Why Brains Misfire

Our country has major health and social problems. Why are their more deaths from Covid 19 virus in our country than any other country? Why are roughly three quarters of our adult population overweight and/or obese?  Why are there so many guns and gun deaths? Why are we still at war?  Why are we behind 50 other countries regarding longevity? Why are we trailing so many countries in measures of happiness?  Why are our school-age kids behind children from other countries in reading and math scores? Maybe the answers to these questions have something to do with our thinking or dumbing down? This essay addresses the effects of aging, obesity, and head injury to brain function cognition.

Our brains weigh about 3 pounds and reach maximum size in our teens and remain that way until about age 28. Among healthy people, brain volume declines slightly but continually over the years. In other words, the learning of complex new material reaches its peak at age 28 and then declines after that due to the slowing of information processing speed. We also lose neurons over time and our neurons also lose some connections with other neurons because of reduced blood flow to the brain. Great works of art, scientific discoveries, and  classical musical symphonies are created before the age of 40 per Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Spinoza, Einstein, Marx, Freud, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Wagner to name a few.

Hunter gatherers faced unpredictable food supplies and potential starvation regularly.  Thankfully, our physiology was genetically designed to protect us from the threat of starvation. Back then, it was feast or famine. We were designed to experience pleasure in the brain when our stomachs are full of food. Those that stuffed themselves most when food was found actually stored the most fat and were protected against starvation. Our brains experience pleasure when we ingest sweetness, fat and salts. In essence we are designed to crave these three caloric dense sweet, fatty and salty tastes. These cravings helped our species survive 13,000 years ago.  Sweets and fat were necessary calories while salt helped us store water in order to maintain critical electrolyte balances.

That was then but now these sweet, salty and fatty tastes that our brains crave are found in abundance in the processed foods found in supermarkets and on restaurant menus. The same genetic pathways that prevented our ancestors from starving in the Stone Age are now the major cause of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, with aging, everyone knows about forgetting, verbal fluency, concentration, attention, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.

Our Stone Age genes were designed for a body expending a lot of energy, walking 6 to 22 miles per day in search of food, water, shelter and social contexts. In the late 1900s, human labor saving devices, that we’ve invented and mass-produced, have caused human activity levels to drop precipitously. Today, only about one in five Americans exercise regularly .Both excessive calorie intake and lack of exercise have contributed to the obesity epidemic currently plaguing our country.

As we age, our bodies need less energy to operate; our basal metabolic rate declines about 5%’s per decade over the age of 20; and we lose about one third of a percent of muscle mass every year after the mid-20s which turns to fat. By age 30, a person needs only 1900 calories and by age 40 only about 1800 calories. A person that continues to consume 2000 calories will gain weight. By age 70 an individual requires even fewer calories. Unfortunately being overweight with a high BMI results in a major risk for cognitive decline. A 16-year-old study of 6401 participants aged  39 to 63 found that being overweight significantly increased the risk for impairment in reasoning, word fluency, speed of thinking and memory. In other words, neurocognitive health is related to obesity.

Within optimal neurocognitive health there’s an ability to learn. This means one is able to attend, to concentrate, to focus and retain declarative memory. Essentially, incoming information or sensory input has been called Short-term Memory. Short-term memory is not held for long periods of time.  With attention, information now goes into what’s referred to as Working Memory storage were information might or might not be forgotten. Working Memory information then is encoded and proceeds into Long-term Memory storage where information can also be forgotten. Normally, long-term memory can be retrieved and thus remembered when required.

If there’s difficulty in attending, concentrating and focusing then there can be irregularities of information going first to sensory, then to working storage and finally to  long-term memory storage. Impairment becomes clear when aspects of the long term memory facts are forgotten and thus are unable to be retrieved. This leaves the individual with gaps in his story. These gaps are typically filled in with made up information or lies which are either embellished or reduced. The individual may or not be aware. Typically, the individual talks in generalities, clichés, and platitudes and other non sequiturs. In essence, the individual is limited in the use of rational thought, objective reasoning, moral comparisons, and understanding as result of lapses in memory. It is been said that we are our memories and that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Currently with mild traumatic brain injury {TBI}, we have a significant problem especially in areas where competitive contact sports, military combat, motorcycle and equestrian injuries are concerned. Mild TBI is also called a concussion. Although most people recover from concussions, that can be problematic and result with physical, cognitive, emotional and/or sleep-related symptoms. Often the symptoms do not reach the level of dementia but they can be significantly disruptive.

 Roughly 1.6 to 3.8 million sports related TBI’s occur in the US every year. One of 10 require hospitalization and children are particularly at risk. Children under the age of 15 have twice as many TBI’s from sports than from auto accidents. Boxers, rugby soccer, bicycling, martial arts, auto racing, ice hockey, baseball, softball, wrestling and especially football are sports associated with high risk for TBI. 20% of high school football players and 40% of college football players are at risk for TBI. Center for the Study of Traumatic TCE at Boston University School of Medicine demonstrated that damage to the brain begins early on in youth football and continues to accumulate in many players. Current football helmets do not prevent concussions from the violent collisions in football.  Repeated TBI’s are called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. With this cognitive disease, the range of symptoms affect the emotional, motor and personality areas. Cognitively, symptoms include mild retrieval problems in memory, slowness of thoughts and speech, impairments in memory, attention, with impairment in the frontal lobe of executive abilities planning.

Mild TBI has become a significant problem for combat veterans. Because of the high prevalence of explosive device related mild traumatic brain injuries  in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has  instituted evaluation and treatment protocols as part of the Defensive and Veterans Brain Injury Centers on several military bases.

The research on cognitive brain functioning demonstrates impairment due to aging, obesity and TBI and CTE brain injuries. Unfortunately, our country has a rising incidence of these diseases. With these diseases, comes dramatic impairment to what happens between our ears. Our ability to employ wisdom, reason, rationality and impulse control are diminished along with a physiological decline. The severity of disease or diseases presents a major problem. Seems to me that, as a country, we have an excess of these diseases which interfere with daily living in the present and for future planning. With greater brain atrophy, our country is at a greater risk for future cognitive decline and more dumbing down. Learning, remembering, moral equivalencies, and intellectual reasoning capacities are all diminished and compromise the decision-making process. Our disease ridden lifestyle is obvious and contributes to the unfortunate consequence of additional irrational and stupid self-defeating behaviors.

References:

Institute for Natural Resources Understanding Dementia and Brain Fitness After 30