HuffPost: Seemingly ‘Harmless’ Habits That Are Prematurely Aging Your Brain

HuffPost interviewed Zaldy Tan, MD, MPH, medical director of the Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders at Cedars-Sinai, about behaviors that can damage brain health.

Social isolation can be as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, according to a study in the journal PLOS Medicine. Yet maintaining a community becomes more difficult with age, posing serious risks to brain health.

“It’s so common in our culture to slowly lose our social network as we go through life,” Tan, the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chair in Neurology and director of the Bernard and Maxine Platzer Lynn Family Memory and Healthy Aging Program, told HuffPost. “We need to have some kind of social network that we can turn to whenever we need it—or even if we don’t think we need it.”

Meeting new people can likewise be beneficial because it makes the brain form new connections, Tan said.

Another bad habit to avoid is frequently consuming fast food or frozen meals. Although tempting for busy people, “in the long term, that may not really be the best for our brains,” Tan said.

Tan also told HuffPost that inadequate sleep disrupts important biological processes, such as forming memories and clearing beta-amyloid, “the sticky protein that wreaks havoc on the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.”

To help maintain brain health, experts recommend learning a new skill, managing stress and getting daily physical activity.

Read the complete article from HuffPost.