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Reflexes Slowing? Look Within

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 4, 2008

WASHINGTON - Think achy joints are the main reason we slow down as we get older? Blame the brain, too: The part in charge of motion may start a gradual downhill slide at age 40.

How fast you can throw a ball or run or swerve a steering wheel depends on how speedily brain cells fire off commands to muscles. Fast firing depends on good insulation for your brain's wiring.

New research suggests that in middle age, even healthy people begin to lose insulation in a motor-control part of the brain - at the same rate that their speed subtly slows.

That helps explain why "it's hard to be a world-class athlete after 40," said George Bartzokis, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the work.

And while that may sound depressing, keep reading. The research points to yet another reason to stay physically and mentally active: An exercised brain may spot fraying insulation quicker and signal for repair cells to get to work.

To Bartzokis, the brain is like the Internet. Speedy movement depends on bandwidth, which in the brain is myelin, a special sheet of fat that coats nerve fibers.

Bartzokis' ultimate goal is to fight Alzheimer's disease. The connection: Building memories requires high-frequency electrical bursts, too, and Bartzokis' earlier research suggests an Alzheimer's-linked gene may thwart myelin repair.

But the new research has broader implications because it sheds light on normal aging, said Zoe Arvanitakis, a neurologist at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

"We knew at some age you peak and there's a sense it would disintegrate as you grow older. But we didn't have a sense of where that age would be," Arvanitakis said.

THE BRAIN GAME
Looking at ways to help keep your brain healthy:

•Keeping active and treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes already are deemed important for good brain health. But physical and mental activity also may stimulate myelin repair, while unused neural pathways wouldn't send out a "help" signal.

•Stress hormones may hurt myelin.

•Tests are determining whether the consumption of omega-3 fatty acids - the oils, found in fatty fish, already recommended for cardiovascular health - might help maintain myelin.

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