Exercise AND Resveratrol stop Alzheimer's....

Tuesday, 9-23-2014

1.  We already know that regular, vigorous exercise cuts Alzheimer’s and other kinds of mental decline as many as a dozen ways!  Such exercise slows aging, releases BDNF that is a specialty growth hormone growing and repairing new nerves and brain cells, cuts high blood sugar and inflammation, increases oxygen and nutrients to the brain and efficiently removes waste, and directly lowers the kind of small particle LDL that otherwise closes off blood vessels to and in the brain with plaque. 

For mental decline, vigorous exercise most days of every week is like having a whole championship football team on your side preventing all kinds of mental decline.

But the total power of it found by some researchers surprised even me!

Dr Al Sears who teaches the kind of progressive and vigorous interval cardio he calls PACE found this!:

“In a study from the University of California, San Francisco, researchers looked at results from clinical trials on 163,797 people.

Buried in the middle of it is an incredible number: Those who got the least physical activity had an 82% higher rate of Alzheimer’s disease.^1”

(Craig Ballentine creates dozens of videos of different exercises you can do for vigorous interval and variable cardio.  He can be a real asset if you need some new ideas of bodyweight cardio you can do at home.

But I think doctor Al Sears teaches the overall outline and health benefits best.  See, www.alsearsmd.com . )

Here’s why Dr Sears thinks it is extra effective at preventing Alzheimer’s and a bit about doing it from that email he sent me:

“Excess plaques, proteins and “white matter” build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. Some of this happens when not enough oxygen and blood get to your brain tissue.

This is where you need a robust “cognitive reserve.” That’s like a protective buffer zone in your brain. It allows your brain to keep functioning even if tangles and plaques are developing.

Cognitive reserve explains why an autopsy can show physical signs of Alzheimer’s in the brain but the person never showed any symptoms. Their cognitive reserve kept them functioning.

Physical exercise builds up your cognitive reserve. But you’ll want to choose an activity that boosts your cardiopulmonary fitness. This is a measure of how fit your heart and lungs are.

Notice how this is NOT cardiovascular fitness.

Shorter bursts of exertion focused on cardiopulmonary fitness increase the power of your heart and lungs. Longer bouts of exercise that focus on making your heart and lungs efficient – cardiovascular fitness – do almost nothing for heart and lung power.

But it’s the heart and lung power that make a difference in preventing Alzheimer’s and dementia.

A new study illustrates what I’m talking about. Researchers looked at 2,747 people between 18 and 30 years old. Using a treadmill test they measured each person’s cardiopulmonary fitness at the beginning of the study which was started 25 years ago.

Recently, they tested everyone for memory and reaction speed. People who had more heart and lung power at the beginning of the study had better memory and faster reaction times. Their brains benefitted more over the long term by building heart and lung power.2

It’s just more proof of the far-reaching benefits of exerting yourself with a focus on the intensity of the challenge you give your heart and lungs. It’s why I named my system Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion, or P.A.C.E.

Early on, I wanted to find a way to help people be able to do interval training, which at the time seemed to be the most beneficial to your health. But along the way I discovered that if you just focus on increasing the challenge with progressivity and acceleration, the journey turned out to be greater than the destination.

The best part is that P.A.C.E. works well no matter what your current fitness level is. Start out slowly and gradually increase the challenge. Either increase the number of repetitions you do or how fast you do them. Over time, you’ll notice it gets easier and easier to do your exercises at a higher intensity.” 

(You can also gradually have shorter breaks between sections just as long as you have some breaks.  The breaks make it easier to go hard in between AND they act as a pressure relief for your heart which makes them MUCH safer than continuous, hard cardio for longer time periods.  If you catch your breath or come close that will do it.  Just avoid having zero breaks or taking zero time in between sections.)

2.  Then too, there are a number of other things that are thought to slow aging and another set of things that seem to prevent Alzheimer’s disease specifically. 

Avoiding even moderately too high blood sugar or worse; slashing chronic inflammation with a very low grain, low omega 6 oil and high omega 3 oil diet and with taking turmeric with black pepper and eating or taking ginger; taking stigmasterol* with antioxidants have each independently shown to literally stop the Alzheimer’s formation process. *(Taking the beta sitosterol supplements that stigmasterol appears with also protect by lowering LDL cholesterol too!)

Exercise, particularly the vigorous kind, and eating a mostly nonstarchy vegetable high nutrition, calorie reduced diet both seem to slow aging. And taking ubiquinol and PQQ to help ensure your mitochondria work well and stay plentiful each slow aging.

But the press on taking resveratrol to slow aging has been mixed. 

The researcher that found that effect adds grape polyphenols to Resveratrol; and says he does find aging slows by taking that combination daily.

But there is new information!  

A study, reported in Medical News Today found that Resveratrol DID prevent the formation of the tangles that cause Alzheimer’s disease!

Here are some quotes from that article and the link to the Medical News Today study:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/282755.php .

“UB researchers corroborate the neuroprotective effects of Sirtuin 1 activation on mice with Alzheimer's disease     19 September 2014

A group of mice was fed with resveratrol, a natural polyphenolic compound found in grapes and red wine. Mice were modified to develop familial Alzheimer's disease, an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that represents 5% of dementia cases and normally has an early onset. Resveratrol dose was equivalent to dietary supplementation and administered for 10 months. Then, its effects on cognitive function and neuronal tissues were compared with a control group that did not receive any supplementation. "Results showed that resveratrol ameliorated short-term memory and stopped the accumulation of senile plaques and the development of tau protein, the two most important characteristics of the disease", explains Mercè Pallàs, researcher from the Research Group on Aging and Neurodegeneration of UB and the Centre for Networked Biomedical Research on Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED).

Researchers studied which mechanisms are activated in this process. Particularly, they focused their attention on Sirtuin 1, a protein involved in ageing. "We used resveratrol because it is thought that one part of its beneficial effects is due to an increase in sirtuin activity". "Although sirtuin proteic levels decreased - she adds, its activity was increased". Surprisingly, the study showed an increase in other intracellular mechanisms. Therefore, "resveratrol's beneficial action increases these other mechanisms and mitochondrial function", concludes the researcher.”

Note that when taking resveratrol had these effects which prevented the Alzheimer’s creation process even in these genetically susceptible mice, it helped prevent the formation and accumulation of cellular debris and preserved strong mitochondrial function.”

Those are two key ways to slow aging too!

Does this sound like taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of resveratrol might be a good addition to your efforts to prevent mental decline and slow aging?

It certainly does to me!