Most 20-somethings are not overly concerned about their heart health, blood pressure or cholesterol.
But new research warns those middle-age concerns could be vital to protect their brains from shrinking decades later.
Neuroscientists tracked more than 500 people for three decades, monitoring their brains and their hearts.
They found young people who followed a low-cholesterol diet, exercised multiple times a week, quit smoking and cut out sugar had less brain shrinkage in their 40s. 'We know that when people take certain steps like exercising and eating well, they have healthier hearts,' said study author Dr Michael Bancks of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
'The American Heart Association created seven simple steps everyone can take to improve heart health called Life's Simple 7 and recent research has shown that people who score higher on that assessment also score higher on thinking tests.
The American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 includes the following factors: maintaining a healthy blood pressure, controlling cholesterol, reducing blood sugar, being active, eating better, losing weight and stopping smoking. They found that people who had better heart health scores at the beginning of the study had a higher average brain volume as a percentage of their total head size in middle age. This was also true for people who had a better average of the beginning score and the score at year 25.
