Estate Planning Blog Articles

Does My Brain Improve as I Age?

Money Talks News’ recent article entitled “2 Ways Your Aging Brain Actually Improves Over Time” explains that our ability to gather new information and to concentrate on the most important things in any given situation may get better with age, according to new research out of Georgetown University Medical Center. The findings were published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

As part of the study, researchers examined three distinct components of attention and executive function in group of about 700 participants:

• Alerting — a state of enhanced vigilance and preparedness in order to respond to incoming information;
• Orienting — the shifting of brain resources to a particular location in space; and
• Executive inhibition — in which we inhibit distracting or conflicting information, allowing us to focus on what is important.

Study co-author João Veríssimo, an assistant professor at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, explained:

“We use all three processes constantly. For example, when you are driving a car, alerting is your increased preparedness when you approach an intersection. Orienting occurs when you shift your attention to an unexpected movement, such as a pedestrian. And executive function allows you to inhibit distractions, such as birds or billboards, so you can stay focused on driving.”

They looked at individuals from 58 and 98, the ages when cognition tends to change the most during the aging process. The researchers found that while alerting abilities declined with age, the other two abilities improved. Those two abilities help us with several key parts of cognition, such as:

• Memory
• Decision-making
• Self-control
• Navigation
• Math
• Language
• Reading

The researchers say orienting and inhibition appear to be skills that can get better over a lifetime the more they’re practiced. However, it appears that alerting — a basic state of vigilance and preparedness — can’t improve with practice.

Study co-author Michael T. Ullman, a professor in the Georgetown University Department of Neuroscience and director of Georgetown’s Brain and Language Lab, commented, “People have widely assumed that attention and executive functions decline with age, despite intriguing hints from some smaller-scale studies that raised questions about these assumptions. However, the results from our large study indicate that critical elements of these abilities actually improve during aging, likely because we simply practice these skills throughout our life.”

Reference: Money Talks News (Sep. 6, 2021) “2 Ways Your Aging Brain Actually Improves Over Time”

What Is Science Doing About Hearing Loss?

Thanks to advances in technology and medicine like artificial intelligence and gene therapy, hearing research is producing significant innovations. AARP’s recent article entitled “Three Game-Changing Innovations for Those With Hearing Loss” looks at a couple of them, in various stages of development.

1. Eyeglasses That Turn Speech into Subtitles. With these, you’ll be able to read what people are saying. An app on your smartphone would listen to a conversation and transcribe the speech into sentences in real time. The text would be sent instantaneously to your enhanced eyeglasses, which would create subtitles. Vuzix, a tech company, recently released smart glasses that work with transcription software. Automatic speech-to-text programs have proliferated in recent years, and live computer-generated captions are now available on most videoconferencing platforms. Smartphone apps can also generate real-time transcriptions for in-person conversations. However, the issue is that users have to be in front of a PC or looking at a phone, which detracts from full social engagement. However, companies are making subtitles more natural, by using “smart glasses” technology, which can project text to a user’s field of vision in a comfortable, nonintrusive way. We may see this in a few years.
2. An App That Lets You Hear Someone in a Crowded Room. This technology can isolate a person’s speech in a noisy environment, which would solve what scientists call the “cocktail party problem.” An app would “listen” to the soundscape surrounding you and separate out different streams of sound, including voices, ambient music and other background noise. It would then isolate the sound you want to hear based on the direction you’re facing — and reduce everything else. The cleaned-up sound would then be delivered straight to your ear through your hearing aid, cochlear implant, or earbuds. Powerful de-noising programs look to be available on hearing technology within five years.
3. Drug Therapy That Regrows Cells That Help Your Hearing. Your body would repair damage to your inner ear — like when a salamander regrows his tail. A drug delivered into your inner ear would turn on chemical switches to regrow the cells responsible for hearing and most hearing loss. Those born with hearing loss or those who lose hearing later in life would get injections to restore some or all of their hearing. This hair cell regeneration would be ideal for anyone who’s lost hearing because of missing or damaged hair cells. However, this isn’t anticipated to be available very soon. Some hair cell regrowth therapies using different methods are currently in human clinical trials. There are trials being conducted at Novartis, Eli Lilly, Frequency Therapeutics, and Pipeline Therapeutics. However, most of this work is still being tested in the lab.

Reference: AARP (August 2, 2021) “Three Game-Changing Innovations for Those With Hearing Loss”

This Breathing Trick may Make You More Heart-Healthy

An easy technique, called high-resistance inspiratory muscle strength training (IMST) is when a person inhales deeply through a hand-held device that provides resistance. Doctors say that to get an idea of how it works, think of “sucking hard through a tube that sucks back.”

Money Talks News’ recent article entitled “This 5-Minute Trick Could Help Your Heart More Than Exercise” reports that, as part of the study, 36 adults ages 50 to 79 with above-normal systolic blood pressure readings (120 or higher) were divided into two groups. Half of them performed high-resistance IMST for six weeks; and the other half did a placebo protocol, which involved much less resistance. (Systolic blood pressure refers to the first or top number in a blood pressure reading. For example, if your reading is 120/80, your systolic blood pressure is 120.)

After six weeks, the systolic blood pressure of the IMST group went down an average of nine points. That reduction is better than what’s normally achieved by walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week. It is also equal to the effects of some drugs that work to lower blood pressure. Moreover, those in the IMST group saw a 45% improvement in vascular endothelial function. That’s the ability of arteries to expand upon stimulation. Levels of nitric oxide — a molecule that dilates arteries and prevents plaque buildup — also increased. Lastly, markers of inflammation and oxidative stress fell drastically. Higher levels of these markers are linked to increased heart attack risk. These findings were published recently in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

IMST has been used for years to help patients with respiratory disease to strengthen their diaphragm and other breathing muscles. Researchers now say that more widespread use of IMST might help aging adults lower their risk of cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of death in America.

In a press release, Daniel Craighead, lead author of the study and an assistant research professor in UC Boulder’s Department of Integrative Physiology, noted, “There are a lot of lifestyle strategies we know can help people maintain cardiovascular health as they age. But the reality is, they take a lot of time and effort and can be expensive and hard for some people to access. IMST can be done in five minutes in your own home while you watch TV.”

The researchers say that 65% of U.S. adults over age 50 have above-normal blood pressure—this raises their risk of heart attack or stroke.

It’s usually suggested that those performing IMST engage in a 30-minute-per-day regimen at low resistance. However, Craighead and others have found that a reduced regimen of 30 inhalations per day at high resistance, six days per week also offers cardiovascular, cognitive, and sports performance benefits. The researchers noted that the IMST regimen may be of particular benefit to postmenopausal women. Earlier research has found that postmenopausal women who aren’t taking supplemental estrogen don’t see as much benefit to vascular endothelial function from exercise as men do.

But IMST looks to boost vascular endothelial function in women just as much as men. Craighead says, “If aerobic exercise won’t improve this key measure of cardiovascular health for postmenopausal women, they need another lifestyle intervention that will. This could be it.”

The breathing-muscle training device used in the study is called a POWERbreathe K3, manufactured by a company in England. It costs a few hundred dollars. However, the researchers say they’re developing a smartphone app that will enable people to do the same IMST regimen at home with other devices.

Reference: Money Talks News (July 15, 2021) “This 5-Minute Trick Could Help Your Heart More Than Exercise”