How do you keep white matter healthy?

Keep your blood pressure and blood sugar in check. That can lead to white matter changes. To keep your heart healthy, follow a low-fat, low-salt diet, and get about 2 and a half hours of moderate-intensity exercise each week. Manage diabetes if you have it and keep your cholesterol in check.

What improves white matter?

As the primary messenger service of the brain, myelination allows white matter to pass notes between distant regions at breakneck speed. In fact, myelinated nerves can carry impulses up to 100 times faster than non-myelinated fibers. In the brain, myelin is laid down by cells called oligodendrocytes.

Can you build white matter?

White matter injuries are very serious, but, depending on the type and extent of the injury, extensive recovery may occur. As long as the neuron cell bodies remain healthy, axons can regrow and slowly repair themselves.

How do you fix white matter in the brain?

White matter disease doesn't have a cure, but there are treatments that can help manage your symptoms. The primary treatment is physical therapy. Physical therapy can help with any balance and walking difficulties you may develop.

Can you repair white matter?

There are currently no adequate treatments for white-matter injury, which often follows central nervous system maladies and their accompanying neurodegenerative processes. Indeed, the white matter is compromised by the deterioration of the blood–brain barrier and the demyelination of neuronal axons.

Protect Your Gray Matter

Can white matter disease be stopped?

Treatments: While there is no known cure for white matter disease, treatments can help to manage the symptoms. Controlling the risk factors associated with heart disease can help decrease the progression of the disease.

What causes white matter damage?

Processes that cause these types of damage include genetic conditions, autoimmune conditions, and infections. Some examples of conditions that affect white matter include: MS. Lyme disease.

Who treats white matter disease?

A neuroradiologist is a doctor who is certified in general radiology and has also undergone specialty training, often with an added board certification in imaging of the brain, spine, and nerves. With this training, they're able to recognize both common and uncommon disorders that affect the nervous system.

How do you know if you have white matter disease?

Advances in medical imaging have made white matter disease easier to spot. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test, which takes pictures of the inside of your brain, can show any damage. Changes to white matter will show up super-bright white (your doctor may call this "hyperintense") on an MRI scan.

How common is white matter disease?

By age 60, this degeneration, termed white matter disease, is present in more than half of the population. Originally, white matter disease was considered a normal, age-related change.

What happens when you lose white matter?

Decreased blood flow (ischemia) and nutrients to the white matter can cause damage to these nerve fibers (axons) including swelling, breaking and complete loss.

Does white matter increase with age?

Age-correlated studies reveal that the changes in white matter may be much higher than those of gray matter (Miller et al., 1980). Upto 40 years of age, the white matter volume increases and is closely related to the formation of the myelin sheath (Courchesne et al., 2000; Bartzokis, 2004).

Is white matter disease the same as MS?

White Matter Consists Mainly of Nerve Fibers

In MS, the immune system attacks the myelin in the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. The attack causes inflammation that eventually leads to sclerosis, which is the medical term for scarring. (That's how MS got its name.)

Does walking help brain function?

Brisk walking improves brain health and thinking in aging people with memory impairments, according to a new, yearlong study of mild cognitive impairment and exercise. In the study, middle-aged and older people with early signs of memory loss raised their cognitive scores after they started walking frequently.

Does exercise build brain cells?

It promotes the growth of new brain cells

One of the most significant benefits of exercise, scientists have found, is that it promotes neurogenesis, or the birth of new brain cells. This is essential to improving cognitive function.

Can walking build up the brain?

But science has shown that walking is also crucial for optimal brain health. "Walking sends increased blood flow to the brain, which is linked to better cognitive function [and] protection against decline and improved memory," Holly Schiff, Psy.

Does white matter disease cause fatigue?

Brain white matter (WM), and more specifically neuronal connectivity, is thought to perform a crucial role in the central processing of fatigue [1]. In diseases of the WM, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), persisting fatigue is a common disabling complication [2].

Is white matter disease genetic?

Leukodystrophies are a group of rare, genetic disorders that affect the white matter of the brain. The word leukodystrophy comes from leuko, which means white, and dystrophy, which means imperfect growth. Leukodystrophies are characterized by this abnormal growth of white matter in the brain.

Does everyone have white matter in the brain?

See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. “Gray matter” is only one of two types of brain tissue; the other “white matter” is rarely mentioned. Yet white matter makes up half the human brain and has not been thought to be important in cognition or learning outside the context of pathology.

Should I worry about white spots on brain?

White matter lesions are among the most common incidental findings—which means the lesions have no clinical significance—on brain scans of people of any age. They may also reflect a mixture of inflammation, swelling, and damage to the myelin.

Does white matter disease cause headaches?

Patients with extensive white matter hyperintensities are likely to have tension-type headaches or to have headaches develop during middle age, according to results published in Cephalagia.

Can white matter lesions go away?

Treatment and Prevention

Sometimes a white spot can go away if treated—for example, if it is an infection or brain tumor. They may also temporarily get smaller and possibly worsen again later. This is often the case with inflammatory conditions such as lupus or MS that flare up and then improve.

Can stress cause white matter?

Increased exposures to stressful events are associated with a corresponding increase in the progression of white matter hyperintensities.

Can you reverse small vessel disease in brain?

It may be possible to reverse some of the brain changes in the early stage of microvascular ischemic disease. But they tend to worsen and become irreversible during the normal course of the disease.

What does white matter in brain MRI mean?

White matter disease is commonly detected on brain MRI of aging individuals as white matter hyperintensities (WMH), or 'leukoaraiosis.” Over the years it has become increasingly clear that the presence and extent of WMH is a radiographic marker of small cerebral vessel disease and an important predictor of the life- ...