Weaker Heart Pumping May Age the Brain

People whose hearts pump less blood may have earlier aging of the brain, new research suggests. Brains tend to shrink as people get older. They shrink especially fast in people with dementia. People with heart disease have a higher risk of dementia. But most of the 1,500 people in the study did not have heart disease. They also did not have a history of stroke, transient ischemic attack or dementia. Doctors calculated the cardiac index for each person. Cardiac index is a measurement of how much blood your heart pumps, compared with your body size (surface area). Researchers also measured brain size. People who had a low or low-normal cardiac index tended to have smaller brains than people with a high index. On average, the difference was equal to about two years of aging. But they did not have brain function problems.