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Beauty & Health Editor
Hannah Frye is the Beauty & Health Editor at mindbodygreen. She has a B.S. in journalism and a minor in women’s, gender, and queer studies from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Hannah has written across lifestyle sections including beauty, women’s health, mental health, sustainability, social media trends, and more. She previously worked for Almost 30, a top-rated health and wellness podcast. In her current role, Hannah reports on the latest beauty trends and innovations, women’s health research, brain health news, and plenty more.
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Caroline Leaf, Ph.D, BSc, is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. She received her masters and Ph.D. in communication pathology, as well as a BSc in logopaedics from the University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed a theory about how we think, build memory, and learn (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory). The learning process has been turned into a tool for individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression.
Leaf is author of Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, and Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. She teaches at academic, medical and neuroscience conferences, churches, and to various audiences around the world. Dr. Leaf is also involved in the global ECHO movement, which trains physicians worldwide on the mind-brain-body connection, mental health and how to avoid physician burnout.
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At-home biological age tests estimate the age of your body’s cells—and this number could be very different from the chronological age you celebrated on your last birthday. These tests are becoming more popular among health-focused crowds, but one big question still remains: Does our biological age actually tell us anything about how long (and how well) we’ll live?
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If you could do something right now to improve your brainpower, would you? Well, researchers have been investigating this topic for quite some time, with new and exciting findings surfacing every day. Most recently, scientists have deemed one fruit particularly beneficial for supporting cognition skills.
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So, what are the best ways to support eye health daily? According to integrative optometrist Marina Gurvich, OD “eye diseases occur due to a combination of genetics, oxidative stress, and inflammation.” She recommends wearing sunglasses during the day and blue-light-blocking glasses at night, exercising regularly, avoiding harsh products when washing your face, and getting plenty of sleep in the name of eye health.
Eating a healthy diet and supplementing can also pay off for your eye health. Eating a Mediterranean-style diet seems to be most helpful for preventing ocular disease, says Gurvich, while supplements that have been shown to protect the eyes include maqui berry, lutein and astaxanthin, and omega-3s.
Finally, tending to your overall health will also support your eyes. Chronic health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease can contribute to vision impairment—as does smoking and physical inactivity, the CDC warns. So your eye health doesn’t start and stop with the obvious prevention methods.
More than anything, be sure to speak with your doctor if you’re concerned about your vision. If you have a current prescription that doesn’t work as well as it used to, stay on top of getting it updated.
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Hannah Frye
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Before we dive into these findings, let’s cover the current state of Parkinson’s research, preceding this study.
The most common suspected cause of Parkinson’s disease is a pathological pattern of Lewy body (LB) protein deposition. These depositions, researchers say, mainly consist of misfolded α-synuclein—a presynaptic neuronal protein that is linked genetically and neuropathologically to Parkinson’s disease1.
Interestingly, the misfolded α-synuclein has not only been found in the central nervous system but also in the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system (ENS)—the latter located within the walls of the GI tract, 2extending from the esophagus to the anal canal, in people with Parkinson’s disease.
The new study, published in BMJ Journals set out to explore the possibility of Parkinson’s disease originating in the gut, based on the fact that misfolded proteins have been found in the GI tract and esophagus.
In order to study this, researchers looked for Parkinson’s patients who had digestive symptoms before being diagnosed with the brain disorder.
The researchers analyzed a combination of case-control studies of 24,624 Parkinson’s patients and a cohort study utilizing a U.S.-based nationwide medical record network. They looked for a broad range of both GI symptoms and GI diagnoses that appeared before Parkinson’s diagnoses.
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Hannah Frye
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Dementia is currently the seventh leading cause of death1 and one of the major causes of disability globally among older people, with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) making up 60 to 70% of dementia cases1.
There is currently no cure for AD. But the earlier you can spot signs of it, the better—and new insights on the gut microbiome’s relationship to dementia may help with early detection.
A recent study published in Science Translational Medicine2 found that the gut microbiomes of symptomatic patients with Alzheimer’s differed from those of cognitively healthy control individuals who ate a similar diet.
For the cross-sectional study, researchers took gut microbiome samples from 164 individuals—49 of whom had biomarker evidence of early, preclinical Alzheimer’s. Those with preclinical AD were more likely to have some specific gut bacteria than those who did not have preclinical AD.
Knowing these unique microbiome features could eventually help improve the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of AD testing, the researchers note. However, they have not concluded a causal relationship quite yet. Though they found a correlation between these microbiome features and preclinical AD, they can’t say for sure whether these microbiome changes cause dementia or the other way around.
All of this to say: This area of dementia research is still in its early stages, so more studies are needed. Nevertheless, this finding could have a profound impact on preclinical dementia treatment. The method of pulling a stool sample is much more accessible and affordable than many of the traditional methods such as spinal taps and brain scans.
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Hannah Frye
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Since we’re a long way off from using light therapy to change the brain in more significant ways, it’s worth asking: What proven alternative methods can we start using today to benefit brain health and response time?
One easy place to start is with supplements called nootropics, which optimize brain health and promote memory, mood balance, and cognitive function. Here are a few highly rated nootropics to look into.
Another great practice for promoting brain health is meditation. Meditation has been shown to keep your hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and emotional regulation, healthier, and some studies have found it can help decrease brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress. It has even been shown to alter the behavior and conductivity of neurons3, like how light therapy did in this new MIT/Harvard study.
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Gretchen Lidicker, M.S.
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So what do brain exercises actually do, and how do they impact your mental fitness? “Brain exercises keep your brain flexible and changing—this is neuroplasticity,” says neuroscientist Tara Swart, M.D., Ph.D.
“When we learn something new, then we get the direct benefit of that new learning but also global benefits in the brain in our executive functioning such as emotional regulation, complex problem solving, creative thinking, etc.,” Swart adds.
Elane O’Brien Ph.D., psychologist and co-author of The Power of Play: Optimize Your Joy Potential, cites what’s known as the “theory of multiple intelligences” to further explain how brain games work.
When we use strategy to solve puzzles or play thinking games, we engage our linguistic-verbal intelligence and put thoughts and feelings into words. This helps develop our cognition and creativity. “Intellectual play and games involving problem-solving, thinking, and practicing new mental skills can teach us how things work in the world. There is an activation of concentration, strategy, and active thinking during playtime,” says O’Brien.
Swart adds that it’s important to play brain games throughout your life1—not just when you’re in school or when you reach older age. “Brain cells can start to shrink or die in your twenties2, so the age to start challenging your brain is when you are not naturally learning [as many new things],” she says.
For a general rule of thumb on when to prioritize different types of brain exercise, neurologists Dean Sherzai, M.D., and Ayesha Sherzai, M.D., directors of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Program at Loma Linda University, previously told mindbodygreen that it may be helpful to focus on attention in your 20s, memory in your 30s, and executive function in your 40s and beyond.
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Josey Murray
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