Your brain’s hippocampus is the epicenter of your memory. It is who you remember yourself to be. It has the highest blood flow of any tissue in the body. It has more mitochondria per volume of cell size than any other tissue in the entire body including the heart. So Mom Nature holds your hippocampus in high regard.
What “feeds” your hippocampus? Estrogen and testosterone.
As you age, from 25 years on, levels of estrogen and testosterone start to silently go south. Your hippocampus goes anorexic. It thins out. The scientific term for this is actually “hippocampal shrinkage.” When the hippocampus starts to shrink, you start to having memory, motivation and affirmation issues. You become more frail.
If you take hormone replacement (estrogen and testosterone) MRIs pre and post studies have shown, that the hippocampus (your sense of YOU) revolumizes to a more youthful size. And you become less frail. Care taking your hippocampus, as you age, makes sense to put on your bullet list along with eat more veggies, move more and practice more gratitude. I talk about this in my soon launching book: SEX why your brain and hormones want you to do it and so does the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University.