Your ID card may say 65 years old, but your brain could function as if it were 55… or 75. A team from the University of Florida has just shown that the way we sleep, manage stress or maintain our social relationships can be read in MRI scans, in the form of a brain that is younger or older than expected.
At the heart of this work published in the journal Brain Communications : L’brain agean indicator calculated using artificial intelligence. In some volunteers, simple everyday habits are associated with a brain up to eight years younger than their actual age. A gap that makes you think.
Another age that matters: the age of your brain
The researchers followed 197 adults aged 45 to 85, most of them suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain related to or at risk of osteoarthritis of the knee. For 128 of them, a brain MRI was repeated two years later. An algorithm (DeepBrainNet) estimated thebrain age of each participant, then the team calculated the “brain age gap”: the difference between real age and brain age.
The more severe the chronic pain, the older the brain appeared, with about 0.67 years older at each pain level. An unfavorable socioeconomic score (low income, little education, disadvantaged neighborhood) added on average one year of brain aging per level, up to almost three years of difference between the extreme groups. The researchers then looked at what, on the contrary, seemed to protect the brain.
How to rejuvenate your brain: habits that make the difference
The team constructed a score of “protective” factors bringing together tobacco, waist size, optimism, positive and negative emotions, perceived stress, social support and sleep quality. Each additional point on this score was associated with a brain 0.69 years younger. Between the least protected people and those with the most favorable factors, the gap reached around eight years at the start of the study, and the best-off brains aged more slowly over two years.
Concretely, the following habits emerge as linked to a younger brain:
- Restorative sleepwith little disturbance or daytime fatigue;
- Absence of smoking or quit smoking for a long time;
- Waistline in a healthy weight zone, limiting inflammation;
- Feeling ofoptimism
and frequent positive affects; - Stress perceived as manageable, less invasive on a daily basis;
- Strong feeling of being able to count on family and friends.
“The message is clear across all of our studies: health-promoting behaviors are not only associated with reduced pain and better physical function, but they also appear to enhance health additively at a biologically meaningful level.”said Professor Kimberly Sibille, professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine and lead author of the study.
Why these gestures weigh more than hard blows
When the researchers integrated pain severity, socioeconomic context and protective factors into the same model, pain alone no longer explained brain age. The people with the most protection had on average a brain about 2.7 years younger than the others, even at a comparable level of pain. The trend was confirmed over time: over two years, a high protective score remained associated with a lower brain age.
For Jared Tanner, specialist in health psychology, “These are things that people have some level of control over. We can learn to perceive stress differently. Poor sleep is very treatable. Optimism can be cultivated“, he explained in a press release from the University of Florida. Kimberly Sibille summarized for her part: “For each additional health-promoting factor, there is evidence of neurobiological benefits. Our findings support the growing evidence that lifestyle is medicine“.