Having children can fight brain aging – the more children, the better

Think you have children to drain your brain? Think again.

A new study suggests that those sleepless nights and stressful mornings can actually keep your mind new and sharp.

Researchers analyzed the brain scans of 19,964 women and 17,607 men from the UK and discovered that people who had children showed slower cognitive declines while aging compared to those with less or no children.

“Regions that decrease in functional connection as the age of individuals are regions associated with adult bonding when individuals had children,” said the author of the main study Avram Holmes, a professor of psychiatry at the Rutgers Center for advanced human brain image research.

That the results were the same for men and women indicates that these brain -growing effects are due to parenting compared to pregnancy.

“The custody environment, rather than pregnancy alone, seems important as we see these effects on both mothers and fathers,” Holmes said.

And it seems that the more children you have, the better the effects.

“We are seeing a widespread model of functional changes, where a higher number of parents of parents is associated with adult functional connections,” especially in parts of the brain related to movement, sensation and social connection, Holmes said.

The findings fly in the face of the usual belief that raising children not only makes you want to remove your hair but also break your brain.

In fact, researchers believe that the expanded network of friends and frequent family visits that come with parenting create social connections that also benefit cognitive function.

There is also possible to have children can make you more physically active, have healthier habits and engage in more mental gymnastics – all of which can also delay brain aging.

The findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Procedures of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Researchers warned that since the study participants were all from the UK, findings cannot necessarily be applied to the general population.

They also noted that more studies are needed to determine exactly how parents can help fight brain aging.

Extended research can have implications on how to fight loneliness and madness in an aging population, especially as fewer people have children these days.

In 2020, people in the 1960s survived children under 10 years old in the SH.BA

“€ If what we are getting is a relationship between extended social interactions and social support that comes through the increase in the number of children in your life, then it means that we can get into the same processes even if individuals do not have a network of social support currently,” Holmes said.