Every new wrinkle reveals how our skin is ageing, while our creaky joints and thickening waists tell the same story about the rate at which our bodies are growing old.
But what about our brains? What is happening within our heads as we age is far less obvious.
While many of us are familiar with the feeling of being less sharp as the years pass, or slower to process information, doctors have traditionally found it difficult to assess the rate at which our brains are ageing.
But that could be about to change, as a new tool to calculate people’s ‘brain age’ is being developed by Public Health England.
It will look at information such as weight, exercise levels, cholesterol and alcohol intake, as experts are increasingly aware that lifestyle factors — from how much you socialise to how many hours you sleep each night — can affect how our brains decline, as well as our risk of developing certain forms of dementia.
These factors can determine how many brain cells we lose and how fast, for as we age our brain literally starts to shrink as we lose more and more brain cells.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2821157/Try-test-reveals-brain-age-read-knock-years-it.html#ixzz3IBMXf8v5
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