You are starting to age and you notice that your reaction times are what they used to be. Why is that? You take care of yourself, exercise, eat right. Yes, but your insulation isn't what it used to be.

Say what? I have an energy efficient house.

I'm sorry, I'm talking about the insulation in your brain's wiring.

Here's an AP report, published in my local Austin American-Statesman, telling us all why we move a little slower as we age. Its that insulation. And darn it....its just going to happen.

But good news! An active body and brain may spot fraying insulation faster and thus trigger the "repair cells" to fix the problem.

details located here: http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/nation/11/04/1104agingbrain.html

How fast you can throw a ball or run or swerve a steering wheel depends on how speedily brain cells fire off commands to muscles. Fast firing depends on good insulation for your brain's wiring.

Now new research suggests that in middle age, even healthy people begin to lose some of that insulation in a motor-control part of the brain — at the same rate that their speed subtly slows.

That helps explain why "it's hard to be a world-class athlete after 40," said Dr. George Bartzokis, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the work.

the brain is like the Internet. Speedy movement depends on bandwidth, which in the brain is myelin, a special sheet of fat that coats nerve fibers.

Healthy myelin — good, thick insulation wound tightly around those nerve fibers — allows prompt conduction of the electrical signals the brain uses to send commands.

Recommendations...

Though much more research is needed, Bartzokis offered some practical advice:

• Keeping active and treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes already are deemed important for good brain health. But physical and mental activity also might stimulate myelin repair, and unused neural pathways wouldn't send out a "help" signal, he said.

• Stress hormones might hurt myelin.

• Consumption of omega-3 fatty acids — the oils, found in fatty fish, already recommended for cardiovascular health — might help maintain myelin. He's testing whether that is the case.