2 news stories to protect your brain....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 3-12-2013

Making sure your brain stays healthy and enables you to keep thinking and remembering well is a big and VERY important subject.

Vascular dementia, brain shrinkage, and Alzheimer’s disease can ruin your life.

We’ll end with the large list of ways we’ve already posted about.

A.  But here’s the two pieces of good news!

1. A new study recent published in the journal Neuron found that -- in conditions of regular use and new and stimulating environments -- beta amyloid plaques were not able to prevent signals between neurons.  The plaques were there but the signal strength was still robust!

We already knew that people who continuously learn new things and play games of strategy regularly and who converse regularly with a group of colleagues, friends, and family develop far less dementia or do it far later than people who don’t. And, people who speak more than one language seem almost immune to mental decline.

Clearly there are two reasons this works that were already known and clear. Research shows that these activities work many parts of your brain at once and often add new cells and interconnections to your brain.

That means, just like the internet, the greater number of connected parts this causes enable you to lose parts of the network and still have the network function.  So damage that would stop a less active and developed brain in its tracks for such people may show little effect at all.

And, the new cells produced likely also help replace any that are damaged in terms of the overall function of their brain.

THIS new study is HUGE in its importance.  It says that such brains can get the amyloid plaques and not sustain damage to the function of the brain.

2.  Then too, wouldn’t it be nice to NOT get the amyloid plaques in the first place?

It seems that beta amyloid plaques contain metals and misfolded proteins.

This new research done at the University of Michigan was able to show that:

EGCG found in green tea and more concentrated in green tea extract, prevented these proteins from forming AND broke up those that had already formed!

This study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Note that both EGCG and green tea extract are available as supplements.

After reading this information I was very glad that I drink 2 cups of green tea and take 4 capsules of green tea extract each day!  (It helps me stay alert without coffee and may help me keep off a pound or two of fat and also has anti-cancer effects.)

Also note that other research found that eating curried foods often that contain turmeric and black pepper or taking the supplement curcumin derived from turmeric with black pepper daily have very similar effects.  Fewer amyloid plaques form and some already in place tend to be removed.  (I now do both.)

This combination, turmeric or the curcumin derived from it and black pepper also has cancer preventing effects other research shows.

B. The other three big causes of mental decline are:

brain shrinkage;

lack of key nutrients;

and reduced or damaged circulation.

a) People who do regular exercise even brisk walking a few days a week and eat or take DHA from fish or the algae they get it from or both avoid brain shrinkage studies show.  BDNF a growth hormone for new nerves and brain cells is generated by exercise is clearly one reason for this.  The DHA may simply slow or prevent the loss of brain cells while the exercise does repairs and adds new ones.

Unfortunately, people who do neither DO get brain shrinkage over time and the white matter they lose is thought to have many of the connecting nerves that make the function of the brain robust. 

This is one reason that older people are more likely to get mental decline. But it IS preventable.

b)  Every single lifestyle factor that can cause impaired circulation harms your brain and every single one you follow that ensures your circulation stays superb prevents mental decline.

Regular exercise and particularly vigorous exercise done several days of every week, do double duty here.  As you do such exercise and for some time afterwards the circulation to every part of you including your brain improves sharply!  Even better, the longer you keep up doing such exercises, the better your protection for your heart and blood vessels gets better research recently found!

Ingesting heart attack starters such as hydrogenated oils, soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup, and too much regular sugar, and refined grain foods and even too much 100 % whole grain foods, fats from grain fed animals and oils such as corn and soy are each high in omega 6 oils

 -- each tend to be or provably ARE heart attack starters. 

Avoid each of them and your health will be better; you’ll be far less fat; and your risk of heart disease and mental decline will fall dramatically!

Eating a DASH II diet with some extra vegetables and fewer grain foods or even better a Mediterranean diet with some extra vegetables and fewer grain foods and with only olive oil instead is shown to prevent mental decline and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Tobacco smoke both direct and second hand -- directly harms your blood vessels and impairs your circulation and there is some effect at EVERY exposure!

Avoid tobacco smoke almost totally and you will escape the mental decline that damage tends to cause.

Soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup, and too much regular sugar, and refined grain foods and even too much 100 % whole grains plus lack of exercise tends to cause insulin resistance and way too high blood sugar.  These excess sugars attach like spikes onto your LDL cholesterol and slowly damage the surface of your blood vessels and destroy many of your capillaries.  Some studies show this kind of circulation impairment may be an effective cause of
Alzheimer’s disease and it clearly causes vascular dementia.

Other studies show that significantly too high salt intake causes impaired circulation from damage to the inside walls of your blood vessels, autoimmune diseases, gout, and high blood pressure.

Avoiding the harmful things listed prevents mental decline because it prevents the reduced circulation to your brain they each cause.

c) Besides DHA, your brain does not work well without adequate B12, Magnesium, and the other B complex vitamins such as choline.

Since elderly people are often deficient in these or horribly deficient, some Alzheimer’s like mental decline has been reversed by ensuring these nutrients are at optimum levels by taking supplements.