As the upturned pot of white gloss paint oozed over our wooden floor, my first
thought was to call my husband. Panic froze my responses, in the same way
that it had when I tried to put up a pram three weeks after giving birth, or
found a mouse washing its paws in our wok.
At 39, my brain is said to be at its peak, but instead, as my one-year-old
crawled at speed towards the white poisonous lake forming at the bottom of
the stairs, I called my other brain. Unfortunately, my husband is in a
meeting, so with the effort of an old lawnmower spluttering into life after
a good kicking, I work out how to mop it up and clean the floorboards, my
shoes and clothes with turps.
Ten years ago, I would never have rung a man for such advice nor, I swear,
would I have needed to because, in spite of having partied until 3am and
surviving on only five hours of sleep, I could have worked this out in
nanoseconds for myself. So it was with some horror that I read of the
finger-tapping exercise carried out by the Semel Institute for Neuroscience
and Human Behaviour at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),
which appeared to prove that our brains peak at 39. The corollary being that
life really does go downhill at 40 and over the neurological cliff at 46.
By testing how fast 72 men aged 23 to 80 could tap their finger in ten
seconds, Dr George Bartzokis, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA, and his
colleagues found that the brain was at its most efficient at 39, but that
its power dropped “at an accelerating rate” once it hits 40.
The scientists believe that the responses of the men slowed dramatically after
39 because of the loss in middle age of a fatty sheath, known as myelin,
that coats the nerve cells or neurons. The UCLA team found that as soon as
the myelin began to deteriorate, a person's responses started slowing down.
Although they tested only men, the same would be expected of women.
Certainly, Alex James, the former Blur guitarist, believes that he is close to
reaching his peak at 39. Living on a farm with his wife and four children in
Oxfordshire, he likens his age to a good cuppa. “I feel that it's been a
long journey to make the perfect cup of coffee, but as I get older it only
tastes better, so the signs are encouraging,” he says. “Youth is overrated.
I've been dragged screaming one step at a time into adulthood. Being in a
band arrested my development. I was 15 till I was 35 and then I became a
dad. So I went from teenager to overly serious in about four years, but the
accelerated process made it fun.”
So why, I ask Bartzokis, do I feel that my brain is operating far less
efficiently than it was a decade ago? At 27, when I worked hard as a BBC
news editor and partied in equal measure, life seemed to be in an upward
trajectory: no problem was too complex or difficult to solve. Sadly, the
doctor points out that not only may my genes be letting me down, but that I
may be paying now for partying so hard in my youth. The answer, it seems,
lies in alcohol.
“The brain is made of fat, so when you get drunk you're basically dissolving
your brain. A glass of wine may have a beneficial effect, but if you get
drunk it's malfunctioning,” he says. “As the alcohol leaves, the brain tries
to repair itself but if you keep doing it, it won't repair itself fully.”
The simple way to halt the decline, if not to reverse it completely, is to
exercise, sleep and consume at least one gram of fish oil a day, he says, as
well as eat colourful fruit and vegetables - which fend off the free
radicals that destroy myelin - and, paradoxically, drink the odd glass of
red wine. Eating too much red meat and iron is also bad news.
Happily, while some areas of the brain are slowing down, he says, the brain's
circuitry is still repairing itself after 39. Wisdom is apparently a
neurological by-product of age. “For example, most older people have better
impulse control than when they were younger because as they age, this
circuit continues to myelinate and brings all their knowledge online so that
they can make a decision better and faster, even though their movements may
be getting slower,” says Bartzokis.
“It's the Michael Jordan effect. He retired as a basketball player because
those neurons controlling his speed and athleticism had started breaking
down, but he went on to run a multimillion-dollar empire, which he probably
couldn't have done at 25.”
So as we live longer, why is it that so many of us - especially women - fear
turning 40? A recent survey of 3,000 women only compounds this by telling us
that women expect to feel their most attractive at 39. And there are plenty
of celebrity models in that category - such as Catherine Zeta-Jones,
Jennifer Aniston, Renée Zellweger and Cerys Matthews, all of whom are 39.
