A Welcome Message For 2025

I am astonished by how quickly time flies.  As we get older, it seems the clock ticks faster. As a new year dawns on us, I’d like to explain why even as the years go by, it is never too late to slow down how our brain ages and to stay youthfully sharp – a very welcome message for 2025, I believe.

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading the Economist’s series on ageing, ‘In Search of Forever’. Ageing is an area of science in which impressive steps are being made: from understanding what makes us age, how to slow down our ageing, to how we may improve our quality of life.  The series included chapters on, ‘Slowing human ageing is now the subject of serious research’, ‘Eating fewer calories can slow down ageing’ and so on.   

I know many of the world’s leading ageing science professors who have made these discoveries. The dawn of public exposure to the secrets of ageing that they have discovered fills me with hope.  I constantly remind myself that ‘DNA is not destiny’. Too many of us still believe that we can do nothing about ageing yet few of us would venture to say, ‘I should do nothing about my health’. But ageing is the major predictor of our health, including that of our brain and because of the leaps in understanding over the last 50 years or so, we now know that there is plenty that we can do to keep our brains in great shape as we age. 

So, let me share a few opening thoughts for personal progress in 2025.

If there is one area on which I am constantly questioned, it is sleep – the reason being that sleeping badly is such a common problem!  A moment of true revelation came to me during my participation in the Global Council on Brain Health sleep workshop.  It was from Dr ‘Chuck’ Czeisler of Harvard University who revealed this gem: sleep changes as we age. It’s not so much that we sleep worse as we grow older but that we have to manage these changes.  Above all, I would say that consistency is the key.  It sounds simplistic but if our sleep habits are  chaotic and irregular, we have very little hope of restoring our brain through sleep.  

Another noteworthy scientific revelation over the last 10 or so years has been the amazing finding that much of our brain health (thinking, feeling and interacting with others) depends on what is going on in our gut: specifically in our large intestine or colon. Too few of us give this a moment’s thought, yet keeping our gut healthy is vital to our brain. The most important message to me is that we mustn’t starve the microbes living there.  In effect, this means eating  a nutritional, high fibre diet – as simple as that!

If there’s one other big message about nutrition, it would be about calories – rarely mentioned in articles about what to eat to stay healthy.  All research over the last nearly 100 years has shown one incontrovertible fact: reduce our calories and we stay healthier and younger.  I’m sure the daily recommendations are too high.  I’d recommend reducing our diet to 1500 total daily calories for women and 2000 for men, depending on our activity and weight.  Over many years this will not only keep our waistlines down but help to keep our thinking sharp.

After the guilty indulgences of this festive season many of us seek salvation in the gym.  Unfortunately, few of us can maintain our enthusiasm over many months.  Psychologists call this, ‘ego-depletion’. So, my advice would be to participate in regular activity which we enjoy.  There is huge benefit to two kinds of daily exercise: ‘aerobic’ activities (eg brisk walking, bowls, swimming and so on) and secondly but much misunderstood, resistance training – otherwise known as ‘weight training’ – which can be done at home.  It is highly beneficial, not just to maintaining our muscle mass but for keeping our brain sharp.

Another regular question is, ‘will crosswords, games and puzzles keep my brain young, or even reduce my risk of dementia?’.  And my answer is always the same, ‘it depends’.  Any game has to have a strong element of learning something new   to make it what psychologists call a ‘cognitive stimulating activity’.  Too superb examples are dancing and learning a new language.  Or both.  Maybe try dancing with a person of another language!

Dance of Life,1899                               by Artist Edvard Munck

Now to finish with a moment of cheer.  Current research studies have revealed a new insight on Alzheimer’s Disease (AD): it may be due to microbes in the brain. Only a few days ago, a brain research team in Arizona, NV, USA concluded that in 25-45% of all diagnoses of AD, the cause could be the migration of a virus from the gut to the brain via the Vagus Nerve.  Day by day, our understanding of this disease and how to cure it, advances relentlessly.  I am optimistic that brain health scientists like these underpin the future health of humanity.  And long may it continue.  Here’s to wonderfully healthy 2025.