Prevent mental decline with exercise and supplements....

Today's Post: Friday, 7-22-2011

In a recent news article the most worried-about health risks were cancer and memory loss in a survey of baby boomers.

That was in my post on Tuesday this week.

Yesterday, I posted on how B12 can help prevent mental decline and B 12 deficiency can produce mental decline symptoms. Yesterday’s post also has ways to get enough B12 even in people who can’t get it well from food.

I got an email earlier today with other supplements that can help improve your brain or prevent Alzheimer’s and mental decline.

And, I also saw a more detailed breakdown on the 7 things that can help prevent mental decline, 6 of which were good health habits. Getting regular exercise both had the most direct effect and it helps prevent or improve all the others except avoiding tobacco smoke. Exercise helps prevent or improve depression, high blood pressure, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

1. So here’s some more on exercise as a way to prevent mental decline.

Too much stress or too much unrelieved reaction to chronic stress has been found to cause direct damage to the part of your brain that is the center of your ability to recall memories and to put them into permanent storage.

Tai Chi and brisk walks outside in decent weather are two of the best ways to turn down over-reaction to stress or a stress reaction that is stuck in the on position. Tai Chi in fact has been shown to do this so well that doing it daily or on most days reduces high blood pressure as well as larger doses of one of the more effective drugs for it.

Conversely, to give you a fast break from worry, doing strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous forces you to concentrate on doing the exercise & temporarily turns down stress. In fact such exercise is one of the very few ways to turn down stress or depression quickly.

Exercise also helps improve circulation and turn down insulin resistance and too high levels of blood sugar. Brisk walks and doing strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous does the best job for those things.

Brisk walks and doing strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous also is the best way to cause your body to release BDNF, the hormone that grows new brain cells.

So between these three functions, it’s clear why exercise is so effective in helping prevent mental decline.

Regular exercise each week also may help a fourth way. Brisk walks and doing strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous also have been shown to sharply slow aging.

2. Other supplements besides B12 that help prevent mental decline.

a) Did you know that eating foods spiced with curry which usually contains turmeric and have a yellow color -- or taking curcumin supplements derived from turmeric -- has been found to help prevent or even help reverse the beta amyloid deposits that help cause Alzheimer’s disease?

In the book Anticancer, it also says two things. It says doing this also helps prevent cancer! And in cancer protection, getting curcumin is as much as 100 times as effective if you take it or eat it with ample black pepper. That may mean that getting your curcumin along with black pepper may also improve its brain protection effects for you.

b) Another supplement that both fights cancer and helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease is vitamin D3. A study was done showing that depending on your size and individual biochemistry, you need to take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day or somewhat more to get these two effects.

(This sounds like a lot. But on a sunny summer day, your body can generate 10,000 to 30,000 iu of vitamin D3.)

c) Other supplements known to help support good brain function or prevent mental decline include,.:

DHA is an omega 3 that is particularly good for your brain. In fact it is so good the children of pregnant women who supplement with it are smarter than in women who do not. Sardines are high in it but wild caught salmon also have a lot. You can also take purified fish oil omega 3 and DHA supplements to get it.

The email this morning had this quote: "In a study at Tufts University, researchers found that those with the highest blood levels of DHA were about 50% less likely to develop dementia and 39% less likely to develop Alzheimer's."

The ubiquinol form of CoQ10 that your body uses after it converts CoQ10 to ubiquinol is now available as s supplement and is both 4 times as effective as taking C0Q10. Since ubiquinol keeps the mitochondria in your cells that make their energy healthy, taking it keeps all your cells in better working order --including your brain cells. Taking ubiquinol also has been found to lower high blood pressure about as much as larger doses of one of the more effective drugs for it. Since taking ubiquinol keeps your cells working well as you get older when they otherwise would not, it also has the effect of slowing aging.

In addition, so far statins are over prescribed massively and up to one third of adults take them. Since statins deplete CoQ10 and ubiquinol, if you take them, you should switch to other ways to protect your heart or add extra ubiquinol to what you take each day to lessen this effect.

Bilberry extract also works as does eating organic berries, particularly blueberries. In some studies this has actually partly restored mental and memory function equal to what the people could do when they were up to 12 years younger. And, bilberries are a kind of blueberry that also helps protect your vision and night vision.

Alpha lipoic acid from 200 mg or more a day helps you lower your blood sugar if it’s too high and it makes vitamin C and E and other antioxidants more effective. It has an effect on the brain similar to reversing aging. The email this morning had this quote, "Studies have shown that alpha lipoic acid may be able to restore short-term memory, reduce age-related decay of brain cells and even double mental activity."

People who eat diets who use mostly extra virgin olive oil instead of cheap oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy or instead of using dairy fat have lower rates of mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease than people who don’t. They also have less heart disease. So extra virgin olive oil almost qualifies as a supplement!

So, between exercise and the foods and supplements that protect your brain, you have whole tool box of effective tools you can use!