly chosen to drink an alcoholic or nonalcoholic “placebo” beverage. Those in the alcohol groups were given enough to reach the same blood alcohol level. Twenty-five and 75 minutes after drinking, the volunteers completed an evaluation called the Trail Making Test, which requires  takers to connect numbered and lettered dots in order, as quickly as possible. (If you want to give it a try, you’ll find a sample here.)

After downing a couple of drinks, older adults in general performed less well on the test than their younger counterparts. The differences were small, but enough to cause impairment while driving. Yet when asked how they felt, the oldsters reported feeling less impaired than did the younger participants.

Both groups seemed to metabolize alcohol equally. The difference, the researchers speculate, may be how alcohol affects the brains of younger or older people. Senior researcher Sara Jo Nixon, PhD, offered this advice to drinkers of any age: “Sit around for a while and let the alcohol metabolize. Don’t drink and run–stay and have dessert.”

© 2009 PDQhealth

In a study reported this week in the journal HortTechnology, 18 eighteen elderly residents in a nursing home were given weekly horticulture classes and a choice of houseplants to take home and care for. Researchers Claudia C. Collins and Angela M. O’Callaghan report that the 4-week program brought about a dramatic improvement in the participants’ demeanors and in scores of happiness as well as the sense of being in control–key measures of healthy aging. Most went from feeling passive and lonely to being much more active and socially connected.

Indeed, for many of the elderly gardeners, houseplants provided crucial companionship. Some even reported singing and talking to their new leafy green friends. Caring for plants gave the residents a sense of being needed and capable. And as the researchers reported, “the overall energy was positive and electric as everone involved could not wait to see how their plants would fare.” Just as important, the volunteers “got dirty hands, dirt on their clothes, and felt competent.”

That sense of competence inspired new excitement about planning for the future–in particular, starting an outdoor community garden. The benefits seen in this small study, in other words, promise to keep on growing.

© 2009 PDQhealth

Traditionally, researchers have assumed that genes play the biggest role in visible signs of aging. If your mother or father looks youthful well into middle age, chances are you will, too. Not necessarily, according to an experiment led by plastic surgeon Bahaman Guyuron, MD. He and his colleagues obtained digital images of the faces of 186 pairs of identical twins, which were then reviewed by an independent panel, who recorded the perceived age differences between the two siblings. In some cases, the identical twins were perceived to be years apart in age.

Reviewing comprehensive questionnaires filled out by the twins, the researchers found that twins who had been divorced appeared nearly two years older than married or single identical twins. Antidepressants also took a toll, aging the faces of people who regularly used them. Weight made a difference, as well, but the direction depended on age. In twins under 40, being heavy made twins look older. After age 40, excess weight made them look younger.

It’s easy to understand how the trauma of divorce might age you. But antidepressants? Dr. Guyurson and his colleagues hypothesize that the drugs may cause facial muscles to relax, which could lead to sagging. As for body weight, extra body fat, especially as the signs of facial aging show up in middle age, may help pad out skin, making people look more youthful.

“A person’s heritage may initially dictate how they age,” said Dr. Guyuron. “But if you introduce certain factors into your life, you will certainly age faster. Likewise, if you avoid those factors you can slow down the hands of time.”

Avoiding divorce isn’t easy, of course. And no one says people with serious depression should skip antidepressants just because they may cause saggy jowls. Although the study’s findings are interesting, they don’t add anything new to the advice that dermatologists say really can hold back the hands of time: avoid sun exposure, don’t smoke (or quit if you currently smoke), get regular exercise, and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables (the antioxidants they contain could keep skin cells more youthful looking). Sound familiar?

© 2009 PDQhealth

Danish and Swedish scientists tracked 1,409 middle-aged volunteers for 21 years. During that time, 61 developed age-related dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s. Reviewing diet surveys conducted at the beginning of the study, the research team found that devoted coffee drinkers—those downing three to five cups a day—were 65 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who averaged only two cups or less.

There are plenty of potential explanations. Previous studies have shown that coffee may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, a disease that damages blood vessels. A Swedish study published in 2004, for instance, which followed 1361 women over 18 years, found that the more coffee the women drank, the lower their odds of developing diabetes. In a study of 17,111 men and women published in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2002, Dutch researchers reported that people who drank seven cups of coffee were half as likely as non-coffee-drinkers to develop diabetes. Lower risk of diabetes might in turn protect blood circulation in the brain and reduce the danger of dementia.

