What’s Causing Your Cognitive Decline?

It starts slowly: You can’t find the word that’s on the tip of your tongue; you don’t recognize the new neighbor you met a few days back; you can’t remember what you ate for dinner last night.

Then you notice more problems: You leave the stove burner on after you’ve served a meal; you struggle to remember the date for a major life event, though you’ve always known it; you slip up and tell someone you’re 38 when you’re actually in your 80s. Worst of all, as you’re confusing your age for the year you were born, you actually believe that’s how old you are.

The late atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, who was a close colleague and my mom’s friend, was sharper at 90 than most people are at 22. But his formidable brain was the exception, not the rule.

Even though the brain is highly adaptable and we can mask age-related forgetfulness well, most of us experience some cognitive decline as we age.

What Predicts Age-Related and Non-Age-Related Cognitive Decline?

A team of researchers from Ohio State University and the University of Michigan asked the question why.

What are the causes of age-related and non-age-related cognitive decline?

Published on Feb. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, the team’s research was based on data from over 7,000 participants who were part of a larger longitudinal study that ran from 1996 to 2016.

The data analyzed were from American adults who were born between 1931 and 1941.

This cohort came from the Health and Retirement Study, a much larger study of over 20,000 people over the age of 50, which had previously measured participants’ cognitive functioning.

Dementia Accounts for Only 41 Percent of Declining Cognitive Function

Researchers found that within the aging population of the United States, dementia only accounted for 41 percent of cognitive decline.

Of the people who have dementia-related cognitive decline, between 30 and 34 percent suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, 4 to 8 percent from Lewy body dementia (which is related to Parkinson’s disease), and 1 to 3 percent have some other kind of cerebrovascular disease.

But what about the causes of non-dementia-related cognitive decline?

The most important factor appeared to be socioeconomic.

“It is critical to discover why some individuals’ cognitive abilities are better than others, and why their cognitive declines are slower,” the researchers wrote. “Solving this problem has important ramifications for policymakers and medical interventions.”

Education Matters

The researchers found that household wealth and income, levels of depression, education, occupation, and race all played a role in predicting cognitive outcomes.

Though also important, the participants’ early life conditions, adult behaviors, and co-morbidities did not play as strong a predictive role.

Participants who had good early education and who stayed in school the longest appeared to have the best cognitive health.

Better cognitive functioning at age 54 and slower cognitive decline after that age was positively correlated with higher socioeconomic status.

In other words, those with the best functioning brains tended to have more education, more robust incomes, and more accumulated wealth than participants whose brains were not working as well.

As this research allowed for nuance, the scientists further found that the number of years of education was not significantly associated with cognitive functioning but that participants with a college degree had slower cognitive decline than those who had not graduated from college.

Marriage Protects Your Cognition

The researchers also examined marital status, number of times married, number of living children, religious affiliation, and self-assessed symptoms of depression (via scoring on a Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression assessment).

As other longitudinal studies have found, people who were not married did worse cognitively than those who were married.

And being widowed after age 54 appeared to cause steep cognitive declines.

At the same time, this study found that having more children led to lower cognitive functioning in midlife but did not appear to accelerate cognitive decline afterward.

Unhealthy Behaviors Correlated With Cognitive Decline

The researchers also examined “bio-behavioral” factors, including body mass index, smoking, and how much vigorous activity the participants did.

Unsurprisingly, people who had markedly unhealthy lifestyle practices—including those who were morbidly obese and those who smoked cigarettes—had lower cognitive functioning and steeper cognitive declines as they aged than participants with healthier lifestyle practices.

Having a chronic disease, including diabetes, heart disease, and psychiatric problems, was also correlated with lower cognitive functioning.

Engaging in vigorous exercise improved cognitive functioning in general but did not change the downward trend of age-related cognitive decline over time.

“Socioeconomic factors—in particular, the quality and quantity of one’s early education—exerts an influence on future cognitive health through the contribution to cognitive reserve,” Karen D. Sullivan, a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist, told MedicalNewsToday.

“Cognitively complex activities contribute to our ‘brain bank’ by building layers and layers of neural networks that can better withstand future neurodegeneration,” she said.

Stay Sharp: Some Takeaways

Although many of their observations about contributions to cognitive decline were statistically significant, the scientists concluded their study with the admission that their research left many questions unanswered.

“All the controlled factors only explained 5.6 percent of the variation in age slope at the population level,” they wrote. So the majority of variation in why some people experience cognitive decline more quickly than others “was not explained.”

Given that these are still unanswered questions, how do we maximize our brain health and minimize cognitive dysfunction?

Brains Have ‘Remarkable Capacity to Adapt and Change’

“Our brains have the remarkable capacity to adapt and change throughout our lives,” Donnie Yance, who is an expert in botanical and nutritional healing, explained on his website.

“We can and should maximize our brain health,” Dr. Cammy Benton, an integrative doctor based in Huntersville, North Carolina, said in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Benton has found that certain lifestyle practices, including consuming phytonutrients in plants, greatly improve the brain health of her patients.

Benton says daily exercise is key, that it’s important to eat “from the rainbow” (meaning a variety of brightly colored fruits and vegetables), and to use lots of spices and herbs to help with brain detoxification and inflammation.

Sleep Matters

Benton also believes sleep is important.

“Honor the circadian rhythm,” she said. “Go to bed by 10 o’clock, be up with the sun, exercise in the morning, and go for a brisk evening walk.”

Botanicals for Brain Health

Like Benton, Yance advocates for using natural compounds to enhance brain health.

In particular, he points to adding certain well-researched plants, particularly adaptogens, to your daily vitamin and mineral regime.

According to Yance, the botanicals that improve the brain’s ability to adapt and change include:

• Water hyssop (Bacopa monnieri)
• Saffron (Crocus sativus)
• Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus)
• Green tea (Camellia sinensis)
• Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba)
• St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum)
• Olive leaf (Olea europaea)
• Ginseng (Panax ginseng)
• Rhodiola rosea
• Red sage (Salvia miltiorrhiza)
• Grapes (Vitis vinifera)
• Horny goat weed (Epimedium)
• Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera)

Stay in the Game of Life

Dr. Robert Lowry, a neurologist and sports medicine physician based in San Antonio, Texas, also believes that staying physically and mentally active is key.

“Stay mentally in the game of life and challenge yourself,” Lowry said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “Keep learning new things—play a musical instrument, travel.”

Other practitioners recommend using hyperbaric oxygen to slow or even reverse brain decline.

Me? I’m heading out on my foot ponies to the library to look for a book on meditation, another activity that purportedly improves cognition. One sec. Let me just make sure I turned the stove off first.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.