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| Keeping your brain sharp could prevent you from having a heart attack or a stroke |
HAVING good thinking skills could help protect against heart attack and stroke, a study has shown.
Scientists who monitored 4,000 older people for three years found those with the lowest thinking ability were 85 per cent more likely to have a heart attack and 51 per cent more likely to have a stroke than members of the highest group.
Lead researcher Dr Behnam Sabayan, from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, said: "These results show that heart and brain function are more closely related than appearances would suggest.
"While these results might not have immediate clinical translation, they emphasise that assessment of cognitive function should be part of the evaluation of future cardiovascular risk."
During the three years of the study, the researchers recorded 375 heart attacks and 155 strokes.
Scientists made the discovery after monitoring the progress of almost 4,000 individuals with an average age of 75.
These results show that heart and brain function are more closely related than appearances would suggest
At the start of the study, participants had their thinking skills evaluated by tests and were graded accordingly.
Dr Sabayan said: "Performance on tests of thinking and memory are a measure of brain health. Lower scores on thinking tests indicate worse brain functioning.
"Worse brain functioning in particular in executive function could reflect disease of the brain vascular supply, which in turn would predict, as it did, a higher likelihood of stroke.
"And, since blood vessel disease in the brain is closely related to blood vessel disease in the heart, that's why low test scores also predicted a greater risk of heart attacks.
We acknowledge that even though the results were statistically significant, the risks were small."
The findings are published online in the journal Neurology.
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