Have you met someone in their eighties who is as sharp as a youngster and fast on their feet? We call them “superagers”.
These special folks not only have great memories, but also move quickly and are less prone to feeling blue. All this comes from a new study in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal.
The Superager Puzzle: Memory that Doesn’t Age
While most people find their memory getting rusty as they age, superagers are different.
Their memory seems to stay strong, just like when they were young. Marta Garo-Pascual from the Queen Sofia Foundation Alzheimer Centre, Madrid, is working to figure out their secret.
She’s asking if superagers have some sort of memory shield against aging or if they just manage it better than others.
The Study Setup: Finding the Superagers
To answer this, Garo-Pascual and her team looked at the biggest group of superagers to date. They found these superagers as part of a project looking for early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
The study involved more than 1,200 folks aged 69 to 86 from Madrid, with 64 identified as superagers.
Super Brain, Super Moves: The Superager Traits
The study showed superagers had more “gray matter”, an important part of the brain, especially in areas controlling memory and movement.
They also had better mental health and were quicker on their feet, even though they reported doing the same amount of exercise as regular folks their age.
Happy Tunes, Active Lives: The Superager Lifestyle
The study also found superagers had been more active when they were younger, were happy with their sleep, and many had a background in music. They were also more independent in their daily lives and scored higher on intelligence tests.
A Healthy Body, A Healthy Mind: Superager Benefits
Dr. Bryan Strange, from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, thinks superagers might be doing more physically demanding activities. This might give benefits like lower blood pressure, less obesity, and better blood flow to the brain, all of which could help keep their minds sharp.
Keep Moving, Keep Remembering: Future Research
Dr. Strange suggests that staying active might be linked to better memory. However, it could also be that having a healthier brain to start with makes superagers more active.
More research can help figure this out, and possibly find ways to help more old folks keep their memory strong.
Same Blood, Different Results: The Superager Mystique
Superagers also had fewer signs of brain damage in their blood compared to regular folks. But, there was no difference when it came to a major risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease.
The research team thinks there might be other factors at play, possibly genetic ones, that make superagers special.
Decoding Superaging: The Next Steps
While the study provides important insights, there’s still a lot we don’t know about superagers. More studies are needed to better understand why some folks can stay sharp and spry into old age.
These findings could lead to new ways to prevent memory decline and keep us all feeling younger for longer.
If you care about nutrition, please read studies about how Mediterranean diet could protect your brain health, and the best time to take vitamins to prevent heart disease.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies that olive oil may help you live longer, and vitamin D could help lower the risk of autoimmune diseases.
The study was published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity.
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