Coffee is also rich in antioxidants, which are believed to protect the circulatory system. A 2004 study conducted by University of Glasgow researchers found that coffee contains levels of antioxidants as high as those in black tea—and that coffee’s antioxidants are actually more easily absorbed into the bloodstream. Indeed, when researchers analyzed the diets of 2,672 Norwegians—among the world’s most avid coffee drinkers—coffee contributed more antioxidants than anything else on the menu.

And in animal studies, caffeine has been shown to protect against the brain plaques that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s.

“Coffee has two virtues,” an old Dutch proverb says. “It is wet and warm.” If you’re a true coffee lover, you know wet and warm is just the beginning. There’s the nose-filling roasted aroma of fresh-ground beans, the intense yet smooth taste of a fine French roast, the frothy surface of a perfectly made cappuccino, the bittersweet richness of a perfectly balanced mocha. And then, of course, there’s the reviving buzz of caffeine, which can lift the spirit and jumpstart the most sluggish morning.

And now, the evidence shows, coffee possesses an even more important virtue: it can help keep us healthy. It’s good, as the old ad slogan said, to the last drop.

© 2009 PDQhealth

The new evidence, published this month in the Journal of Geriatric Psychology and Neurology, shows that memory loss and other mental impairments are twice as common in people 65 and older who have the lowest levels of vitamin D, compared to those with the highest. The research, conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge and the University of Michigan, involved almost 2000 older adults.

“This is the first large-scale study to identify a relationship between vitamin D and cognitive impairment later in life,” said Dr. Ian Lang, MD, from the Peninsula Medical School, who helped conduct the study. “Dementia is a growing problem for health services everywhere, and people who have cognitive impairment are at higher risk of going on to develop dementia.”

For more reasons to take extra vitamin D, and advice on how much to get, check out “D is for deficient. And dangerous.”

© 2009 PDQhealth

“It’s just in my nature–the batteries I got when I was born,” says Schmidt, who lives in Calgary, Canada. “My legs want to go.”

She can probably thank those restless legs of hers for her sharp-as-a-tack mind. Schmidt recently volunteered for a study that compared active and sedentary older women, conducted by Marc Poulin, PhD, and his colleagues at the University of Calgary. Using a random sample of 42 women with an average age of 65, the team measured the volunteers’ cardiovascular health, resting brain blood flow, and cognitive function.

The active women in the group had 10 percent lower resting and exercising blood pressure, a strong defense against heart disease and stroke. They also had more vigorous circulation in their brains. And they had a 10 percent edge over their sedentary colleagues in measures of brain function.

“The take home message from our research,” said Dr. Poulin, is that basic fitness–something as simple as getting out for a walk every day–is critical to staying mentally sharp and remaining healthy as we age.”

© 2009 PDQhealth

Call it the rose-colored glasses phenomenon of aging. When researchers at Duke University showed young and elderly volunteers a series of 180 positive and negative pictures and then asked them to recall what they’d seen a half an hour later, the older participants were less likely than their younger counterparts to remember the negative images. The average age of the young volunteers was 25, compared to 70 in the older group.

The difference was more than simply a matter of accentuating the positive. Using magnetic resonance imaging to take live pictures of brain activity during the experiment, the researchers turned up crucial age-related variations in circuitry. Older brains showed less interaction between a region called the amygdala, which detects emotions, and the hippocampus, the center for learning and memory. At the same time, older brains showed stronger connections between the hippocampus and a part of the brain called the dorsolateral frontal cortex, which is involved in higher thinking processes.

These differences suggest that older brains use thinking rather than feeling to form and store memories. “Seniors’ brains actually work differently than younger individuals,” explained Florin Dolcos, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience in Duke University’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and a member of the faculty of the University of Alberta in Canada. “They have somehow trained their brains so that they’re less affected both during and after an upsetting event.”

Other research confirms the rose-colored glasses phenomenon. Laura L. Cartensen, PhD, the director of the Stanford University Center on Longevity, has studied how young, middle-aged, and older volunteers remember images viewed on a computer screen. The youngest participants recalled positive and negative pictures equally well. Those 40 to 55 showed a bias toward rosier images. Among those over 55, Cartensen found a “whopping difference” in favor of the positive pictures. Dr. Cartensen speculates that as we get older, we’re motivated to form a more positive view of life. Few of us, it seems, really want to end up grumpy old men and women.

The findings provide new insights into how we remember. They may also help lead researchers to more effective ways to help older people with age-related memory loss.

©2009 PDQhealth