More good news on preventing mental decline....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 2-11-2014

Recently Dr David Perlmutter author of the new Grain Brain book and the older Better Brain book listed an article he posted to Facebook.

There are two parts of your brain that are critical to retain your ability to store and retrieve memory that can gradually shrink as you get older.  If that happens you get mental decline and your abilities shrink too!

One is the white matter that we now know acts like telephone wires once did for land lines and connects the hippocampus where memories and the software to input and retrieve them is located.

So if your white matter drops too much, the memories may be there still but your ability to contact them may not be.

The second one is the hippocampus itself which acts as a memory controller and has some storage.

We already knew that exercise that is at least moderately vigorous releases BDNF a growth hormone that grows new brain and nerve cells and that people who do no exercise at all have gradual shrinkage of their white matter.

Clearly to avoid or reverse that doing exercises that robustly release BDNF most days of every week is protective of your white matter and might even restore some.

But the article Dr Perlmutter posted has research with even better news:  Exercise actually causes your hippocampus to grow in addition!

That can not only prevent mental decline, it can help reverse it after it has begun!

Here are the key quotes from his article and after it I’ll comment.

http://www.drperlmutter.com/growth-hormone-brain-now-available-without-prescription/

Growth Hormone For Your Brain – Now Available Without a Prescription!

We’ve all come to accept the notion that our brain will continue to shrink as we age. And nowhere is this decline more impactful than in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, one of the primary brain areas that’s first to decline in Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers measuring the size of the hippocampus using MRI scans demonstrate a clear correlation between shrinkage of the hippocampus and declining cognitive function. So, at least as it relates to the hippocampus, size does matter.

Challenging the status quo notion that loss of hippocampal function is inevitable is new and exciting research showing that we have the potential to actually grow new cells in this vitally important area of the brain, expanding the hippocampus in size and enhancing memory function.

The growth of new cells in the brain, neurogenesis, is enhanced under the influence of a specific protein called BDNF. And while there is no pharmaceutical approach to increasing BDNF, animal research has long recognized that aerobic exercise causes a robust increase in BDNF levels and as a consequence increases both the growth of new cells in the hippocampus as well as increase in memory.

But while the animal research has long confirmed the relationship between aerobic exercise and the growth of new brain cells, this relationship has been only recently demonstrated to occur in humans.

Neuroscientist Kirk Erikson and his research team at the University of Pittsburgh publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science studied a group of 120 adults over a one-year span. Half the group was given a stretching program to perform 3 times each week while the other half engaged in 3 days of aerobics.

After one year, the 2 groups were evaluated looking at 3 parameters. First, using MRI scans, the change in size of the hippocampus was calculated. Second, serum measurements before and after the trial were measured. And finally, the study actually measured memory function at the beginning and end of the trial.

The results were breathtaking. While the group doing the stretching program manifested a decline in memory, hippocampal size and BDNF levels, the aerobics group showed not only improvement in memory, but an actually increase in the size of the hippocampus accompanied by an increase in their blood levels of BDNF. The authors concluded:

These results clearly indicate that aerobic exercise is neuroprotective and that starting an exercise regimen later in life is not futile for either enhancing cognition or augmenting brain volume.

What’s more, research just published several weeks ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that blood levels of BDNF almost perfectly predict future risk for developing dementia as long as 10 years in the future.

The results of these studies have huge implications. There is no effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and yet, simple aerobic exercise can turn on the genetic machinery to manufacture BDNF, the brain’s “growth hormone,” creating new neurons in the brain’s memory center and actually improving memory. Despite the lack of any pharmaceutical development to enhance this process, you have direct control of your BDNF levels and thus the fate of your brain.

You can increase your BDNF levels and enhance the growth of new brain cells and memory.

Here’s how:

Engage in regular aerobic exercise. I recommend 20 minutes per day, 6 days each week.”

“….The omega-3 DHA, like aerobic exercise, has been shown to activate the genes that turn on BDNF production. So take a supplement that contains DHA. DHA is available in fish oils as well as algae-derived (suitable for vegetarians). While krill oil is popular, the DHA content is typically only 10% of fish or algae-based products.”

