Cut your risk of Alzheimer’s and mental decline 4 MORE ways....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 2-6-2014

Recently I got information on 4 more ways to lower your risk of getting Alzheimer’s and mental decline.

One source which tested 3 of these ways was in Medical News Today and that link to their original article is here.

It sounds like an upgraded way of using all 3 plus the other methods known to work would be unusually effective.

The second one I think I also saw in Medical News Today.  But it was in an email from Newsmax that I saw it and read it.

I.  Here are the first 3:

3 ways that reversed Alzheimer's effects besides turmeric. exercise; & socializing

None of these included turmeric and black pepper. None removed bad fats that show up in the human diet notably excessive omega 6 oils nor did they include extra virgin olive oil instead.

(Exercise increases blood flow to the brain and helps grow new brain cells enough to prevent or even help reverse brain shrinkage.  People who don’t exercise fail to get this effect and over time their white matter that connects many parts of their brain together including memory centers simply goes away. Regular exercise even if brief on most days of every week, particularly vigorous exercise, prevents this.

Eating turmeric and/or taking curcumin derived from it daily with black pepper has been shown to help prevent or even partially reverse Alzheimer’s disease.  One of these ways is that it’s a strong anti-inflammatory.  It seems to cause less release of the tau protein that may be a cause.  And, it lowers LDL cholesterol which in the case of the sterol stigmasterol lowers beta amyloid deposits.  And it may also help cause your immune system to remove beta amyloid plaque.

Socializing, despite how smooth and easy it seems as we’ve grown up doing it from early childhood, uses massive amounts of your brain and lights up your brain like a Christmas tree on scans.  It’s been shown to maintain function even when beta amyloid is present.  This may be because it maintains a network of healthy nerves, maintains connections, and forces the area where the beta amyloid is located to stay healthy and connected.)

The study in Medical News Today used mice and did not use exercise or turmeric by themselves or in combination with the 3 things they did test even in the mice.

DHA that they did test is an anti-inflammatory and also works with exercise to grow new brain cells.  That’s why it’s too bad they didn’t add changes in diet to minimize inflammation and add exercise when they tested it.

Here’s what they did test.  They used some British spellings for a few words.

Here are some of the key quotes:

" all test diets reversed the memory deficit of the APP/PS1 mice in the odour recognition task:"

(Loss of your sense of smell is a leading indicator that you are beginning to get Alzheimer’s.  So it’s nice to know that all 3 of the things they tested did that!)

The sterols DID cut beta amyloid build up by quite a bit but without the inflammation reduction and antioxidants did NOT improve spatial memory function as much as hoped.  It did restore smell though.

DHA by itself was similar and did NOT improve spatial memory function as much as hoped.  It did restore smell though.

The Fortasyn supplement, which contains uridine-monophosphate, phospholipids (choline and PS), B- vitamins, and antioxidants DID improve spatial memory function to the same level  as unimpaired mice. “

(Uridine, PS, choline, other B complex vitamins, and antioxidants like real vitamin E and vitamin C together might well have worked better if the other two things were added.)

And, it too DID restore smell also.  Clearly if one was given, this would be it.

Since the sterols DID cut beta amyloid, they do here suggest trying the sterols plus the supplement to see if that combination worked better for both spatial memory function AND long term prevention or reversal.

A real shame they did not then try all three together! 

An even worse shame they did not try these 3 AND turmeric and black pepper. AND removed bad fats that show up in the human diet notably excessive omega 6 oils AND included extra virgin olive oil instead AND added exercise in the pool where they tested the spatial memory.

The previous research I saw used the part of the Fortasyn supplement AND DHA and had very good results -- in people!  And, I suspect they are correct in guessing that adding the antioxidants to the sterols would help if the sterols by themselves do tend to cause extra oxidation.

Here’s the link to their research.

Dietary treatment shows potential in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

http://mnt.to/l/4k9x

New research findings indicate that an early onset of dietary treatment may slow

down the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

The fourth one was in an email from Newsmax:

It seems that a particular flavanol called fisetin prevented memory loss even without reducing beta amyloid deposits similarly to the effects of regular socializing.

It's in strawberries, apples, and red wine.  It's similar to quercetin so quercetin may have this effect too.  That’s good because more foods are high in quercetin and quercetin supplements are easier to find.

Strawberries are particularly high in fisetin.  And, Doctor’s Best does have a Fisetin supplement.

Fisetin also is one of the flavonols that amplifies the effect of resveratrol to help protect telomeres and slow aging.

Here’s a couple of the key quotes:

“A natural compound found in strawberries, cucumbers, and other fruits and vegetables appears to stop memory loss tied to Alzheimer's disease, according to new research by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

In experiments on mice with a rodent form of Alzheimer's, the scientists found a daily dose of the compound — a flavonol called fisetin — prevented the progressive memory and learning impairments that are hallmarks of the disease.

It did not alter the formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, accumulations of proteins which are commonly blamed for Alzheimer's disease. As a result, the Salk researchers said the findings suggests a way to treat Alzheimer's symptoms independently of targeting amyloid plaques, according to a

Medical Xpress report on the study.

"We had already shown that in normal animals, fisetin can improve memory," said lead research Pamela Maher, a senior staff scientist in Salk's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, who detailed the team's findings in the journal Aging Cell. "What we showed here is that it also can have an effect on animals prone to Alzheimer's."

Next, Maher's team plans to study how fisetin affects memory and cognitive function, with the hope that it may lead to new treatments for the condition.

"It may be that compounds like this that have more than one target are most effective at treating Alzheimer's disease," said Maher, "because it's a complex disease where there are a lot of things going wrong."

This same complexity is one of the reasons that combining proven preventives or improvers is far more effective than single methods.

So if you wish to do that, particularly for prevention, this post has many methods to choose from.