Blood Flow of the Brain

NutraCeuticals, Part 1:  Brain Blood Flow


The American Heart Association in 2009 published an article in Hypertension, the official Journal of the American Heart Association.   The title of the article is Arterial Pulse Wave Velocity and Cognition With Advancing Age by Elis, Robbins, Budge, Abbayaratna, Dove, and Elias.   The following information on high blood pressure, memory, and mental cognition was taken from the article.

High Blood Pressure and Cognitive Performance

“Hypertension is a risk factor for lowered cognitive performance and dementia

Many hypertension related changes in the brain have been identified and posited as the mechanisms underlying relations between blood pressure and cognition…There is evidence that disproportionately poor cognition performance in older rather than in younger persons would be observed with measures of arterial stiffness.”

Arterial Stiffness of Clogged Arteries & Pulse Wave Velocity

Arterial Stiffness is one way to describe Clogged Arteries, and one of the best ways to measure how bad the clogged arteries problem is, is to measure the pulse pressure.

In a study followed for over 30 years, it was found that problems with arterial stiffness, is associated with declines in cognitive performance in older adults.

As a section of the Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study, with 409 participants, research showed that, “The combination of older age and higher Pulse Wave Velocity, is associated with the lowest level of cognitive performance, whereas lower age and Pulse Wave Velocity are associated with better performance.”

The authors of the American Heart Association research article concluded that the consistency of their findings are related to the fact that, “Pulse Wave Velocity is the gold standard for noninvasive estimation of arterial stiffness, an integrative marker of arterial function, and that arterial stiffness contributes significantly to the progressive decline in cognitive performance with advancing age.”

The authors of the American Heart Association article stated that, “Regardless of the statistical model used, we found that the combination of higher age and high Pulse Wave Velocity was associated with poorer performance on the global, visual spatial organization and memory, verbal episodic memory, and scanning and tracking composites and for the similarities (abstract reasoning) test…Taken as a whole, the pattern of results suggests that arterial stiffness influences multiple brain areas…Arterial stiffness plays an important role in atherosclerosis in large and small vessels…Arterial stiffness becomes more prevalent with advancing age, and increasing numbers of adults are surviving into old age”

“These dynamics make arterial stiffness-related attributable risk for lowered cognitive performance an important health concern.”

Brain Brightening: Restoring the Aging Mind

The work of Dr. Thomas Budzynski, Dr. Helen Budzynski, and Dr. H.Y. Yang, in the Handbook of Neurofeedback book (2009), edited by James Evans, Ph.D., introduced the topic of cerebral blood flow as relating to the problems of cognitive functioning.  In their chapter on Brain Brightening: Restoring the Aging Mind, they write that, “The dynamics of neural networks may account for the coexistence of cognitive decline and physical decline in older adults.   In this view, cognitive decline is partially the product of the aging process resulting from deteriorating neurotransmitters,  from poor cerebral blood flow, and from brain hypoxia.”

In this regard, for improving brain function, the area of concern easily centers around cerebral blood flow as relating to cognitive functioning, due to the fact that:

Elderly people who show NO significant decline in cognitive functioning, and who have maintained GOOD CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW, have the good active EEG brain waves as those of much younger individuals.

BUT, Older individuals who show some DECREASE in CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW, also show A DECREASE in MEMORY and cognitive processing.

Due to these interesting facts,  therapy should naturally be focused upon what can be done to improve blood flow to the brain. Memory Care of Arizona is vitally aware of this and directs a major portion of important medical attention to reducing the problems of clogged arteries and to improving cerebral blood flow in the brain.

The following page describes the measurement of the Pulse Wave Velocity.  This is used to obtain the level of arterial stiffness, for the purpose of knowing how bad the clogged arteries are that go to the brain, so that therapy can be started to reduce the hardened arteries and increase blood flow to the brain.

Comments are closed.