My comments:

1.  Other research has shown that regular brisk walks do have this effect and that people who take them most days a week avoid the shrinkage of their white matter.

However, more vigorous exercises can be even better in several ways.

Higher intensity cardio for much briefer periods and superslow strength training each release more growth hormones than brisk walking and likely release more BDNF too. 

Even better, they can be much easier to fit into your schedule. There are days I have time for my 4 to 6 minute cardio that I would not have 20 minutes to walk.  And, I can do those exercises at home in weather too dark and rainy or too hot and sunny to walk in.

But there are even more reasons to use them instead of or in addition to walking that are brain protective!

Dr Perlmutter’s new book shows conclusively as does other similar research that even lower levels of high blood sugar cause Alzheimer’s like harm to your brain and higher levels or type 2 diabetes is very harmful even more than low levels.

But besides mostly eating health OK protein foods and oils and lots of vegetables & very little grain or sugar and some supplements, there is an extremely effective antidote for high blood sugar and insulin resistance.

This antidote is doing the same higher intensity cardio for much briefer periods and superslow strength training that time efficiently produces lots of BDNF!

Lastly, improving the power of your heart and improving your blood flow and the health of your blood vessels and the resulting heart attack risk measures that doing this causes also prevents vascular dementia and other kinds of brain decline caused by low blood circulation.

And THAT agent is doing the same higher intensity cardio for much briefer periods and superslow strength training that time efficiently produces lots of BDNF!

So now we know this kind of exercise prevents mental decline 3 effective ways!

2.  Eating wild caught fish NOT too high in mercury two or more days a week and taking a purified omega 3 supplement and a DHA supplement each day together ensure you get plenty of DHA.

If you do that, taking krill oil in addition may enhance the effect according to one source I saw.  But that only works for this purpose if you add it to the first set of things.  Dr Perlmutter is correct that it is not high in DHA by itself.

3.  Also besides eating very little if any grain, ingesting virtually no oils like corn and soy and canola that are high in omega 6 oil, and very little animal fats from animals fed grains reduces the amount of omega 3 oils needed to lower inflammation enough to have brain protective and heart protective effects.

Extra virgin olive oil and protein foods from wild caught or only naturally fed animals both avoid that problem.  The Mediterranean diet with lots of vegetables and extra virgin olive oil and nuts derives much of its legendary and tested health protection from this source.

Unlike vegetable oils high in omega 6 or butter high in omega 6 from cattle fed almost only grains -- nuts and extra virgin olive oils contain monosaturated omega 9 oils that do NOT interfere with omega 3 oils like DHA or boost inflammation.

That diet has been shown to be both heart and brain protective.   

Even more info on preventing mental decline!....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-17-2013

A.  Dr Dharma Khalsa isn’t perfect but is a foremost researcher in preventing mental decline and Alzheimer’s and maintaining function in people with early symptoms of it.

Nearly two weeks ago his assistant emailed out some valuable information.

There was a “Super Ager” study at Northwestern University in Illinois. They studied people who were older but still in great shape mentally.

1.  From the email it looks as if one finding was that these people have a positive attitude and overall upbeat outlook on life.

2.  In the study, the MRI brain scans showed  that the Super Agers had thicker brain cortices and that thinning brain cortices correlate to loss of brain cells and gray matter.

Apparently they found that chronic oxidative stress and low-grade systemic inflammation tended to cause thinning brain cortices.  (See our other posts on how stopping sources of excessive omega 6 oils, using extra virgin olive oil instead, and taking or eating DHA and other omega 3 sources in combination turns down chronic high inflammation.  So does taking curcumin and eating turmeric and ginger.)

3.  In the email they said that:  “…. research shows that (this physical brain decline) starts in your mid 40’s when your body’s principal antioxidant glutathione system starts petering out.

You may remember that glutathione is the mother of all antioxidants but can become overwhelmed and depleted as we age and as we are over exposed to the stress and toxins of modern day living.”

“….Glutathione deficiency is found in nearly all of his very ill patients.

These include people suffering with serious diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes and chronic fatigue – to name a few.

So what we should be asking then is how do we boost our natural glutathione levels?

There is a compound called ALA or Alpha Lipoic Acid (has been shown to boost) the glutathione production in your body and actually raising blood glutathione levels after a 6 month period” (in a study).

