Imagine going to the doctor and getting your blood pressure checked. You know, the machine that squeezes your arm and then gives two numbers?
Well, a recent study, published in the journal Stroke by researchers from the University of Miami, led by Michelle R. Caunca, has shown that the second of these numbers – the diastolic blood pressure – might tell us something really important about our brains.
First, let’s talk about what these numbers mean. When your heart beats, it pushes blood through your arteries.
The pressure during this heartbeat is called systolic blood pressure – that’s the first number. The second number, the diastolic blood pressure, is the pressure when your heart rests between beats.
Doctors usually think the top number is more important for understanding your risk of heart diseases. But this study focused on the bottom number – the diastolic blood pressure.
The researchers were curious if this number could tell us something about the chances of having certain scars in the brain, which could mean a higher risk of dementia, stroke, or even falls.
For the study, the team looked at 1,205 people who were 50 years or older. They used MRI scans to find scars in the brain, known as white matter lesions.
These scars can block messages in the brain, which are important for muscle movement, sensation, and thinking.
Now, here’s what’s interesting: they found that people with lower diastolic blood pressure (below 80) had fewer of these brain scars compared to those with higher diastolic blood pressure (above 90).
This is a bit of a surprise because we usually worry about high blood pressure, especially the systolic kind, when it comes to brain health.
White matter in the brain is made of nerve fibers that help send messages back and forth. When there are lesions in this white matter, it can mess up these messages. This can increase the risk of falling, having a stroke, or having problems with memory and thinking.
By the time we reach 60, up to 20% of us might have these white matter lesions. They become even more common as we get older, with most people over 90 having them.
The researchers noticed that these lesions tend to happen in different parts of the brain depending on which blood vessels are affected.
What’s really important is the link they found with lesions in a specific area of the brain called the periventricular region. These particular lesions are more likely to be connected with cognitive issues – problems with thinking and memory.
So, what does all this mean for us? It shows how crucial it is to know your blood pressure and to talk with your doctor about what’s best for you.
Keeping an eye on that lower blood pressure number could be more important than we realized, especially for our brains as we get older.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about unhealthy habits that could increase high blood pressure risk, and people with severe high blood pressure should reduce coffee intake.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about antioxidants that could help reduce dementia risk, and Coconut oil could help improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s.
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