metabolic

We have almost always assumed that the decline of our mental abilities is an almost inevitable toll of the passage of time, since turning years old ages the brain, and that is a fact. However, science has been warning us for years that our lifestyle has a lot to say in this process, and that is why we have the power to delay brain aging. It is studied. An ambitious study has managed to draw an unprecedented map of exactly how different factors such as age and poor metabolic health act that ‘attack’ our brain. The point here is that they do it through totally different ‘paths’, meaning that, regardless of the age you put on your ID, the state of your metabolism is sculpting the health of your brain. Two axles. The main novelty comes from the hand of a recent published research in the prestigious magazine PLOS Biology where it is proposed to unravel how exactly natural aging and metabolic syndrome interact in our own brain. To achieve this, the researchers thoroughly analyzed more than 3,000 brain scans and what they found was that the brain does not suffer from an all-encompassing “wear and tear”, but rather responds to two completely independent axes of deterioration. The two ways. On the one hand, the usual chronological aging pathway was seen and, on the other hand, there is a specific deterioration network linked to poor metabolic health. The study says that metabolic problems, such as insulin resistance, hypertension or excess abdominal fat, impact the brain through metabolic pathways separate from those of pure cellular aging. This “metabolic axis” directly alters the amount of blood that reaches the brain to nourish it and is closely associated with a loss of cognitive flexibility, that is, our ability to adapt our thinking to new or unexpected situations. A puzzle. In addition to this study, already in 2024, a great analysis among the population of the United Kingdom demonstrated the consequences of suffering from a metabolic disease such as diabetes. What they determined was that, by observing people no dementia But with poor metabolic health, the researchers detected a lower total brain and gray matter volume, as well as the appearance of small brain lesions. This is what ultimately produces worse memory and less mental processing speed. And no, this is not a problem exclusive to the elderly, since when analyzing young and middle-aged adults, it was seen that the combination of obesity and poor metabolic health already showed direct associations with signs of brain aging in MRIs and worse cognitive function long before reaching old age. It can be modified. Unlike our date of birth, which logically cannot be modified, we can shape metabolic health little by little through diet, exercise and regular medical control to be able to find any problem that arises in our body in time. Images | cottonbro studio In Xataka | We’ve been trying to figure out why we gain weight for decades. Science is becoming clearer