Tânia Rêgo / Agência Brasil
Who inspires you to live a healthier life? While many people follow the lifestyles of the rich and famous, scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) suggest looking at indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon.
To the Tsimane and Moseten tribes use optimal diet and exercise practices that lead to healthy brain aging and a lower risk of disease, reported the Study Finds.
Industrialization meant that humans had more access to food and health care and less need for hard physical labor. But with that, we got used to eating more and moving less. Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle are linked to faster cognitive decline.
“The lives of our pre-industrial ancestors were marked by limited food availability,” said Andrei Irimia, one of the study’s authors, published at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Humans have historically spent a lot of time exercise out of necessityto find food, and their brain aging profiles reflected that lifestyle,” continued the USC professor.
In the study, the team recruited 1,165 members of the Tsimané and Mosetén tribes, aged between 40 and 94, and performed CT scans to measure brain volume. In addition, they measured body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, total cholesterol and other health markers.
The results showed that the tribes have less brain waste and better heart health compared to people from Western nations such as the United States (US) and Europe.
The researchers also pointed to differences between indigenous societies. The Mosetén are a “sister” population of the Tsimané, with a similar language and history. But a fundamental difference is that they are more exposed to technology modern technology, medicine, infrastructure and training.
“The Mosetén serve as an important intermediary population, allowing us to compare a wide spectrum of lifestyles and health factors. This is more advantageous than a direct comparison between Tsimané and the industrialized world”, explained Andrei Irimia.
So, although both tribes were doing better than modern populations in Europe and the US, the Mosetén did not perform as strongly as the Tsimané. In the latter, high BMI and “bad cholesterol” levels were linked to larger brain volumes. This could be because people have more muscle than people in modern nations with similar BMIs.
“During our evolutionary past, more food and less calories spent getting it resulted in improved health, well-being and, ultimately, greater reproductive success or Darwinian fitness,” said Hillard Kaplan, a professor at Chapman University who has studied the Tsimane for nearly two decades.
“The evolutionary history selected by psychological and physiological traits, which made us want extra food and less physical work, and with industrialization, led us to exceed the marks”, he continued.
The secret is between not eating too little, not too little, and constant exercise.
ZAP // 