Along with exercise and meditation it is a sure fire way to get glutathione levels back up to healthy levels and reduce the chronic oxidative stress and low level systemic inflammation.”

Alpha lipoic acid is an antioxidant that supports other antioxidants and works with both water based and oil based organic molecules.  (R lipoic acid is more expensive but may be more effective than alpha lipoic which is a mixture of the R and the D forms.)

And, there is a much stronger glutathione booster, N-acetyl- Cysteine aka NAC which you can also buy as a supplement.

B.  That same day, I got a separate email that said that phosphatidyl choline (aka listed as the B vitamin choline) helps keep the cells of all your body including your brain fluid and functional.  We also know that choline boosts the good kind of cholesterol, HDL, and is found in egg yolks and other foods.

This email said that getting enough choline also boosts glutathione! 

Besides getting choline in foods you can buy lecithin supplements that mostly contain choline.

A related compound, I think they appear together often called phosphatidyl serine or PS has been shown to help keep brain cell walls fluid and functional and prevent oxidation and stiffening well enough that people who began taking it restored 12 years worth of mental decline in studies.  PS is available in supplements.

Choline also has recently been found to cut triglycerides by 36%. 

Since choline also boosts the protective HDL, this means that getting enough of it also lowers your level of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes plaque, reduced circulation, and heart disease. 

THAT also prevents mental decline by preventing vascular dementia.  So between the parts getting enough choline and PS strongly prevents mental decline.

AND, besides causing the increased release in the brain cell and nerve growth factor BDNF which is also protective, getting vigorous exercise most days of every week, even if in brief sessions also directly cuts your level of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes plaque, reduced circulation, and heart disease.  This is also strongly protective against heart disease, stroke, and vascular dementia.

In addition, your doctor can tell because such exercise also boosts your level of HDL and reduces triglycerides.

C.  In addition, in the Medical News Today email it was announced today that a diabetes drug already in use apparently improves function and may be partly curative in late stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Since it’s already in use, it may be approved for that use soon.

The even better news is that you can do each of the things this drug is thought to do with things already available to you NOW!

Diabetes drug enters clinical trial for Alzheimer's treatment

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

A drug commonly used for treating diabetes may reverse symptoms of late-stage 

Alzheimer's disease and is now in the process of entering a major clinical 

trial. Researchers from Lancaster University in the UK conducted a study 

revealing that the drug, liraglutide, may reverse memory loss in the late stages 

of Alzheimer's, as well as prevent the build-up of toxic plaques on the brain 

that contribute to symptoms of the disorder.

"Liraglutide activates receptors on neurons that set a growth-factor type of signaling cascade in motion.

This means that the cell repair of neurons is improved, the energy metabolism is normalized, and synapses are kept functional. Oxidative stress is reduced, and growth and replacement of neurons is improved. The brain is much better placed to cope with stress and toxic influences."

This is great news for people with more severe Alzheimer's disease!

Since the drug is already approved and used with reasonable safety, if it does test as working for this, in this case, making it available soon makes sense.

But the effects of this drug that are thought to cause this improvement are already available now!

(I've read such late stage people also do better when fed MCT oils which give their brains energy without the sugars that caused the problem initially.)

Here's what they think the drug does:

"Liraglutide activates receptors on neurons that set a growth-factor type of signaling cascade in motion.

This means that the cell repair of neurons is improved, the energy metabolism is normalized, and synapses are kept functional. Oxidative stress is reduced, and growth and replacement of neurons is improved. The brain is much better placed to cope with stress and toxic influences."

Regular vigorous exercise, even if brief, most days of every week improves energy metabolism and releases the brain cell and nerve growth factor BDNF.  Even moderate exercise does so to some extent.

Taking the omega 3 DHA as a supplement or eating it in wild caught fish increases the release of BDNF. Doing that plus the exercise CAN be done early in Alzheimer's and is protective before that.

One researcher documented that ingesting DHA and choline and a substance called uridine which is in Brewer's yeast directly at the same time a few times a day caused better, more normal repair in the nerves and improved brain function in people with early stage dementia.

Taking the supplement ubiquinol improves energy production in the mitochondria of older cells and might well improve the energy availability of nerve cells and brain cells. It’s also a good antioxidant.

