Still more ways to prevent mental decline!....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-25-2013

1.  High fructose corn syrup causes both an immediate mental performance drop off and helps cause long term mental decline!

According to new research at UCLA, ingesting high fructose corn syrup cuts mental performance.

One way it does this is by reducing the messages sent across synapses and so directly slows and reduces mental performance.

The research also indicated that ingesting high fructose corn syrup caused insulin resistance.  That in turn causes your body to be slow in turning down your blood levels of blood sugars.  Meanwhile other research found that this action directly causes development of Alzheimer’s disease.  They found this can happen even before fasting glucose or HBA1C tests as too high!

2.  Meanwhile, the researchers at UCLA found that adding more DHA had the reverse effect!  Mental performance was better, more messages were sent across synapses and the indicators of problems with sugars such as high triglycerides improved.

3.  Just recently saw an article on Medical News Today on the ways that Alzheimer’s and mental decline can be prevented

Mostly this article is a repeat, some better done than others in the article, of things that are themselves preventable that when prevented prevent Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.  

The good news is that it covered most of the ways that don't use supplements.

But the best news is that it had these two new things!

a)  It's known that people who keep learning, are well educated, who know more than one language well and/or who have an active social life, can show plaques of some underlying Alzheimer’s like damage but NOT have any memory or cognitive drop off.

Some of that is because doing these things, we now know, prevents much potential Alzheimer’s like damage from harming the connection between nerves or even by stopping further damage.

Some of that is the network effect of a big network because you can lose more from it than you can from a small network and still have the network function well.

But THIS has something exciting that's new.  If you have little drop off in circulation from high small particle LDL and plaque build up, you can have lots of amyloid plaques with no symptoms of mental decline.  80% of the people with both symptoms and plaque were in poor shape on high small particle LDL and plaque buildup.  

THAT may mean that here too you can have the amyloid plaque but NOT have mental decline if you keep your high small particle LDL and blood vessel plaque buildup low!

THAT we know how to do!

b).  It's hard to function well socially or be interested in life if you can't see or can't hear or are uncomfortable or have bad breath from poorly done dentures.

Those things push older people who have them towards Alzheimer's symptoms and damage.

We are beginning to know how to protect and restore sight.  We know some things that protect hearing.  And preventing tooth loss or getting implants instead of dentures can all help also.

Everything we can add that works or have people do in these areas prevents mental decline!

(Eating organic blueberries &/or taking bilberry extract and eating foods high in lutein and zeaxanthin are each known to help prevent most kinds of age related eye diseases.  Taking resveratrol seems to add to this effect; and there are lutein and zeaxanthin supplements.  I eat the organic blueberries and take bilberry extract and resveratrol and eat raw broccoli florets daily which are high in lutein and zeaxanthin.  By eating these foods and taking these supplements there are people who have experienced restoration of useful sight after it had initially declined.

Even better there is research that when built upon and approved can restore the retina and its nerves using stem cells.  Preliminary tests show that it works!)

(Avoiding loud noises or using ear protection as simple as inexpensive ear plugs and using extra care on volume from earphones -- does protect your hearing.

And it seems eating and/or taking a wide variety of carotenes is so ear protective it both reduces damage and allows hearing recovery if there is damage. 

In foods, strawberries, sweet potatoes, yams, squash, carrots -- and broccoli and other dark green vegetables are high in carotenes.  Tomatoes are high in the carotene, lycopene.  You are able to use more of these if you eat these foods with a health OK oil such as extra virgin olive oil or by eating them with nuts or avocados.  These vegetables can be steamed and tomatoes work best when really cooked down to tomato or pasta sauce.  You can also take lycopene and beta carotene as supplements.  But if you do, it has dramatically better health results if you add that to eating many of these foods every week or almost every day.  The good thing is that if you do both, you also will be less likely to get cancer and your health will be better.)

(There are also two sets of ways to prevent bad dentures! 

Don’t lose your teeth in the first place!  By brushing your teeth every day by brushing at the gumline well enough and by flossing every day and by good routine dental care, you will likely keep your teeth.  And, if you do that and still lose one, getting a crown or implant prevents the need for dentures entirely – let alone badly fitting ones!)

How to prevent Alzheimer's disease and dementia

http://mnt.to/a/4fS4

Researchers say there are certain lifestyle measures we can take to reduce our 

risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and dementia, including being physically 

active, eating a healthy and balanced diet, maintaining good cardiovascular 

health, and exercising the brain.