How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Contrary to old science, we can grow new brain cells later in life

  • The previous belief that we couldn’t was largely based on rodent studies

  • A study showing that we in fact can, was quickly followed by another study refuting it to say we can’t

  • The “refuting” study turned out to have accidentally destroyed its own evidence

  • More studies since have confirmed the original study’s findings, and more

  • While neuronal birth-and-(re)growth does slow in old age, it doesn’t stop

  • It decreases very sharply in people with Alzheimer’s disease

  • We can give our brain a boost by means of diet, exercise, and supplementation

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Why #1 way to strengthen your mind is to use your body

Dr. Wendy Suzuki, neuroscience professor, explains, in this short (6:05) video:

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Prefer text? Click here to read the transcript

🧠 MAIN FEATURE

How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)

It was long believed that brain growth could not occur later in life, due to expending our innate stock of pluripotent stem cells. However, this was mostly based on rodent studies.

Rodent studies are often used for brain research, because it’s difficult to find human volunteers willing to have their brains sliced thinly (so that the cells can be viewed under a microscope) at the end of the study.

However, neurobiologist Dr. Maura Boldrini led a team that did a lot of research by means of autopsies on the hippocampi of (previously) healthy individuals ranging in age from 14 to 79.

What she found is that while indeed the younger subjects did predictably have more young brain cells (neural progenitors and immature neurons), even the oldest subject, at the age of 79, had been producing new brain cells up until death.

Read her landmark study: Human Hippocampal Neurogenesis Persists throughout Aging

There was briefly a flurry of news articles about a study by Dr. Shawn Sorrels that refuted this, however, it later came to light that Dr. Sorrels had accidentally destroyed his own evidence during the cell-fixing process—these things happen; it’s just unfortunate the mistake was not picked up until after publication.

A later study by a Dr. Elena Moreno-Jiménez fixed this flaw by using a shorter fixation time for the cell samples they wanted to look at, and found that there were tens of thousands of newly-made brain cells in samples from adults ranging from 43 to 87.

Now, there was still a difference: the samples from the youngest adult had 30% more newly-made braincells than the 87-year-old, but given that previous science thought brain cell generation stopped in childhood, the fact that an 87-year-old was generating new brain cells 30% less quickly than a 43-year-old is hardly much of a criticism!

As an aside: samples from patients with Alzheimer’s also had a 30% reduction in new braincell generation, compared to samples from patients of the same age without Alzheimer’s. But again… Even patients with Alzheimer’s were still growing some new brain cells.

Read it for yourself: Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is abundant in neurologically healthy subjects and drops sharply in patients with Alzheimer’s disease

Practical advice based on this information

Since we can do neurogenesis at any age, but the rate does drop with age (and drops sharply in the case of Alzheimer’s disease), we need to:

Feed your brain. The brain is the most calorie-consuming organ we have, by far, and it’s also made mostly of fat* and water. So, get plenty of healthy fats, and get plenty of water.

Exercise. Specifically, exercise that gets your blood pumping. This (as our earlier-featured video today referenced) is one of the biggest things we can do to boost Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, or BDNF.

Here be science: Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Depression, and Physical Activity: Making the Neuroplastic Connection

However, that’s not the only way to increase BDNF; another is to enjoy a diet rich in polyphenols. These can be found in, for example, berries, tea, coffee, and chocolate. Technically those last two are also botanically berries, but given how we usually consume them, and given how rich they are in polyphenols, they merit a special mention.

See for example: Effects of nutritional interventions on BDNF concentrations in humans: a systematic review

Some supplements can help neuron (re)growth too, so if you haven’t already, you might want to check out our previous main feature on lion’s mane mushroom, a supplement which does exactly that.

For those who like videos, you may also enjoy this TED talk by neuroscientist Dr. Sandrine Thuret:

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Hearing So Clear It Has No Peers

Have you heard the good news?

A team of top German engineers has just unveiled the world’s very first hearing aids with dual processing, and the results are clear... Literally!

Why is this so special? Thanks to this cutting-edge German technology, these tiny devices capture speech and noise separately, resulting in groundbreaking levels of noise reduction and speech clarity.

Hear.com is so confident you’ll love their product, all devices come with a 45-day no-risk trial. They’ve already got 385,000 happy customers and counting, and their award-winning customer service will help with anything you need.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Eye-tracking technology can help improve quality of life assessment for older people with dementia

• Minimizing fallout from explosive cell death could slow inflammation, cancer spread

• Senolytic therapy in mild Alzheimer’s disease shows safety in phase one trial

• Testosterone therapy found to have better mental health outcomes with early treatment

• Study puts a comically serious spin on loneliness in aged care

• What many doctors get wrong about the risks of being overweight

• Weight-adjusted waist index shows promise in predicting stroke

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar—Your Brain's Silent Killers – by Dr. David Perlmutter

If you're a regular 10almonds reader, you probably know that refined flour, and processed food in general, is not great for the health. So, what does this book offer more?

Dr. Perlmutter sets out the case against (as the subtitle suggests) wheat, carbs, and sugar. Yes, including wholegrain wheat, and including starchy vegetables such as potatoes and parsnips. Fruit does also come under scrutiny, a clear distinction is made between whole fruits and juices. In the latter case, the lack of fiber (along with the more readily absorbable liquid state) allows for those sugars to zip straight into our blood.

The book includes lots of stats and facts, and many study citations, along with infographics and clear explanations.

If the book has a weakness, it's when it forgets to clarify something that was obvious to the author. For example, when he talks about our ancestors' diets being 75% fat and 5% carbs, he neglects to mention that this is 75% by calorie count, not by mass or volume. This makes a huge difference! It's the difference between a fat-guzzling engine, and someone who eats mostly fruit and oily nuts but also some very high-fat meat/organs.

The book's strengths, on the other hand, are found in its explanation, backed by good science, of what wheat, along with excessive carbohydrates (especially sugar) can do to our body, including (and most focusedly, hence the title) our brain, leading the way to not just obvious metabolic disorders like diabetes, but also inflammatory diseases like Alzheimer's.

Bottom line: you don't have to completely revamp your diet if it's working for you, but data is data, and this book has lots, making it well-worth a read.

Click here to check out Grain Brain, and learn about how to avoid inflaming yours!

Wishing you the best of health at every age,

The 10almonds Team