Showing posts with label .dementia views. Show all posts

Friday, September 13, 2019

How emotions affect those with Alzheimer's

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

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The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two
EMOTIONAL STATES of individuals with Alzheimer's are profoundly influenced by Caregivers. Learn how.

A new University of Iowa study further supports an inescapable message: caregivers have a profound influence -- good or bad -- on the emotional state of individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Patients may not remember a recent visit by a loved one or having been neglected by staff at a nursing home, but those actions can have a lasting impact on how they feel.
The findings of this study are published in the journal, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology.

Sad and Happy Movies

UI researchers showed individuals with Alzheimer's disease clips of sad and happy movies. The patients experienced sustained states of sadness and happiness despite not being able to remember the movies.

Emotional Life is Alive and Well

"This confirms that the emotional life of an Alzheimer's patient is alive and well," says lead author Edmarie Guzmán-Vélez, a doctoral student in clinical psychology, a Dean's Graduate Research Fellow, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Guzmán-Vélez conducted the study with Daniel Tranel, UI professor of neurology and psychology, and Justin Feinstein, assistant professor at the University of Tulsa and the Laureate Institute for Brain Research.

Tranel and Feinstein published a paper in 2010 that predicted the importance of attending to the emotional needs of people with Alzheimer's, which is expected to affect as many as 16 million people in the United States by 2050 and cost an estimated $1.2 trillion.

Treating Patients, Teaching Caregivers

"It's extremely important to see data that support our previous prediction," Tranel says. "Edmarie's research has immediate implications for how we treat patients and how we teach caregivers."

Despite the considerable amount of research aimed at finding new treatments for Alzheimer's, no drug has succeeded at either preventing or substantially influencing the disease's progression. Against this foreboding backdrop, the results of this study highlight the need to develop new caregiving techniques aimed at improving the well-being and minimizing the suffering for the millions of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer's.

For this behavioral study, Guzmán-Vélez and her colleagues invited 17 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 17 healthy comparison participants to view 20 minutes of sad and then happy movies. These movie clips triggered the expected emotion: sorrow and tears during the sad films and laughter during the happy ones.

Remembering Scenes Vs. Remembering Feelings

About five minutes after watching the movies, the researchers gave participants a memory test to see if they could recall what they had just seen. As expected, the patients with Alzheimer's disease retained significantly less information about both the sad and happy films than the healthy people. In fact, four patients were unable to recall any factual information about the films, and one patient didn't even remember watching any movies.

Before and after seeing the films, participants answered questions to gauge their feelings. Patients with Alzheimer's disease reported elevated levels of either sadness or happiness for up to 30 minutes after viewing the films despite having little or no recollection of the movies.

Emotions Far Outlasted Memories

Quite strikingly, the less the patients remembered about the films, the longer their sadness lasted. While sadness tended to last a little longer than happiness, both emotions far outlasted the memory of the films.

The fact that forgotten events can continue to exert a profound influence on a patient's emotional life highlights the need for caregivers to avoid causing negative feelings and to try to induce positive feelings.

Empowering Caregivers

According to Guzmán-Vélez, simple things that can have a lasting emotional impact on a patient's quality of life and subjective well-being include:

Frequent visits
Social interactions
Exercise
Music
Dance
Jokes
Serving patients their favorite foods.

Guzmán-Vélez says, "Our findings should empower caregivers by showing them that their actions toward patients really do matter."

Source:

University of Iowa Health Care

Journal Reference:

Edmarie Guzmán-Vélez, Justin S. Feinstein, Daniel Tranel. Feelings Without Memory in Alzheimer Disease. Cognitive And Behavioral Neurology, 2014; 27 (3): 117 DOI: 10.1097/WNN.0000000000000020

Thursday, June 27, 2019

How to bath those with dementia without a struggle

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter
The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get
an easyceu or two

Pines Education Institute
Senior man in bath washing himself smiling : Stock Photo

Senior man in bath washing himself smiling : Stock Photo

Teepa Snow, a nationally acclaimed Alzheimer's and dementia care specialist, teaches her students how a person with dementia perceives his/her world and how to properly adapt one's own behavior to increase communication and mutual understanding.

Learn Teepa Snow's effective hands-on techniques to ease your daily caregiving tasks and increase the quality of life for your loved one or patient. In this training DVD, Teepa demonstrates effective approaches to bathing, eating, dressing, transfers, and how to respond to certain types of behaviors in patients with dementia.

"The Art of Caregiving" is presented by The Pines Education Institute of SW Florida and facilitated by Teepa Snow, MS, OTR/L, FAOTA.