You can have people eat wild organic blueberries which are very high in antioxidants and have been directly found to be brain protective even more than that;  eat other organic fruits and vegetables high in antioxidants; and take antioxidant supplements, notably N-Acetyl Cysteine which releases the potent antioxidant glutathione to improve antioxidant protection to the brain. Coffee, green tea, tea, and spices are also high in antioxidants.

You can eliminate the sugars and other damaging foods that cause blood sugar and insulin issues to eliminate a major cause of mental all decline:  stop all:  excess intake of real sugar, any high fructose corn syrup, agave (also high in free fructose), virtually all refined grain foods, white rice, and virtually all use of artificial sweeteners.  (Those all tend to boost the damaging triglycerides.)

And, taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day and turmeric or curcumin supplements derived from it with black pepper each day has been shown to help prevent amyloid plaque and may even remove it to some degree.

For early stage mental decline or Alzheimer's -- or for prevention, each of these is available now!

To the extent they are possible to use they may also work, or at least improve matters, with later stage cases if you can use them all.

So I hope they do test and approve this drug quite soon.  But the effects are each available now!   

Coffee boosts mental performance AND protection....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-5-2013

An email I get is from Medical News Today.

They list the key information from reports of recent health and medical research.

We already know that studies found  that coffee boosts mental performance and everyone knows who has ever had coffee knows it can help you wake up and be alert for a while soon after you drink it.  One writer said it takes effect in about 18 minutes.

And, previous studies have found that drinking 3 or more cups of coffee a day – either regular OR decaf helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease!

Last week Medical News Today had a story that the protective effects of coffee drunk 3 or more times a day include preventing prostate cancer.  (That likely means it helps prevent other cancers and cancers in women too.)  This protection has been credited to the high levels of antioxidants in coffee in the sources I’ve seen before.

This new study says drinking a LOT of coffee is protective but then has two cautions not to do it.

1.  There IS a drawback to drinking that much coffee; but both cautions they list are incorrect for most people. And they don't list the valid one!

2.  You CAN get the protection without drinking that much coffee.  

(See my comments below.)

High coffee intake may help against prostate cancer

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

Consuming four or more cups of coffee a day could reduce the risk of prostate 

cancer recurrence and disease progression, according to a study published in the 

journal Cancer Causes and Control.

My comments:

Four cups a day of coffee can cause anxiety type symptoms and sleep disruption.  So, one or two or sometimes three cups a day is better for you. 

I personally think that two and sometimes three cups of coffee is best and if more wake up is needed than that:   taking a brief nap, or a few seconds or a couple minutes of brisk exercise, or several cups of tea or green tea plus the green coffee bean extract two times a day will do the job.  And, it will do it without then disrupting your sleep to make you start groggier than you otherwise would have.

Note that the green coffee bean extract now available and decaf coffee each have two of the 3 ingredients they say in this article that might be creating the protective effects.

With my reflux, even the two or three cups of coffee a WEEK I drink, I pay for with extra symptoms.

So, I'm glad I've been taking the green coffee bean extract twice a day for some time now.

I also get caffeine from tea, green tea, dark chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa!

(Coffee with those ingredients and other antioxidants is also tested as reducing the odds coffee drinkers will get Alzheimer's!)

2 points:

1.  Percolated coffee for sure and possibly espresso boost cholesterol.  Drip coffee which is easier to make and in far more common use does not! So this caution is not completely accurate.

2.  Stress boosts blood pressure reliably.  If that's happening already -- particularly if combined with no exercise, that much coffee can add to the effect a bit. Stress also may make feeling a bit anxious worse on 4 or more cups of regular coffee.

Otherwise, drinking this much coffee is rarely a problem with boosting blood pressure. So that caution is not accurate as stated either!

Also, the few potential health problems with coffee:  a compound called acrylamide, the chemicals used in growing coffee, and the solvents used in processing it may well be considerably less in the coffee and decaf from a company called Mt Hagen organic coffee and decaf. 

It’s organic and heated less so it has less acrylamide and has far less of a taste of processing chemicals than standard instant regular or decaf coffee. 

