Recent research confirms why you should immediately quit smoking, maintaining ideal body weight, and maintain their blood sugar and blood pressure.
According to experts the study, three risk factors, namely smoking, diabetes, and obesity, can cause your brain to shrink rapidly in middle age, even triggering a mental disorder until ten years later.
This is the result of a study of 1352 volunteers who average 54 years old in the research entitled "Framingham Offspring Study" since 1971. Researchers from the University of California found that smoking, high blood pressure, and diabetes associated with changes in blood vessels that could potentially harm the brain.
"We can not cure or treat diseases of aging, but to encourage people to have a healthy body and healthy mind is important," said Dr. Charles DeCarli, Director of the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center.
"People should stop smoking, control their blood pressure, prevent diabetes, and lose weight," added the researchers who memublikasi his research in the journal Neurology issue of August 2, 2011.
In this study, volunteers are required to undergo tension, cholesterol, and diabetes. Measurements also included body mass and waist circumference volunteers. They then undergo a scan (scan) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain within an interval of 10 years. The first MRI scan done about seven years after the initial examination of risk factors. Participants who had a stroke and dementia at the initial examination no longer involved in the study. From the results of the first and last scan revealed, 19 participants had a stroke and the other two suffered dementia.
Participants are high tensinya showed faster decline in the ability of the brain, ie, test planning and decision making. It is associated with a higher acceleration in terms of damage in the area of the brain blood vessels than those with normal blood pressure.
Those who develop diabetes in middle age experience more rapid shrinkage in the hippocampus than did not have diabetes. Those who smoke in general brain volume loss and shrinkage in the hippocampus which is faster than nonsmokers, as well as damaged blood vessels in the brain more quickly.
Meanwhile, participants who are obese in middle age tend to be in 25 percent of participants who experienced a rapid decline in executive function tests. Those with waist-hip ratio tend to go higher among participants who experienced a 25 percent decrease in brain volume faster
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