SOURCE:

Pines Education Institute of S.W. Florida and Teepa Snow

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Complete memory loss reversal

Manchester University

Mefenamic Acid, a commonly used anti-inflammatory drug, successfully treated Alzheimer's in the lab. The University of Manchester showed how this medication completely reversed memory loss and brain inflammation in mice.

NSAIDs & Alzheimer's

Nearly everybody will at some point in their lives take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; mefenamic acid, a common Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug (NSAID), is routinely used for period pain. In research using mice, it completely reversed memory loss and brain inflammation.

The findings are published in a paper authored by Dr David Brough and colleagues, in the respected journal Nature Communications. Dr Brough and Dr Catherine Lawrence supervised PhD student Mike Daniels, and postdoc Dr Jack Rivers-Auty who conducted most of the experiments.

Inflammatory Pathway

Though this is the first time a drug has been shown to target this inflammatory pathway, highlighting its importance in the disease model, Dr Brough cautions that more research is needed to identify its impact on humans, and the long-term implications of its use.

The research, funded by the Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Society, paves the way for human trials which the team hope to conduct in the future.

Around 500,000 people in the UK have Alzheimer’s disease which gets worse over time, affecting many aspects of their lives, including the ability to remember, think and make decisions.

Mefenamic Acid Vs. Placebo

In the study transgenic mice that develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were used. One group of 10 mice was treated with mefenamic acid, and 10 mice were treated in the same way with a placebo.

The mice were treated at a time when they had developed memory problems and the drug was given to them by a mini-pump implanted under the skin for one month.

Memory loss was completely reversed back to the levels seen in mice without the disease.

Stopping Brain Cell Damage

Dr Brough said: “There is experimental evidence now to strongly suggest that inflammation in the brain makes Alzheimer’s disease worse.

“Our research shows for the first time that mefenamic acid, a simple Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug can target an important inflammatory pathway called the NLRP3 inflammasome , which damages brain cells.”

He added: “Until now, no drug has been available to target this pathway, so we are very excited by this result.

“However, much more work needs to be done until we can say with certainty that it will tackle the disease in humans as mouse models don’t always faithfully replicate the human disease.

Available Drug, Faster to Trial

“Because this drug is already available and the toxicity and pharmacokinetics of the drug is known, the time for it to reach patients should, in theory, be shorter than if we were developing completely new drugs.

“We are now preparing applications to perform early phase II trials to determine a proof-of-concept that the molecules have an effect on neuroinflammation in humans.”

Dr Doug Brown, Director of Research and Development at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Testing drugs already in use for other conditions is a priority for Alzheimer’s Society - it could allow us to shortcut the fifteen years or so needed to develop a new dementia drug from scratch.

“These promising lab results identify a class of existing drugs that have potential to treat Alzheimer’s disease by blocking a particular part of the immune response. However, these drugs are not without side effects and should not be taken for Alzheimer’s disease at this stage – studies in people are needed first.”

Full bibliographic information:

Fenamate NSAIDs inhibit the NLRP3 inflammasome and 2 protect against Alzheimer’s disease in rodent models, published in the journal Nature Communications

Michael J. D. Daniels, Jack Rivers-Auty, Tom Schilling, Nicholas G. Spencer, William Watremez, Victoria Fasolino, Sophie J. Booth, Claire S. White, Alex G. Baldwin, Sally Freeman, Raymond Wong, Clare Latta, Shi Yu, Joshua Jackson,
Nicolas Fischer, Violette Koziel, Thierry Pillot, James Bagnall, Stuart M. Allan, Pawel Paszek, James Galea, Michael K. Harte, Claudia Eder, Catherine B. Lawrence, David Brough*

SOURCE:

Manchester University

Friday, October 12, 2018

Berrries keep women smart

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

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Care 2Causes
by Judy Molland

Women who eat plenty of blueberries and strawberries stay sharp as they age, and maybe men can benefit too, according to a major study released in the Annals of Neurology.

Lead author and epidemiologist Elizabeth Devore, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, along with her team, analyzed data from The Nurses’ Health Study, which started tracking the health and lifestyle of 121,700 nurses in 1976.

For the berry analysis, 16,000 stroke-free women older than 70 were given six tests for memory and cognitive function. Every two years from 1995 to 2001, researchers measured mental function in these women. Those who ate more blueberries and strawberries had the slowest memory decline.

Exciting news that with such a simple dietary intervention we can stay smarter longer!