I found Mt Hagen decaf and regular instant coffee at Whole Foods when I was looking for a better tasting instant decaf for my wife and me.  It’s remarkably more mild and smooth and tastes less of processing chemicals than the kind we were using.  Then we found that their instant regular coffee was similarly better than the regular instant coffee my wife was drinking.

(Acrylamide is also produced by heating grains and potatoes & it’s thought to be mildly carcinogenic and harmful to the nerves.)  

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!  

Prevent Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, and mental decline....

Today's Post:  Friday, 11-30-2012

1.  Whatever is important to you -- if your memory or your ability to mentally manage what you do to succeed in it goes away or you cease to exist, your ability to have and do what you care about is gone.

Do you want that to happen to you?

In our economy, if a large percentage of our best educated and wisest and most experienced people have to be taken care of and can contribute nothing, can they create jobs?  Won’t that make our economy dramatically weaker?

That’s beginning to happen now! 

Do you want that to keep getting worse when it could stop happening?

The various dementias and kinds of mental decline do these things. From minor memory loss to being completely erased as a person in your brain followed by death, they are horrifying.

2.  But they are surprisingly preventable!

We’ve posted on this topic before.

But Parade Magazine recently said that November is Alzheimer’s awareness month.

3.  So I decided to post on some of the many methods that prevent these things.

a)  It’s now known that taking curcumin supplements along with black pepper daily or eating a lot of curried foods with the yellow spice turmeric also with black pepper most days each week, largely prevent Alzheimer’s disease.  The research found this both tends to lower the amount of tau protein that causes the build up the harmful beta amyloid that seems to cause the damage and help your body remove beta amyloid from your brain cells.

(Doing this also is anti-inflammatory for people just now learning to avoid eating excessive omega 6 oils as we discussed in yesterday’s post  or who have conditions like osteoarthritis that feel better and stop getting worse when you turn down inflammation.

And in the book Anti-Cancer, it’s well described that this also helps prevent cancer.)

But there is more help in doing this to avoid mental decline too!

Alzheimer’s disease may be partly caused and definitely speeded up by excessive inflammation and excessive LDL cholesterol causing cardio vascular disease and reduced blood flow to the brain.  This is also the main cause of vascular dementia. 

So besides directly preventing Alzheimer’s disease it is very helpful that eating or taking turmeric lowers LDL cholesterol and excessive inflammation – because it helps ensure less heart disease and maintains good blood flow to your brain.

b)  Taking at least 3,000 to 4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 tends to help this process particularly in helping to clean out excessive beta amyloid in your brain because doing so boosts the health and effectiveness of the cells in your immune system that do so.

c)  Your brain is like the internet with thousands of nodes and interconnections. 

That means that if you learn enough to multiply the connections five fold, you can lose more of the nodes without turning off the effective communications than you otherwise could.

Then too, in the brain, there is a chance that adding new connections continuously tends to grow new brain cells and may slow down the damage of Alzheimer’s disease.

So people who keep learning and people who already learned a great deal or speak several languages or many of these develop less brain damage and can sustain far more without loss in function. 

In fact, people who speak several languages rarely show any symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease even when they have beta amyloid build up and may also have less.

We also now know from brain scans that while talking to people and socializing feels easy, it produces brain activity comparable to the physical effort that a professional basketball player exerts during a fast paced game!

That would predict that people who maintain a lot of friends and acquaintances they talk to regularly would have less apparent Alzheimer’s disease.

And, that is exactly what studies have found!

Secondly, did you know that people who exercise most days of every week produce a nerve cell growth hormone that creates new nerves and brain cells called BDNF?

We now know it does just that!

And, that would predict that as people get older who never exercise, their brains would shrink and people who always exercised would avoid that problem.

And the research shows that is precisely the case.

That means that continuously learning and socializing to add new interconnections in your brain and adding new brain cells AND better circulation to keep from losing brain cells with exercise would be enormously protective.

Your brain, as your internal internet would then always have more nodes and interconnections and able to stand far more damage and still work well.

It does! 

And research has found that keeping your omega 6 levels low and getting enough omega 3 oils and in particular, taking DHA supplements also helps keep you from losing brain cells.

