3 MORE ways to prevent mental decline....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-9-2013

Last Tuesday, 7-2-2013, we listed three ways and a bonus link to a previous post with a whole set of other things you can do!

Believe it or not just since then, I’ve gotten 3 MORE ways to prevent mental decline and boost your current mental performance.

The first two have mostly to do with preventing brain shrinkage and doing so by growing new brain cells by releasing BDNF that is a growth hormone that specifically causes new nerves and brain cells to rebuild and repair your brain.

You need all your brain in good repair and normal size for it to work well.  But if you lack BDNF, not only does that NOT happen but you lose some of your brain’s white cells that are thought to wire the sections of your brain together.  When that happens, your mental performance declines, your memory is not as sharp, and your brain actually shrinks!

Worse, if you don’t correct this, it continues until you have a significant performance and memory drop off.

So, if there were two ways to successfully boost BDNF most days of every week, THAT would be well worth knowing AND using!

It’s well known that eating or taking the omega 3 acid DHA tends to preserve mental abilities.

 One researcher found that taking DHA with choline and uridine, a growth promoter found in Brewer’s yeast, caused new and better connected brain cells well enough he found some reversal in mental decline!

1.  The choline and the uridine apparently boost the effect.  But I just found out what powers this is that getting abundant DHA directly boosts BDNF with very positive mental performance improvements!

Dr Al Sears is not perfect.  I think some of his supplements are much more effective than others.  But his health articles and the research behind them are often superb.

(See www.alsearsmd.com to get on his email list.)

Recently, he sent an email with the following very important information:

People have gene called homologene 7245.  This gene helps you produce BDNF!

BDNF boosts every part of your brain when you have enough:

The synapses or connections between nerve and brain cells stay healthy & so does how well they work to transmit signals, memories, and other information.

You grow new glial cells which act as your brain’s immune cells, anchor neurons, and help clean up waste AND help you learn and access new information!

And, you develop new dendrites or messenger lines to add more connections or keep existing ones between brain cells!

Getting ample or extra DHA “kicks the gene responsible for BDNF production into high gear”!!

(DHA is one of the two main omega 3 oils in fish and other seafoods.  In addition, it is a very effective anti-inflammatory which has even more protective and health benefits!)

Researchers have documented some very useful results of this effect of DHA on boosting BDNF:

Recently researchers examined people with brain injury who got extra DHA and found that it restored their production of BDNF to normal.

In research published in the American Journal of Nutrition, researchers showed that breast-fed babies whose mothers took 200 mg of DHA per day outperformed DHA-deficient babies.

They had better hand-eye coordination and skills like “standing up, walking, going up and down stairs, and keeping their balance.”

Researchers at UCLA found that animals given high levels of DHA had significantly higher BDNF levels. “They were far more resistant to injury from brain trauma. And those who didn’t get enough DHA in their diet suffered from learning disabilities.”

A recent Japanese study had more good news: memory and learning ability improved dramatically with boosted BDNF production.

How can you get more DHA?  You can eat wild caught fish high in it.  Wild caught salmon has a lot of omega 3 oil and a high level of DHA.  Sardines are unusually high in DHA.  And you can take both DHA supplements and omega 3 supplements from filtered fish oil.  Jarrow makes a good DHA supplement; and Nordic Naturals makes a good omega 3 supplement from filtered fish oil.  Water packed sardines are the least expensive way to do this. 

I personally use all of the above except sardines because I can get DHA several times a day by doing so.  And between the different ways I ensure I get enough DHA!

2.  As you can see, getting enough BDNF has truly huge powers to prevent mental decline, prevent brain shrinkage of your white matter, repair your brain, and maximize your mental performance!

Are there any other ways to boost BDNF?

Yes! 

And it’s known to be extremely effective as a BDNF booster – AND to improve your brain blood circulation and protect your brain in other ways, have other multiple health benefits –AND it slows aging enough to add years of healthy life!

It’s when people get regular, and vigorous or high effort exercise most days of every week.  The wonderful news is that the sessions can be as short as 10 to 20 minutes a day.  So most people CAN find time for them.

