SALT LAKE CITY — We all know the basics for staying physically healthy: eat well, exercise and get enough sleep. But what about keeping your brain healthy as you age?
In this week’s Wellness Wednesday, FOX 13’s Max Roth spoke with Dr. Angel Lybbert, a geriatrician at Intermountain Health Utah Valley Senior Medical Clinic, about how people can protect their brain at any stage of life.
“When you talk about things they’re wanting to avoid in their older age, it’s trying to avoid dementia, avoid cognitive decline,” Lybbert said.
The good news, she said, is that it is never too early — or too late — to start protecting your brain.
“There are things you can actually do to protect your brain health as you get older, as you start to age,” Lybbert said. “We call them the six pillars of brain health.”
Those six pillars include physical activity, good nutrition, mental exercise, social engagement and sleep.
“The brain is not a static organ. It changes,” Lybbert said. “You can think of it as a muscle that the more you work certain parts of it, the more those cells develop, the more the connections are fortified.”
Sleep plays a particularly important role in memory and overall brain function.
“There’s a big connection with sleep and memory,” Lybbert said. “When we’re getting down in some of the deeper layers of sleep is when we’re consolidating our memories. It’s when our brains are doing housekeeping and cleaning itself out from all the debris that it needs to get rid of.”
She recommends aiming for at least six hours of sleep each night.
“So shooting for six hours a night at least should be a good goal,” she said.
When it comes to keeping the brain active, Lybbert said there is no single activity that works better than all others.
“People ask that a lot, you know, is there something in particular I should be doing? Is it crossword puzzles? Is it, uh, Sudoku?” she said. “And really there’s not one particular thing that rises above all the others in terms of being good for your brain.”
Instead, she encourages people to find activities they genuinely enjoy.
“Think of it as an exciting time like when you were back a younger person trying to decide on a career,” Lybbert said. “It’s an adventure. The world is open to you. So now that career phase is coming to a close, it’s another adventure. The world is open to you again.”
As Roth put it: “Find the thing you’ll enjoy. It’s not a chore, it’s life.”