Maybe it is the sleepless nights of my daughter's first year taking their
toll, but on this too I have to disagree. The hair is greying, the lines are
appearing, the waist expanding and I can no longer afford the designer
clothes of my twenties. Sheila Panchal, a psychologist, says that it is
because we are in thrall to outdated stereotypes. Much of society still
believes that a person should have settled down by the time he or she is 30.
“Whereas life's all ahead of you in your twenties, you have a feeling that
life's running out at 30 and that's accelerated by the time you're 40,
especially if you haven't met society's expectations,” she says. “So what
you must do, is work out your strengths and take it forward. It's a new
chapter, so you need to stop looking back.”
Alex James agrees. Youth, he believes, has held a tyranny over us for the past
50 years and may now have run its course. He is looking forward to donning
the uniform of the middle-aged - Church's shoes and well-tailored jackets -
and growing old gracefully. He will celebrate turning 40 this month with a
few hand-picked friends, he says, “doing the opposite of Elton, and
pretending I have less friends than I really do”. Alexandra Blair
The other view
“How many people,” a friend of mine asked recently, “does it take to keep team
Austin on the road?” His comment followed a discussion in which I'd
mentioned not only my doctor, dentist and optician, but also my
physiotherapist, therapist and masseur. He has a point. Rather like a piece
of electronic equipment that breaks down the day after the warranty runs
out, so my body seems to be preparing itself for a dramatic system failure
the day after my 40th birthday.
Perhaps, then, I should celebrate some sort of pyrrhic victory that I am for
the next two months better able to intellectualise my sharp decline to old
age than at any other time in my life. On January 31, the day I turn 40, the
fatty sheath around my nerve cells is apparently going to vanish in a puff
of bitter resignation, which is ironic as the fatty sheath around my stomach
seems to be doing the exact opposite.
From that moment on, I assume, I shall become like my parents - unable to
operate the DVD player or remember why I've walked into the kitchen and
opened the fridge. Until that moment, however, my mind is at the peak of its
powers. But is this really the case? The cynical may argue that this
question is answered by the fact that I've spent the past 15 minutes staring
at my computer screen trying to work out whether it is true or not, only to
be distracted by a YouTube video of a chimpanzee playing Jenga.
I would, however, like to argue that it is the case. In my twenties my mental
faculties were somewhat impaired by the lifestyle of the average
twentysomething. Those young people who end up in the Big Brother house
aren't naturally mentally deficient. They are merely victims of a youth
culture that forces them to drink three times their own bodyweight in
Bacardi Breezers in an evening and fight in town centres.
In our thirties, we all head to the gym, to atone for the sins of our younger
years. Each tread on the treadmill is a step on the road towards our own
fitness nirvana, where all those things we put into our bodies in the early
1990s have been negated by our zealous piety in the gym.
There is evidence. It used to be a source of much irritation to my girlfriend
that I could never recognise people. “You met them at Hugo's last summer,”
she'd say after I'd “Nice to meet you, what do you do”-d yet another of our
acquaintances only to discover that the previous summer I'd spent four
pleasant days with them in France. Now not only do I remember the names of
people, but also I can recall what they do for a living and small pieces of
trivia such as their favourite football team. If she's a little freaked out
by it, it probably comes as little relief to her that I am too. At least
until now.
My finding-things/losing-things ratio has also decreased. Now I can remember
where she put the car keys and, joy of joys, recall something said in a past
argument that gives weight to something. This, obviously, won't last, but
let's celebrate. I am sure that once I am in my forties, barely able to
remember my name or tap my fingers on the desk with any sense of purpose, I
shall look back on 2008 as a golden age.
Can any of us, though, be sure? Certainly my generation is only just knocking
on the doors of power. It is not quite our turn to run the country even if
some of us are in the Cabinet. It is quite concerning that Ruth Kelly
recently reached the height of her mental powers. And downright scary that
in a couple of years George Osborne will be the brightest light on the Tory
front bench. Certainly, I feel brighter now, but that could be the
confidence that comes from experience. And that, surely, is the crux of the
matter. The scientists claim that after 40 the brain slows. They are not
saying we become less intelligent, more that it takes a while for the
information to emerge - like downgrading a broadband connection. When I do
turn 40, the least intelligent thing I could do is ignore the wisdom of my
elders. Jeremy Austin
