Here is a fascinating research study from Russia on the importance of taking care of your blood pressure. High blood pressure decreases blood flow to your brain and impairs concentration and other cognitive processes. Lose weight, exercise and get hypertension treated!!
“The aim of our study was to estimate brain perfusion and cognitive function (CF) in patients with arterial hypertension (AH) before and after hypotensive therapy. The study included 15 patients (mean age, 53.0+/-5.7 years) with previously untreated or ineffectively treated essential hypertension of the second degree.
All patients underwent brain single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanning with 99mTc-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) and comprehensive neuropsychological testing before and after 24 weeks of hypotensive therapy (angiotensin-converting enzyme [ACE] inhibitor or diuretics). The brain perfusion was significantly lower (15-22%) in all regions of AH patients. These patients showed a 25% decrease in attention and psychomotor speed as well as a 14% decrease in mentation. Six months of hypotensive therapy led to an increase in brain perfusion by an average of 7-11% in all brain regions. After treatment these patients demonstrated an average 11-18% improvements in attention and psychomotor speed, as well as an average 10% improvement in abstract mentation.
Marked signs of brain hypoperfusion and impaired CF: decrease in attention, slowing psychomotor speed and mentation was found in hypertensive patients even without focal neurological symptomatology. Twenty-four weeks of hypotensive treatment with ACE inhibitors or diuretics had a positive effect on cerebral perfusion and led to CF improvement.
Reference: Efimova IY, Efimova NY, Triss SV, Lishmanov YB. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Institute of Cardiology, Tomsk Research Center, Tomsk, Russia. nuclear@cardio.tsu.ru. Brain perfusion and cognitive function changes in hypertensive patients. Hypertens Res. 2008 Apr;31(4):673-8.