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IN COGNITVE health, as with physical health, early detection makes a huge difference in treatment and recovery. Whilst there is no cure for dementia, slowing its development is possible when one’s mental faculties are monitored regularly. When a person’s mental health is diagnosed as deteriorating early on, certain treatments to decelerate its pace may be applied, according to a research published in the journal PLoS ONE. The early stages of dementia can be reversed with hormones, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, and lifestyle changes.
“Knowing early on if one is developing dementia will give him/her time to slow its progress with a boost of supplements, good nutrition, and a change in lifestyle”
How fast can you think?
Simple brain health tests can be conducted just as any routine physical exam. The P300 test, for instance, measures brain age and waves. Most individuals have an average brain speed of 300 milliseconds (msec). Add a person’s age to the 300, and you’d have a 40-year-old having an average brain speed of 340 msec. If for instance the results of a 40-year-old individual’s test show a brain speed slower than 340 msec — by simple math— he is showing progressive signs of cognitive decline and low brain metabolism, as may likewise be reflected on paralleling PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans of his brain.
A healthy brain at its peak performance would be processing information at 300-320 msec. Loss of even 4/100 of a second, equivalent to a brain speed slower than 340 msec, correlates to lowered brain performance and cognitive decline. And it must be noted that most people lose 7-10 msec of brain processing speed per decade after age 40. It follows, therefore, that untreated patients from ages 80 to 100 would have a brain speed of 380-400 msec, which leave them with some type of advanced dementia. The loss of brain processing speed is the best marker of memory and attention decline, not the PET scan, and the P300 test which does this is as easy to perform as an EKG or cholesterol blood test.
That said, this brain-health check-up test ideally should be implemented for in-office use to measure early signs of dementia 20 years before it begins, in order to save the continued function and productivity of our baby boomers – just like the way primary care settings routinely assess cardiac conditions.
Start at 40
Eric R. Braverman, MD, lead author of the above-mentioned study, points out that typically dementia begins to show between ages 70 and 80, but with a 20- to 30-year prodrome stage starting from ages 40 to 50. The prodromal stage condition is called mild/moderate cognitive impairment (MCI). According to Dr Braverman, “Diagnosis and treatment of MCI in a primary care setting may prevent and delay or potentially end the development of dementia.”
So, how is this easy test done, then? Decline in brain speed, seen as delays or gaps between thought and action, are measured with the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA). This test measures basic brain functions, including complex attention, psychomotor processing speed, and reaction time. Typically, those between the ages of 40 and 50 will already display subtle changes on an array of brain tests, namely the P300 Brain Electrical Activity Mapping, TOVA, Wechsler Memory Scale-III, CNSM, etc. But the earliest sign of an impending cognitive decline has been found to be in a gap between thought and action, which would be reflected in a delay in the conversion of a thought process to action.
