Your Brain at Age 65 and Older

First, the tough news. When we reach our mid-60s, our brain volume is decreasing, which can affect attention and memory, says neurologist Jennifer Rose Molano, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Dementia also becomes more common. “The number of new cases basically doubles every five years after age 65, ” says David S. Knopman, M.D., associate director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. “About 10 percent of people over the age of 65 have significant cognitive impairment.”

But maintaining a healthy lifestyle and challenging your brain can reduce some of the effects. Exercise continues to be important: A study of women 60 and older, which was conducted at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital’s Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine in Dallas, found that a brisk 30- to 50-minute walk three or four times a week increased blood flow to the brain. And aerobic exercise improved connections between different parts of the brain in adults ages 60 to 80, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found. Brain health scientists say that exercise is tied to maintaining brain volume, as well as better symmetry and blood flow, all of which are tied to healthier aging.

The older brain has at least one advantage over a younger one: wisdom. We have accumulated experiences that help us make sound decisions. Our vocabulary also peaks in our late 60s or early 70s, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, and the brain continues to develop new neurons and new neural connections across a life span, a Global Council on Brain Health report notes.

Consider incorporating the following habits into your daily life.

Break out of your routine. Novelty helps build denser neural networks, Green says. Switch things up: If you typically play sudoku, try a crossword puzzle. If you know how to speak Spanish, try learning French. “You need to step out of your comfort zone and allow yourself to be a bit uncomfortable,” says Adam Gazzaley, M.D., coauthor of The Distracted Mind and a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Challenging yourself intellectually is one of the pillars of good brain health, Gazzaley says.

Follow the MIND diet. If you take the Mediterranean diet (a largely plant-based diet that can lower your risk of heart disease) and combine it with the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, created to lower blood pressure), you get the MIND diet (Mediterranean Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay). Developed by Martha Clare Morris, a nutritional epidemiologist at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, the diet can lower Alzheimer’s risks by up to 53 percent, studies have found. MIND focuses on 10 brain-healthy foods: green leafy vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, other veggies, whole grains, fish, poultry, olive oil and wine. Here are the diet’s eating rules.

• Every day: Three servings of whole grains, a salad and one other vegetable
  
• Just about every day: Nuts (as a snack)
• Roughly every other day: Beans
• Twice a week: Poultry
• At least twice a week: Berries, especially blueberries
• At least once a week: Fish
• Less than once a week: Red meats, cheese, pastries and sweets, fried foods (or fast food), and butter and margarine (less than one tablespoon of butter is allowed each day)

Get a hearing aid. If you’re struggling to hear, and you’re not wearing a hearing aid, you may be straining your brain. The problem? People who struggle to hear can devote too many mental resources to understanding what people are saying. But in a study at the University of Texas at El Paso, people in their 50s and 60s with hearing loss improved their working memory, selective attention and processing speed when they started wearing hearing aids.

Help others. When older adults volunteered for two years with the AARP Experience Corps in Baltimore, a volunteer-based tutoring program where older adults serve as mentors to children, their brains not only didn’t shrink, but in men they even grew slightly, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study found. The benefits could be due to increased physical activity, socializing and problem-solving, says Michelle Carlson, a professor at Johns Hopkins who led the long-running study.

Connect with other people. When older adults are socially engaged and have large social networks, they tend to have better brains, according to the “Brain and Social Connectedness” report from the Global Council on Brain Health. In a study at Rush University Medical Center, participants with an active social life — whether volunteering, visiting friends or attending church — performed better on memory tests than those who didn’t have an active social life. When you talk with someone, Green says, you use skills that can diminish with age. “You have to pay attention and think quickly. You’re using short-term and long-term memory, and you're using executive function, verbal skills and visual skills,” she says.