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| A sharp memory at 90 isn’t just good genes |
| Some people keep a clear mind at 90. Scientists call them SuperAgers. Their memory can match a person 20 or 30 years younger. For a long time the easy guess was luck — that they drew a good genetic hand and dodged the genes that raise Alzheimer’s risk. |
| A new study pushes back on that guess. Researchers pooled 142 SuperAgers and 89 ordinary older adults from five sites across the United States and Canada. They checked the big risk gene, the one called APOE. They also checked a wider score built from many smaller risk genes at once. |
| On paper, the SuperAgers looked no different from their peers. Same risk genes. Same scores. Even the rare protective genes weren’t any more common among them. Their gift wasn’t written in the parts of the code the team could read. |
| Let me explain why that’s good news. If sharp late-life memory came only from rare genes, most of us would be shut out from the start. But these brains seem to stay young through what they do, not just what they were born with — steady repair, low inflammation, decades of use. Think of it like a house. Two homes are built the same year. The one that’s cleaned, fixed, and lived in still stands strong at 90. |
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The SuperAgers’ edge isn’t a single lucky gene you either have or don’t. It looks built, not inherited. And that leaves the door open to the rest of us. |
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| Now the honest part. This study looks at people who are already SuperAgers, so it can’t prove what made them that way. And I could be wrong about how much sits in our hands. We’re talking about research in progress. |
| Still, I believe the message is a hopeful one. Your genes set the table. Your daily life decides much of the meal. I urge you to keep building — learning, moving, staying close to people — as if the effort counts. Because it looks like it does. |
| Multisite SuperAging Research Initiative, Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy · July 2026 |
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| Walk in bursts — your brain likes the change of pace |
| You already know walking helps the brain. There’s a way to get more from the same 30 minutes. It’s called interval walking, and it’s caught on fast this year. The idea is simple. You trade short bursts of brisk walking with easy strolling, back and forth. |
| Japanese researchers built the method years ago — three minutes fast, three minutes slow, repeated. The fast bursts do the heavy lifting. Your working muscles pull sugar out of your blood. Your heart sends more blood up to the brain. And your mood tends to lift with it. Steady walking is good. This asks a bit more of you, and hands a bit more back. |
| You don’t need a gym or gear to begin. Here is a simple way to start. |
| The Protocol |
| When |
| About 4 times a week. Morning or after a meal both work well. |
| Duration |
| About 30 minutes — roughly five rounds of 3 minutes fast, then 3 minutes easy. |
| Rules |
| Brisk means you can talk but not sing. Easy means you fully recover. Good shoes, and build up slowly if it’s new to you. |
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| The brisk pace should feel like work, not a strain. If you have heart or joint trouble, clear it with your doctor first. I urge you to try it — even two rounds is a start. |
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| A second language may keep the brain years younger |
| Know another language? Keep using it. At a large neuroscience meeting this summer, researchers reported that people who spoke more than one language had brains that looked younger than their age — by more than a decade on some measures. Each extra language seemed to add to the effect. Juggling two tongues appears to build a mental cushion, the kind that helps a brain take a hit and keep working. It’s a link, not proof. But picking up or brushing off a language costs nothing, and it’s never too late to start. |
| Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum · July 2026 |
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| Trimming long naps helped memory hold steady |
| Long daytime naps may not be harmless. In a year-long study, older adults who kept up a heavy nap habit lost more word-and-story memory than those who cut their naps back. The ones who trimmed down held on better. Napping isn’t the enemy — a short early-afternoon rest is fine. It’s the long, frequent naps that tracked with faster slipping. So if you doze for an hour or more most days, try shortening it. Your night sleep may thank you too. |
| GeroScience · 2026 |
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| Ozempic-style drugs may quiet the brain’s reward switch |
| Why do these new drugs curb cravings? A study in mice offers a clue. A newer pill in the Ozempic family reached deep into a brain circuit that drives eating for pleasure — not real hunger, but the pull of a treat. When that circuit went quiet, the mice ate less of the fun stuff. This was mice, so go easy on the conclusions. Still, it hints these drugs work partly in the brain, not only the gut. That could reshape how we think about appetite and the tug of reward. |
| ScienceDaily · July 25, 2026 |
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| The dementia drug list keeps growing. More than 150 treatments now sit in human trials. And the mix has changed. The old target — the sticky amyloid plaques — is now only about a fifth of what’s being tested. The rest goes after tangled tau fibers, inflammation, the immune system, even the way brain cells handle fuel. Three very different shapes caught my eye this week. |
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| A shot you give yourself to clear the plaques |
| Amyloid is the sticky plaque protein. Eli Lilly’s remternetug clears it — and this is the new part, you can inject it under the skin yourself, like an insulin pen, instead of sitting for a hospital drip. In its late-stage trials, most people managed the self-shot at home. Lilly is even testing it to prevent Alzheimer’s in people who don’t yet have symptoms. Clearing plaque still doesn’t promise a sharper memory. But an easy shot could put treatment within reach for far more people. |
| Phase 3 (TRAILRUNNER-ALZ) · Eli Lilly · 2026 |
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| A daily pill aimed at several brain proteins at once |
| Most drugs chase one bad protein. Buntanetap, an oral pill from Annovis Bio, goes after several — the tau that tangles and the amyloid that clumps — by slowing how the body makes them. This month the company finished filling its big final-stage trial: 850 people with early Alzheimer’s across the United States. Results aren’t due until early next year. A pill that swings at many targets at once is a bigger bet than most — well worth watching to see if it lands. |
| Phase 3 (fully enrolled) · Annovis Bio · July 7, 2026 |
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| A drug that dials down one brain inflammation signal |
| Not all inflammation is the same. INmune Bio’s drug, called XPro, blocks one troublemaking inflammation signal while leaving the helpful kind alone. In a mid-stage trial focused on people whose Alzheimer’s came with signs of inflammation, it moved a brain-scan marker of white-matter health and pointed the right way on thinking and daily tasks. American regulators gave it a fast-track label to speed things along. Calming the brain’s fire, without dousing the whole system, is a careful and promising idea. |
| Phase 2 (MINDFuL) · INmune Bio · 2026 |
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