From The New York Daily News:

“Not everyone’s memory declines as they age, but on average, when women did decline over time, the group that ate the most berries declined less,” said Devore.
The benefit was seen with just a half cup of blueberries or one cup of strawberries consumed a week. Frozen, regular or organic all work.

And if you ate more? The study didn’t look at that.

“Because cognitive decline develops over many years, long-term dietary habits are likely most relevant to brain health,” Devore said.

“We provide the first epidemiologic evidence that berries may slow progression of cognitive decline in elderly women,” said Devore.

Devore added that the findings are of particular importance to the aging population, which is on the rise: the number of Americans aged 65 and older grew 15 percent from 2000 to 2010 according to the U.S. Census.

Flavonoids are antioxidants that are found in berries, apples, citrus fruits, tea, red wine and onions, and previous research has shown they may reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

We know that it’s a great idea if everyone, young and old, increases their daily intake of fruits and vegetables, in order to live a healthy life, and now here’s even more proof that we should all be heading to the produce aisle.

The magic bullet in berries may be a certain kind of flavonoid known as anthocyanidins, which cross the blood-brain barrier.

They have also been found in the regions of the brain involved with learning and memory.

Get the berry habit and stay smart!

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Is a loved one at risk of developing diabetes

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter
The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Newsmax

Many in long term care are at risk to develop diabetes

Here are ways to help them

The Type 2 diabetes tide remains unchecked in the United States, as does pre-diabetes -- having a blood sugar level higher than normal, but not high enough for a diabetes diagnosis.
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that about 30 million Americans -- roughly 10 percent of the population -- have Type 2 diabetes. What's more, over 80 million have pre-diabetes, which, if not treated, often leads to diabetes within five years.

But there is a way to control and reverse this alarming trend, according to a multi-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) study. In fact, the study revealed how to reduce your risk of diabetes by 58 percent.

Diabetes puts people at risk of heart and blood vessel disease, nerve damage, and kidney and eye damage, among other health threats. And while Type 2 diabetes is more common among certain ethnic and racial groups -- including American Indians, Alaska Natives, African Americans and people of Hispanic descent -- no one is immune. And though you can't change your heritage, you can change diabetes risk factors like carrying too much weight and being sedentary.

A multi-year NIH study of more than 3,000 overweight or obese adults with blood sugar at pre-diabetes levels found that lifestyle changes can have a profound effect\

What you eat counts, too. Focusing on fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy cuts Type 2 diabetes risk. By contrast, eating a lot of refined grains (like baked goods made with white flour and white rice), processed meats and added sugars increases it. So aim to rebalance your diet.

Finally, rethink your drink. One very simple step is to cut out sugar-sweetened beverages. Sodas and similar drinks may lead not only to Type 2 diabetes, but also to overweight and more belly fat, in particular.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Is there a relationship between copper and Alzheimer's

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Use DICE method for dementia

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A novel approach to handling agitation, aggression and other unwanted behaviors by people with dementia may help reduce the use of antipsychotics and other psychiatric drugs in this population, and make life easier for them and their caregivers, a team of experts says.

The DICE model aims to reduce psychotropic drug use in dementia

The new DICE model - for Describe, Investigate, Evaluate, and Create - seeks to reduce psychotropic medication use in dementia patients.

Publishing their recommendations under the easy-to-remember acronym of “DICE”, the panel of specialists in senior mental health hope to spark better teamwork among those who care for dementia patients at home, in residential facilities and in hospitals and clinics.

In fact, the federal agency that runs Medicare and funds much dementia-related care has made the DICE approach an official part of its toolkit for reducing the use of antipsychotic drugs and other mental health medications in people with dementia.

D: Describe - Asking the caregiver, and the patient if possible, to describe theThough these drugs may still help some patients, the important paper in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society says, many non-medication approaches could also help reduced unwanted behaviors, also known as neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia. But it will take teamwork and communication to do it.

Most people with Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-affecting conditions also get aggressive, agitated, depressed, anxious, or delusional from time to time, says senior author Helen C. Kales, M.D., head of the U-M Program for Positive Aging and Geriatric Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Health System and investigator at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research . Or, they might have delusions, hallucinations, or lose inhibitions.

“Often more than memory loss, behavioral symptoms of dementia are among the most difficult aspects of caring for people with dementia. These symptoms are experienced almost universally, across dementia stages and causes,” she says. “Sadly, these symptoms are often associated with poor outcomes including early nursing home placement, hospital stays, caregiver stress and depression, and reduced caregiver employment.”

