Correlating Autonomic Nervous System Aging and Cognitive Impairment

Heart rate variability is known to be a good way to assess the function of the autonomic nervous system. (That said, most of the commercially available tools for those who want to measure heart rate variability at home are quite unreliable; it is challenging for a self-experimenter to obtain results that are as useful as those provided by medical equipment used by medical staff). The autonomic nervous system, like all aspects of our biology, is negatively impacted by the progression of aging. The same mechanisms of molecular damage that drive autonomic nervous system aging will be involved in cognitive decline and neurodegenerative conditions, so it should be no great surprise to see that these forms of age-related degeneration correlate with one another. Changes in cognitive performances and cardiovascular disorders represent a normal phenomenon of the aging process. Cardiovascular risk factors, such as smoking, obesity, diabetes mellitus, increased cholesterol, and systemic blood pressure (BP) levels, and an inadequate lifestyle may compromise also cerebral blood flow, which in turn can negatively affect cognitive performance. Moreover, the same age-related anatomical and functional cardiac changes, including also the autonomic nervous system (ANS), determine cardiac output alteration, causing cerebral blood flow modulation. This variation could interfere with microcirculation and cause cerebral ischemia, particularly in those brain sites that control the different...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs