(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

Over 45? How about kicking off the new year with the news that your brain is probably already in decline? Here’s the Today Show.

“Well, new research in our health news that shows mental function begins to decline as early as age 45. Previous studies have shown the brain’s capacity for memory, reasoning, and comprehension tapering off at the age of 60, but a new joint study from institutes in France and Britain showed a 3.6% drop in reasoning starting at age 45.”

The researchers followed thousands of participants over a 10-year period, testing them repeatedly on different cognitive abilities. And not only did declines start after 45, NPR explains it just got worse from there.

“...the decline was even faster for people in their 50s and 60s, especially men. Other mental abilities that faded included memory, and so-called verbal fluency, which measures a person's ability to quickly say words in a particular category. However, people's vocabulary didn't change.”

This research is among the first to find significant declines in middle age. But since the youngest people in the study, those in their late 40s at the beginning, showed decline, it might have gotten started even earlier.

New Scientist quotes a researcher saying these results show old-age dementia starts early.

“The findings suggest that early signs of dementia could be identified in people in their 40s, who may be able to start preventative therapies... ‘As yet, there is no cure for dementia, and accumulating evidence indicates that effective interventions will need to be administered long before marked neurodegeneration has occurred.’”

Hold on -- does that mean treatments should begin before a problem shows up? That’s how a neuroscientist on BBC’s Radio 4 saw it. He weighs in on the idea.

“If you look at every individual one of us, we all change our pattern of aging in different sorts of ways, and many of us go on very well into our 70s, 80s, 90s, some of us decline earlier. What I’m against, I think, is the idea that we should, if you like, medicalize -- drug -- an entire population because of, in some way, what is a normal process of aging. Maybe we need to embrace that we age.”

The researchers say if you want to protect your brain, you should start protecting your heart. The same things that help your heart as you age -- healthy eating, exercise, not smoking -- are associated with lower risk of old age dementia.