The Nuance
How to Age-Proof Your Brain
At 30, your mental muscles have likely already begun to weaken
In Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a character is asked how he managed to go bankrupt. “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
For a lot of people, age-related cognitive decline follows a similar trajectory.
At first the loss of mental sharpness is imperceptible. But one day you may wake to find that your memory, concentration, and other mental muscles have grown noticeably, frustratingly weak.
Exactly when this cognitive decline starts is a matter of expert debate. But research in the journal Neurobiology of Aging has found that it may begin as early as your 20s.
“Typically, a person peaks out around their 30th birthday,” says Michael Merzenich, PhD, a professor emeritus and former director of the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. Each decade thereafter, the average person’s mental acuity steadily drops off, he says.
This slow-motion cliff dive into the cerebral abyss was once considered an inevitable part of aging. Senility was thought of as a destination, not a disease: live long enough, and sooner or later you’d get there.