Doctors often prescribe these patients medications often used in patients with mental health disorders, despite little hard evidence that they work well and despite the risks they can pose -- including hastening death. Meanwhile, studies have shown promise from non-medication approaches to changing dementia patients’ behavior and reducing triggers for behavioral symptoms in their environment and daily life. But too few health teams are trained in their use.

Kales and her colleagues Laura N. Gitlin, Ph.D. and Constantine G. Lyketsos, M.D. from Johns Hopkins University authored the new paper on behalf of a group of experts, called the Detroit Expert Panel on the Assessment and Management of the Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Dementia, who developed the DICE approach.

Sponsored by Kales’ program, the national multidisciplinary panel of experts met in Michigan to create a comprehensive approach to behavioral management.

Dubbed “DICE” for Describe, Investigate, Evaluate, and Create, it details key patient, caregiver and environmental considerations with each step of the approach and describes the “go-to” behavioral and environmental interventions that should be considered.

Briefly described, the components are:

1. Who
2. What
3. When
4. Where
of situations where problem behaviors occur and the physical and social context for them. Caregivers could take notes about the situations that led to behavior issues, to share with health professionals during visits.

I: Investigate – Having the health provider look into all the aspects of the patient’s
1. health
2. Dementia symptoms
3. Current medications
4. Sleep habits
that might be combining with physical, social and caregiver-related factors to produce the behavior.

C: Create – Working together, the patient’s caregiver and health providers develop a plan to prevent and respond to behavioral issues in the patient, including everything from
1. Changing the patient’s activities
2. Adjusting the environment
3. Care education
4. Support for the caregiver.

E: Evaluate – Giving the provider responsibility for assessing
1. How well the plan is being followed
2. how it’s working
3. What might need to be changed.

The authors say that doctors should prescribe psychotropic drugs only after they and the patient and caregiver have made significant efforts to change dementia patients’ behavior through environmental modifications and other interventions, with three exceptions related to severe depression, psychosis or aggression that present risk to the patient or others.

Now, the authors say, health providers of all kinds who care for dementia patients should familiarize themselves with the DICE approach – as should the spouses, adult children and others who care for dementia patients at home.

“Innovative approaches are needed to support and train the front-line providers for the burgeoning older population with behavioral symptoms of dementia,” says Kales, a professor in the U-M Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation . “We believe that the DICE approach offers clinicians an evidence-informed structured clinical reasoning process that can be integrated into diverse practice settings.”

Gitlin, who directs the Center for Innovative Care in Aging at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, adds, “The DICE approach is inherently patient- and caregiver-centered because the concerns of individuals with dementia and their caregivers are integral to each step of the process. DICE also enables clinicians to consider the roles of nonpharmacologic, medical and pharmacologic treatments concurrently.”

Lyketsos, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview, stresses that the approach “has tremendous utility in clinical trials of treatments for behavioral symptoms, particularly in testing new medications. DICE can be used to better subtype behaviors, or focus on particular behaviors at randomization coupled with systematic treatment approaches”.

MORE INFORMATION:

Reference: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Volume 62, Issue 4, pp 762–769, April 2014

Learn more about the U-M Program for Positive Aging , including its resources for health care providers to assist with management of behavioral aspects of dementia

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Sleep Problems May Be An Early Sign of Alzheimer’s

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter

Summary: A new study links sleep problems with increased biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers discovered those who report low sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and other sleep problems had elevated levels of Alzheimer’s related biomarkers in their spinal fluid than those who reported no sleep problems. However, no abnormalities were found in the spinal fluid of people with obstructive sleep apnea.

Source: AAN.

Poor sleep may be a sign that people who are otherwise healthy may be more at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life than people who do not have sleep problems, according to a study published in the July 6, 2017, online issue of Neurology. Researchers have found a link between sleep disturbances and biological markers for Alzheimer’s disease found in the spinal fluid.

“Previous evidence has shown that sleep may influence the development or progression of Alzheimer’s disease in various ways,” said study author Barbara B. Bendlin, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For example, disrupted sleep or lack of sleep may lead to amyloid plaque buildup because the brain’s clearance system kicks into action during sleep. Our study looked not only for amyloid but for other biological markers in the spinal fluid as well.”

Amyloid is a protein that can fold and form into plaques. Tau is a protein that forms into tangles. These plaques and tangles are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

For the study, researchers recruited 101 people with an average age of 63 who had normal thinking and memory skills but who were considered at risk of developing Alzheimer’s, either having a parent with the disease or being a carrier of a gene that increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease called apolipoprotein E or APOE. Participants were surveyed about sleep quality. They also provided spinal fluid samples that were tested for biological markers of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers found that people who reported worse sleep quality, more sleep problems and daytime sleepiness had more biological markers for Alzheimer’s disease in their spinal fluid than people who did not have sleep problems. Those biological markers included signs of amyloid, tau and brain cell damage and inflammation.

“It’s important to identify modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s given that estimates suggest that delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in people by a mere five years could reduce the number of cases we see in the next 30 years by 6.7 million and save $367 billion in health care spending,” said Bendlin.

While some of these relationships were strong when looking at everyone as a group, not everyone with sleep problems has abnormalities in their spinal fluid. For example, there was no link between biological markers in the spinal fluid and obstructive sleep apnea.

The results remained the same when researchers adjusted for other factors such as use of medications for sleep problems, amount of education, depression symptoms or body mass index.

“It’s still unclear if sleep may affect the development of the disease or if the disease affects the quality of sleep,” said Bendlin. “More research is needed to further define the relationship between sleep and these biomarkers.”

Bendlin added, “There are already many effective ways to improve sleep. It may be possible that early intervention for people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease may prevent or delay the onset of the disease.”

One limitation of the study was that sleep problems were self-reported. Monitoring of sleep patterns by health professionals may be beneficial in future studies.

ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Funding: The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Source: Renee Tessman – AAN
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: The study will appear in Neurology.

CITE THIS NEUROSCIENCENEWS.COM ARTICLE

The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Prevent Dementia- Muscle in on More Memory

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter

The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition

HEALTH RESEARCH:

Can muscle strength gains really fight MCI? (MCI is Mild Cognitive Impairment, sometimes nicknamed "pre-Alzheimer's".) Check out this health tip from Australia's "SMART Trial" for seniors.

Increased muscle strength leads to improved brain function in adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), new results from a recent trial led by the University of Sydney has revealed.

With 135 million people forecast to suffer from dementia in 2050, the study's findings--published in the Journal of American Geriatrics today--have implications for the type and intensity of exercise that is recommended for our growing ageing population.

Mild Cognitive Impairment defines people who have noticeably reduced cognitive abilities such as reduced memory but are still able to live independently, and is a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.

Findings from the Study of Mental and Resistance Training (SMART) trial show, for the first time, a positive causal link between muscle adaptations to progressive resistance training and the functioning of the brain among those over 55 with MCI

The trial was conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) at University of New South Wales and the University of Adelaide.

"What we found in this follow up study is that the improvement in cognition function was related to their muscle strength gains" said lead author Dr Yorgi Mavros, from the Faculty of Health Sciences, at University of Sydney.

"The stronger people became, the greater the benefit for their brain."

SMART was a randomised, double-blind trial involving 100 community-dwelling adults with MCI, aged between 55 and 86. They were divided into four groups doing either:

Resistance exercise and computerised cognitive training;
Resistance exercise and a placebo computerised training (watching nature videos);
Brain training and a placebo exercise program (seated stretching/calisthenics); or
Placebo physical exercise and placebo cognitive training.

Participants doing resistance exercise prescribed weight lifting sessions twice week for six months, working to at least 80 per cent of their peak strength. As they got stronger, the amount of weight they lifted on each machine was increased to maintain the intensity at 80 per cent of their peak strength.

The primary outcomes of a paper published in 2014 found these participants' global cognition improved significantly after the resistance training, as measured by tests including the Alzheimer's disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive scale. The cognitive training and placebo activities did not have this benefit. The benefits persisted even 12 months after the supervised exercise sessions ended.

"The more we can get people doing resistance training like weight lifting, the more likely we are to have a healthier ageing population," said Dr Mavros.

"The key however is to make sure you are doing it frequently, at least twice a week, and at a high intensity so that you are maximising your strength gains. This will give you the maximum benefit for your brain."

These new findings reinforce research from the SMART trial published earlier this year, whereby MRI scans showed an increase in the size of specific areas of the brain among those who took part in the weight training program. These brain changes were linked to the cognitive improvements after weight lifting.

"The next step now is to determine if the increases in muscle strength are also related to increases in brain size that we saw," said senior author Professor Maria Fiatarone Singh, geriatrician at University of Sydney.

"In addition, we want to find the underlying messenger that links muscle strength, brain growth, and cognitive performance, and determine the optimal way to prescribe exercise to maximise these effects."

MORE INFORMATION:

The SMART trial was funded by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council. It was conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) at UNSW and the University of Adelaide.

SOURCE: