Keeping heart healthy in 20s could be key to bigger brain

HAVING a healthy heart in your 20s may help you have a bigger brain in later life, according to scientists.

They found that those who started out with a higher ‘heart score’ also had larger brains relative to their head size when they were middle-aged.

The academics tracked 518 participants over 30 years until their early 50s and graded them on how well they adopted a package of seven lifestyle measures known to reduce heart disease risk.

These were having healthy blood pressure, controlling cholesterol, reducing blood sugar, being more active, improving diet, losing weight and stopping smoking.

Scores for each measure in the Life’s Simple 7 programme developed by heart experts were given, ranging from zero to 14. After 25 years, scans showed that those with higher scores early on had more brain volume than those who did less well.

Lead researcher Dr Michael Bancks said: ‘We know that when people take

certain steps like exercising and eating well, they have healthier hearts.

‘The American Heart Association created Life’s Simple 7 and research has shown that people who score higher on that also score higher on thinking tests. We wanted to see if maintaining a healthy heart, as defined by these seven factors, affected the physical make-up of the brain as well.’

Every point reduction on the rating scale was equivalent to a year of agerelated brain shrinkage, the study published in the journal Neurology found. Smoking was more associated with smaller brain volume than any other risk factor.

Dr Bancks, of Northwestern University in Chicago, US, added: ‘These findings are exciting because these are all changes that anyone can make at a young age to help themselves live a long and healthy life. This may mean that heart health may have an impact on brain function in early life, but more study needs to be done.’

At the end of the project, 26 per cent of participants had a ‘poor’ score of zero to seven, 58 per cent had an ‘intermediate’ score of eight to 11 and 16 per cent had an ‘ideal’ score of 12 to 14.

‘Changes that anyone can make’