There are no two organs more integral to human life than the heart and the brain. Our hearts provide blood to all areas of our bodies, and our minds allow us to understand and interact with the world. Now, a fascinating new study out of the UK reports strong heart health is actually associated with sharper thinking skills and stronger problem-solving. In other words, a robust heart promotes a strong mind.
Additionally, study authors from both Queen Mary University London and the University of Oxford say strong heart health and functioning are also linked to faster reaction times.
“Heart disease and dementia are important and growing public health problems, particularly in ageing populations,” says Dr. Zahra Raisi-Estabragh, BHF Clinical Research Training Fellow at the Queen Mary University of London “We already knew that patients with heart disease were more likely to have dementia, and vice versa, but we’ve now shown that these links between heart and brain health are also present in healthy people. We demonstrated for the first time, in a very large group of healthy people, that individuals with healthier heart structure and function have better cognitive performance.”
“With more research, these findings may help us to establish strategies for early prevention and reduce the burden of heart and brain disease in the future,” she adds.
This certainly isn’t the first time that modern science has found a medical connection between the mind and heart. Heart disease complications often involve the mind and cognition, and many dementia-related risk factors can also put one at greater odds of developing heart disease. However, the exact nature of the relationship between the heart and mind has largely remained a mystery.
So, the research team behind these findings set out to find some answers. To that end, health data on over 32,000 individuals were analyzed. Heart health was measured via MRI, and cognition was assessed using a series of “fluid intelligence” (problem-solving skills) and reaction time tests.
All in all, that assessment showed individuals with healthier hearts performed significantly better on the cognition tests than other participants.
Digging a bit deeper, the study authors took the time to consider if the connection between heart and brain health is dependent upon shared risk factors for vascular disease including diabetes, smoking, obesity, and high blood pressure. Ultimately, though, no compelling evidence appeared suggesting that these shared elements account for the associations.
What exactly does that mean? There’s something else connecting the mind and heart that we haven’t caught on to just yet. For example, some projects have reported that proteins thought to only appear in the brain among Alzheimer’s patients may also accumulate on heart muscles in certain cases.
For clarity’s sake, researchers stress that their findings are in no way a confirmation that heart disease leads to dementia, or that a strong heart guarantees robust thinking skills. An association is being reported here, not full-on causation. That being said, more research will continue to be conducted on this topic, hopefully leading to more definitive conclusions one day.
The full study can be found here, published in The European Heart Journal Cardiovascular Imaging.
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