Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Healthy ageing

20 Jul 2020

Josie Bigland | Meet Our Researcher Series

Josie Bigland is working toward becoming a Clinical Psychologist, with a personal goal of giving back to the community; specifically, families enduring hardship when it comes to managing the health of a loved one affected by dementia. Her experience with quality control of data across CHeBA’s longitudinal studies has revealed to her the importance of exercising throughout the lifespan to maintain cognitive health.   How did you first get into researching the ageing brain? As a self-supporting student, I was looking for a research assistant position to get me through university whilst… Read More
25 Feb 2015

Keeping Fit to Delay Dementia

MONICA CATIONS By now it is well established that poor cardiovascular and cognitive health in early life can increase the risk of dementia in old age.  But did you know that it could also bring forward the age of dementia onset to midlife?  Evidence is emerging to suggest that fitness as early as the teenage years could be associated with younger onset dementia (YOD). Younger onset dementia is any dementia with onset before the age of 65 years.  It is much less common than dementia in old age, but there are currently around 20 000 people with YOD living in Australia.  Dementia in midlife… Read More

Positive Ageing

PROFESSOR HENRY BRODATY and PROFESSOR PERMINDER SACHDEV In historical times, the elderly were highly revered.  Wisdom and knowledge were respected and ageing was seen as a positive experience.  Over the decades, our opinion of ageing has shifted and certainly in parts of the first-world ageing has become a loaded term.  ‘Being old’ is sometimes associated – particularly by many of the younger generation - with health issues and decline.  From the perspective of everyone at the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), it’s time to stop that trend and re-think the meaning of ageing.  Positive… Read More

Grow Your Brain

NICOLA GATES, PhD A lifetime of engaging enriching activities has been shown to delay the onset of cognitive decline and dementia. Therefore growing or building up your brain through new experiences gives you credits to reduce possible deterioration. Brain reserve is a concept to describe a brain’s physical and physiological robustness and resilience against disease and trauma. High reserve is due to the growth of more neurons, more synapses, greater connections and neuronal networks. Cognitive reserve is a related idea to describe how a lifetime of cognitive effort through education,… Read More
20 Jan 2014

Exercising the Mind

CHeBA Blog: Exercising the Mind
CHeBA Champion, Stephanie Campbell with her grandparents
STEPHANIE CAMPBELL, CHeBA CHAMPION (FITNESS AMBASSADOR FOR CHeBA) I’m jogging up a ridiculously steep street in Sydney’s leafy, bayside suburb of Mosman. My knees ache, my quads are burning, and my lungs hurt from straining for air. No point pretending – I hate uphill. Forehead glistening with sweat, I grit my teeth and finally reach the crest, attempting to breathe through a massive stitch in my side as I take the pace back down to a steady walk to recover. The oversized Garmin fitness watch strapped to my left wrist bleeps encouragingly at me to signal I’ve covered another kilometre, and… Read More

Ageing Well - Living Healthier

PROFESSOR HENRY BRODATY, MD, PhD Prevention We all become slower and more forgetful as we age, some of us more than others. When this change is accelerated and interferes with a variety of thinking or cognitive abilities and interferes with our day to day functioning, this is diagnosed as dementia, of which the most common type is Alzheimer’s disease. Surveys of the population indicate that dementia in general and Alzheimer’s in particular, along with cancer, are the health problems that we generally fear most. Rightly so! As we are living longer the chances of developing a dementia… Read More

Staying Connected Online is a No Brainer

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au This article was originally published in Simply Connected on the Tapestry website.  Can staying connected with your friends online keep your brain young? Research indicates that social activity, in combination with a healthy lifestyle and brain training, actually restores and improves brain function. In many countries we are ageing at an astonishing rate. For example, in the US, the number of individuals aged 90 years and over is predicted to increase from the current 2 million to more than 8 million by 2050. Centenarians (those that attain the age… Read More
19 Mar 2013

Let's Rethink the Meaning of Ageing

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Historically, none of us have particularly looked forward to growing 'old'. If you ask a wide demographic to define the word 'ageing', a range of pessimistic viewpoints will filter in, such as loss of independence, burden to others, physical incapability, loneliness, hip replacements, dementia and loss of dignity. It seems that, for many people, the path to ageing appears to be a steep decline into misery. A predominant reason for this is that age catches us by surprise. We're unprepared. We've been happily going about our business of day to day life… Read More