Healthy habits linked to younger brain age

Your chronological age may say 65, but your brain could be acting a decade younger - or older - depending on your life experiences.

That's the message from a new study by University of Florida researchers, who found that optimism, good sleep, social support and other positive factors were strongly linked with healthier brains. The findings suggest that how people live and cope with stress can measurably influence the pace of brain aging, even in those living with chronic pain.

"These are things that people have some level of control over," said Jared Tanner, Ph.D., a research associate professor of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida who helped lead the new study. "You can learn how to perceive stress differently. Poor sleep is very treatable. Optimism can be practiced." 

The research followed 128 middle-aged and older adults, most with chronic musculoskeletal pain associated with or at risk of knee osteoarthritis, for two years. Using MRI scans analyzed by a machine learning system, the team estimated each participant's "brain age" and compared it to their actual chronological age. This brain age gap between the two served as a measure of whole-brain health.

Stressful factors like chronic pain, low income, less education and other social risks were associated with older-looking brains. Those links seemed to make less of an impression over time. What stood out more clearly were protective elements: things like getting restorative sleep, maintaining a healthy weight, managing stress, avoiding tobacco and having supportive relationships.

Study participants who reported the most protective factors had brains eight years younger than their chronological age when the study started, and their brains went on to age more slowly over the next two years.

The message is consistent across our studies, health promoting behaviors are not only associated with lower pain and better physical functioning, they appear to actually bolster health in an additive fashion at a meaningful level."

Kimberly Sibille, Ph.D., associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at UF and senior author of the report

Sibille and Tanner, along with colleagues across UF and at other institutions, published their findings Sept. 11 in the journal Brain Communications. 

Scientists have long known that older brains are more vulnerable to problems like memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Traditionally, brain research has focused on individual regions. But since pain, stress and life experiences affect many parts of the brain at once, the brain age gap - the difference between a person's age and how old their brain looks in brain scans - provides a single, whole-brain snapshot that captures those complexities.

Although the study focused on people living with chronic pain, it's likely that factors like lower stress, social support and quality sleep serve to slow brain aging in other populations as well. 

"Literally for every additional healthy promoting factor there is some evidence of neurobiological benefit," Sibille said. "Our findings support the growing body of evidence that Lifestyle is medicine."