South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Untreated aches linked to aging brains
Your joints may be achy and your back may be sore, but if you have chronic pain of any type, do something about it.
New research from the University of Florida Institute on Aging finds chronic pain — left untreated — can cause the brain to show signs of aging, In some individuals, brain aging has led to decreased mobility, Alzheimer’s and even an earlier death.
In a two-year study, UF researchers looked at the the brains of 47 older adults 60 to 83 and found “the greater the pain intensity they were experiencing, the older looking their brain.”
Individuals without chronic pain had on average a brain that looked four years older than their actual age. To gauge brain age, Yenisel Cruz-Almeida, a UF Institute on Aging faculty member and the study’s lead author, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans that measured gray and white matter in the brain.
Cruz-Almeida found pain relief may help to slow brain aging that otherwise would take place. Older adults who treated their pain — using everything from medication to physical activity to home remedies — had youngerlooking brains. Seniors with chronic pain who had a positive outlook on life or engaged in activities like dancing or meditation also had younger-looking brains, the researchers found.
“You can’t just say you are get
ting older and have pain and that’s normal,” CruzAlmeida said. “We should be actively looking to get pain relief satisfactory to the patient.”
At the YMCA in Hollywood, seniors with chronic pain swim, lift weights and take exercise classes to alleviate symptoms. Les McBride, 81, swims about 10 laps at least two times a week. McBride says swimming is his way of treating his chronic back pain and staving off brain aging.
“It definitely makes a difference,” McBride said.
Ira Farber, a Davie physical therapist who works with older adults, finds chronic pain manifests in many different ways with ailments that might be joint related, soft-tissue related or disc related. Farber sees how untreated chronic pain could make someone
feel older, depressed, and cause brain aging, which is why he treats discomfort in seniors with stretching and strengthening exercises.
“There is proven correlation between pain and depression,” he said. “Endorphins release when you exercise and that helps with mood stabilization.”
The UF study included only older adults considered mentally and physically healthy — not those with major illnesses who might experience pain. To build on the correlation between pain and brain aging, Cruz-Almeida is launching a broader study this fall with a larger population, digging deeper into how brain aging can affect mobility and critical thinking.
“Strategies and treatments may work better to prevent brain aging when we know earlier someone is going down a trajectory that might have a higher risk,” she said.
James Cole, co-author of
the UF study and a brain science researcher at Imperial College London, has developed a computer algorithm used with MRIs to calculate a brain’s biological age. The algorithm recognizes how a brain looks at specific ages in healthy individuals based on their volume of brain tissue.
While two individuals may be the same chronological age, their brain age could vary because of ge
netic and environmental influences. Cole’s previous study of the MRIs of 2,636 healthy people age 18-90 found individuals with a brain age older than their bodies might be at risk of poorer lung function, slower walking speed and lower fluid intelligence. In addition, he found each extra year of brain age resulted in a 6 percent increase in the risk of earlier death.
Cole has stressed that while his technique for predicting brain age which relies on costly MRIs is a long way from being used in clinical practice, it could one day be used as a screening tool and provide an opportunity for early intervention when someone’s brain is older than it should be.