Is it really true men have worse memories than women as they age?

Ask any women and she will tell you a man’s memory is worse than hers. And now science has proven her right.

Dr. Clifford Jack of the Mayo Clinic noted that they saw worse memory and worse brain volumes in men than women over the age of 40s onward.
In the study Jack conducted it included 1,246 cognitively normal people between the ages of 30 and 95. Researchers found that even though memory started to decline for both sexes at age 30.

And in males, the hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls memory, was also smaller than women’s, especially after age 60

Why? Females have the protective advantage of hormones. Estrogen has been shown to help in a number of ways to ward of aging. Also women have less risk of vascular disease.

On a positive note, an interesting finding of the study is that the decline in memory for both men and women had nothing to do with a connection to brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.

“One of the big conclusions that had been drawn in the past was that the memory and brain-volume declines you see in middle age are probably due to underlying Alzheimer’s pathology,” said Jack. “What we found that was quite different is that these declines that begin in the 30s and continue through old age occur well before we see evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.”

So what can we do to slow the aging process? You’ve heard it before a healthy lifestyle, and especially exercise of both the body and brain. Keep learning, and keep exercising – it goes a long way.

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