By the year 2050 it is expected that neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease will become a major burden on our society and really stress our country financially.  You can already see the companies being created in an effort to offer some help in this.  The adult daycare companies seem to be popping up all over the place. 

My great grandmother used to say jokingly, as she progressed with Alzheimer’s disease, they say: the memory is the first thing to go and I can’t remember what comes next.

Is a decrease in things like memory and cognition a normal part of the aging process?    

New research supports that cognitive decline is not part of the “normal” aging process.  It also says that if we know what to look for in early signs, that we can make changes and slow the progression of decline and in many cases even stave off the disease all together.  So how do you test for cognitive decline?  How do you test for Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s?

With conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease there is window of about 15 years when you are actually developing the disease but not showing any outward signs and symptoms like memory loss or the tremor associated with Parkinson’s. However, if you know what to look for you can pick up the disease early when you can still make changes to stop and even reverse the disease. 

A term that has been showing up in the literature is what is known as cognitive reserve.  This simply means that you can exercise your brain in such a way that gives you a “cushion”.  Essentially by exercising the brain you can overfill the cup so that the decline associated with the disease doesn’t show up as soon or as severe, and in some cases exercising the brain in a specific way has been shown to reverse the process that is occurring.

What exactly is cognition?

When we evaluate the brain, it is important to look at cognition in many facets.  Cognition is not simply being good at something like math but looking at all the parts.  We need to look at things like reaction time, both simple and choice, all areas of memory such as short-term memory as well as the different processes involved in long-term memory, it is also important to look how well you can use the information from memory by processing it and deciding what to do with it; This test is called procession speed.  When we see slowing in processing speed, we know decline is not far behind.  At the Brain Optimization Institute, we use cutting edge techniques to evaluate all of the aspects of cognition to ensure that your brain is cognitively on track and even able to build cognitive reserves.

The sense of smell and your brain age.

If we truly want to evaluate brain health, we can’t stop at just looking at cognitive process though.  One sign that has shown up recently in the research is actually our sense of smell.  Yeah believe or not, how well you can smell and identify a smell is one of the earliest predictors of brain health and an early sign of decline.  In fact, the Fox foundation has recognized it as one of their most important signs to have evaluated to determine the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease.  In the Brain Optimization Institute office, we have a very unique way of testing your sense of smell and use the latest research to compare it to factors associated with positive and negative brain function.

What about how light and sight affect brain age?

Did you know that having light sensitivity can also be an early sign of a weakening brain?  New research shows that how well your pupil responds to light is an early sign of declining brain both in degeneration and injury.  We have long known to test the pupils in things like concussion and that research has opened a new window into how that test can also be used for the aging brain.  By timing how quickly your pupil responds in addition to how well it holds under certain conditions we gain access to an unique window into the health and function of your brain.

How does my brain age affect my mood?

Our mood tells us a lot about the health of our brain as well.  If we have more symptoms of anxiety or depression this tells us that a very important part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, is not functioning well.  Mood disorders are often one of the most overlooked signs of early decline of the brain.  We, as individuals, often are not able to evaluate our own mental health in the early stages of disease.  Our friends and family members are good people to ask but it also can show up with specific testing as well.

There are a number of good tests that we can take to determine if this is something that is beginning to slip, even before we begin to notice it.  The good news is that this is also a great predictor of improvement as your brain starts to improve.  So, using validated testing to both evaluate your baseline and improvements is key to getting an accurate picture of brain health.

Balance, Coordination, and Brain Age:

The last, but definitely not least important cue to declining brain health is your balance and coordination.  This is the number one concern of aging people as report by the World Health Organization. They fear falling and losing their independence most.  There are many effective ways to evaluate these functions; from testing things like a one-legged stand to finger to nose testing and all are very effective.  It is important to get a complete picture of how you perform with balance and coordination.

There are normative values for age and gender in all of these tests and it is important to be ahead of these as you age so that you can stay ahead of the curve and decrease your likelihood of decline.

If you have any questions about these or any other tests for cognition, please feel free to reach out and ask. We are happy to answer question and be there for you on your quest to stay healthy.