Moderate exercise when done every week also works but takes much longer to do and is not quite as effective.

Even better, recent research shows that the longer you do such exercise every week, the greater the effect becomes.

(It IS very important to start at a quite easy level and force yourself to increase your efforts very gradually.  If you start out even at first at a high level or increase too fast you can get injured or trigger heart problems or get stress fractures.  The much better news is that by making slow BUT CONTINUOUS progress over a long period of time, you can get extremely fit and strong without these problems!

One key is that the sessions are short.  Super long exercise creates stress on the heart and has caused heart stoppage and fatal heart attacks.

Sessions of 15 to 60 seconds of high effort by contrast is extremely safe if you build up to it properly.  Also, super slow strength training with somewhat lighter weights is virtually injury free.  Using fast or jerky moves with heavy weights is much more likely to cause injury.

And, with the cardio, you can do your bursts of effort while walking or using a low impact exerciser like an elliptical trainer or a Nordic Track etc.

3.  Homocysteine is a blood marker for heart disease.  People who are high in it are more to much more likely to get heart attacks and strokes.

In heart disease it may act as an after the fact indicator because lowering it isn’t as protective for heart disease as many people once thought.

BUT, for brain protection homocysteine itself is dreadfully harmful! 

I’m including the information on how to lower homocysteine directly in this post because I got an email this week showing that high homocysteine is HORRIBLY bad for your brain!  And, it’s not a secondary effect! Homocysteine harms your brain DIRECTLY!

Improving your heart disease risk by exercise and eating right and stopping ingesting various kinds of heart disease starters lowers homocysteine.

And you can lower your homocysteine level directly by taking several supplements: 

500 to 1,000 mcg of vitamin B12 in a lozenge that is sucked or chewed to get direct access to your blood without poor digestion or reflux drugs from preventing your access to it; (Taking Metformin is also known to deplete B12.  So if you do, be sure to take this much B12!)

20 to 100 mg a day of vitamin B6: (More than 100 mg a day of B6 begins to be harmful.  So stay below 100.  I get 10 mg in my multi and 25 mg in my B-complex and take 50 mg which totals 85 mg.)

Folic acid of 800 mcg a day and eat foods high in folate such as greens and nonstarchy, mostly green, vegetables;

NAC, N-Acetyl-Cysteine 500 to 1,00 mg a day;  NAC also boosts glutathione and is a powerful antioxidant and direct protector of your health.

And TMG, 500 to 750 mg a day.  (Tri-Methyl-Glycine, also called betaine is a methyl donor which directly protects your DNA)

Why add this information to this post?

Check this out!

Dr David Blyweiss has an email newsletter, Advanced Natural Medicine  naturalmedicine@advancedalternativenews.com .

One of his emails this week had this:

High levels of homocysteine can lead to:

It’s apparently a direct cause of Alzheimer’s disease; and high levels of homocysteine lead to more amyloid plaques and tangles of tau, the direct evidence of the build-up of the damage of Alzheimer’s disease.

High homocysteine causes damage to your brain’s white matter. “White matter lesions are pockets of dead cells that can affect the way your brain transmits information to the thinking areas of your brain. It's now believed changes in white matter could be one of the earliest detectable brain changes in Alzheimer's disease.”

High levels of homocysteine cause brain shrinkage. “When key areas of the brain begin shrinking, your risk of dementia increases by more than three times. MRI scans can identify brain shrinkage up to 10 years before Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed.”

A while back there was a study of people with mild cognitive impairment and high homocysteine levels. Those who just took B12, B6, and folic acid “were able to lower brain shrinkage by a whopping 53%. And once their brains stopped shrinking, they started getting higher scores on cognitive tests.”

In summary, in addition to all the other methods to prevent brain decline and increase mental performance, you can

Take DHA and eat high DHA foods to boost BDNF. 

You can get the regular exercise that also boosts BDNF.   

And you can stop a cause of Alzheimer’s and brain shrinkage by lowering your homocysteine levels!

(See the post from last Tuesday, 7-2 for many more methods that work!)

In short, the people who say that mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease are not preventable, are totally incorrect because they simply don’t know how many things do so and how well they work!