Any steps you take to improve the delivery of oxygen to your heart—that two-mile jog, for example—automatically pump up your brain. The steps include well-known dietary cardiovascular strengtheners like fiber-rich foods, which lower cholesterol; leafy greens rich in B vitamins and folate, which reduce levels of vessel-harming homocysteine; omega-3 fatty acids, which may prevent arrhythmias; and exercise, which reduces blood pressure, helps control blood-fat levels and keeps weight in check.
Brain-boosting steps may also include downright counterintuitive measures. Women who have one alcoholic drink a day—be it wine, beer or that cosmopolitan—have a much lower risk of cognitive decline than either teetotalers or heavy drinkers, according to a study at the Harvard School of Public Health. It's the effect of alcohol on your blood. By elevating levels of "good" cholesterol, thereby lowering the risk of stroke, small amounts of alcohol may protect both your cardiovascular system and the brain it serves.
Sweet Memory: Oat Cuisine
Your brain is the only organ that draws nearly all its energy from glucose, the sugar in ripe grapes and honey, for example, and produced in quantity from pasta and other starchy carbohydrates. That sweet substance also fuels the formation of sweet memories, or at least reliable ones.
Lab experiments reveal that a dose of glucose-sweetened lemonade boosts recall of events, words, movements, drawings and faces, among other things, with effects lasting long enough to get you through a two-hour exam. Other research extends these findings from doctored drinks to regular food. Any carbohydrate-rich dish, such as a bagel or a thick slice of bread, may prompt similar memory enhancements for healthy adults.
While a candy bar provides a burst of brain energy, that flash quickly subsides and your blood-sugar level plummets, fueling the desire for another ride on the blood-sugar roller coaster. Both body and brain may do better with foods that score low on the glycemic index, a rating that measures how fast and how high a food increases blood glucose levels after it's consumed. Because they surrender their starches slowly, such fiber-rich foods as barley, beans and Jo March's oatmeal all provide a steadier—and less fattening—stream of energy than a Snickers bar.
Over the long term, less-fattening foods benefit body, blood and brain. A healthy weight helps prevent diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance, conditions associated with a decline in cognitive capacity. Compared to glucose-intolerant adults, people with a well-maintained energy supply hang on longer to their memories.
Signal Savers: Salmon Tales
Neurons, the main cells in your brain, are a bit like New York City: bustling with activity but walled off from the outside by rivers and membranes, respectively. For neurons to survive and contribute to the world, their walls need to let vital goods pass in and out.
A healthy cell in its prime has a supple membrane that allows important molecules to cross unimpeded, as if over the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight. As a cell ages, though, the materials in the membrane stiffen and make it less pliable. With bridges and tunnels closing down, tollbooth like receptors on the surface of the membrane don't collect as many incoming signals from message-carrying neurotransmitters as they should. You might feel such effects as sluggishness in learning the new and recalling the old, poor sleep, lowered pain threshold. Impaired body-temperature regulation could make you uncomfortable in ordinary settings.
The neuronal membrane is made up primarily of fats, the very same fats that you fork into your mouth. In fact, your brain has your body's second-highest concentration of fat, right after actual fatty tissue—think butt and belly—itself.
The kinds of fats in the foods you eat influence the character of your cell membranes. Cholesterol and saturated fats harden membranes, while essential polyunsaturated fatty acids—omega-3s and omega-6s—render them supple. A healthy mix of essential fatty acids seems to enhance learning by facilitating the smooth passage of signals through neuronal membranes.
Most Americans take in plenty of omega-6 fatty acids, via nearly ubiquitous soy and corn oils. But the typical American diet lacks sufficient omega-3s, notes David I. Mostofsky, a neuroscientist at Boston University. Within days after you add omega-3s to your diet, membranes are rejuvenated in composition.
Salmon and other coldwater fish and (perhaps less appetizingly) algae are rich sources of the omega-3 fats that your body can utilize directly from food—known as EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). Walnuts and flaxseeds are rich in a related substance, alpha-linolenic acid, which can be converted more or less efficiently to EPA and DHA in the body. Human breast milk is rich in all three fatty acids, and DHA provides critical insulation for an infant's developing nervous system.
Under the direction of Gregory Cole, the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles is preparing to test whether omega-3 fatty acids can deter Alzheimer's disease, the number one cause of cognitive decline. So far, the fats have successfully fended off dementia in lab rats.
Tests of omega-3s are underway for a variety of other conditions, ranging from sleep disorders and anxiety to depression and impaired immune responses. "Nobody fully understands why they should have so many different functions," muses Mostofsky. Perhaps it's because the neuronal membrane controls access to all other nerve-cell functions.
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