HMB for Brain Health?

[muscleupcrohn]

This section hasn't been getting too much attention lately. Let's fix that!

We all probably know by now that HMB can help prevent muscle loss/breakdown/catabolism (for athletes and elderly people alike), but apparently it may even be able to not only prevent some negative effects of aging on muscle, but also prevent/delay some negative effects of aging on the brain.

This recent study found that:

HMB forestalled the effects of aging on the dendritic tree of this population of neurons.

For more context:

In both healthy aging humans and rat models, there are cognitive deficits associated with age-related dendritic shrinkage within the prefrontal cortex.

As expected, there were fewer spines and a retraction of dendritic material in the apical and basilar trees in old age controls of both sexes compared with their middle-aged counterparts. However, these losses did not occur in the HMB-treated rats in either dendrites or the total number of dendritic spines.

Beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate ameliorates aging effects in the dendritic tree of pyramidal neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex of both male an... - PubMed - NCBI

Now, it's not something that seems like it would improve cognition in healthy young adults, but it is rather interesting, and makes HMB an even more promising supplement as we age, and even as a generally heathy supplement to help us essentially stay younger longer.