So if you do these things, you tend to turn off Alzheimer’s and multiply the amount of damage your brain can sustain without its performance for either memory or decision making dropping off.

Interestingly, strength training has been found to restore decision making abilities in older people where their decision making abilities had declined.

d)  Vascular dementia is caused by too much drop off in blood circulation and a drop off in blood circulation tends to speed up and may help cause Alzheimer’s disease.

But that’s close to totally preventable! 

People without heart disease or high blood sugar avoid it.

People who do interval cardio a few days of every week, massively crank up the circulation to every part of their body on those days – including their brains.  Research has found that on days people exercise in the morning or while at work, their mental performance goes up.  And it was just reported that exercising after you learn something you want to remember helps you store the information in long term memory.

And, if you also follow a lifestyle that prevents strokes, a total shut down of circulation, and prevents heart disease, doing that besides the exercise, not only prevents heart attacks and strokes, it prevents circulation drop off to your brain.

Slashing your omega 6 intake and increasing your omega 3 intake does this.

Completely, 100 %, avoiding ingesting heart attack starters such as hydrogenated oils also high in omega 6.   (Hydrogenated oils don’t leave your body quickly.  So if you eat ANY on a regular basis, you accumulate and ALWAYS have harmful amounts in your body.)

Completely, 100 % avoiding tobacco smoke both avoids the gradual closure of your blood vessels which even light smoking and second hand smoke cause, it ALSO avoids triggering heart attacks and strokes you otherwise would have escaped.  (Though many people do not, some smokers avoid cancers.  BUT none of them escape this gradual creation of heart disease not even light smokers or brand new smoker!)

Do the things that reduce your small particle LDL that eating hydrogenated oils boosts instead.

Anything that increases your HDL and or lowers your triglycerides does this.  And so does stopping ingesting anything that, like hydrogenated oils that does the reverse.

Two major things that we know directly lower small particle LDL and not only lower heart attack risk but lower death rates are:

Doing vigorous exercise such as interval cardio or strength training almost every week or doing  over 1,000 to 1500 calories a week of moderate exercise or both directly lowers small particle LDL.

So does taking niacin even in as little as one 300 mg dose after a larger meal each day.

Other major ways to boost HDL include eating egg yolks or taking some kind of choline supplements, taking pantothenic acid, B5, of 200 to 300 mg a day and so does drinking red wine in moderation.

Using only olive oil apparently does NOT increase HDL as once thought. BUT eating omega 6 oils also LOWERS HDL while only using olive oil does not.

A huge thing to avoid is anything but the tiniest amounts of high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, foods made out of refined grains, and large servings of real sugar.

Why? 

People who eat this stuff several times a day or drink soft drinks either regular or diet several times a day develop low HDL and sky high triglycerides – in addition to developing blood sugar problems and gaining fat.

Guess what that means?  It means that ingesting this stuff boosts the dickens out of your small particle LDL – just like tobacco smoke and eating hydrogenated oils.

If you avoid it all except refined grains and real sugar very occasionally, this means that you also remove a major cause of heart attacks, strokes, and mental decline!

But in this case, removing these foods and drinks from your life counts DOUBLE in preventing heart disease, strokes, vascular dementia, AND Alzheimer’s disease.

Why?

Because in addition to no longer directly causing heart disease with small particle LDL, deleting this stuff from you life along with getting regular vigorous exercise prevents and tends to reverse high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes too!

It seems that excessive blood sugars stick onto both your small particle LDL and the large particle LDL that normally just rolls harmless along. 

Research has found that this acts like adding SPIKES to all the LDL in your blood!

That does the triple -- causing heart disease, increasing inflammation to do more damage and even destroying capillaries!

If you have high blood sugar from ingesting this stuff and not exercising, it directly shuts down circulation to your brain by doing these things.

That’s why slamming the door on ingesting this stuff and exercising every week prevents both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

e) Other things help and other things can cause dementia such as getting enough B12 and other B vitamins and eating wild, organic blueberries on the helpful and damage reducing side and avoiding ingesting aluminum which may help cause Alzheimer’s.

Not getting enough B 12 and other B complex vitamins in older people can cause dementia.  Adding them tends to reverse this!

Eating blueberries not only helps prevent strokes, older people with just some mental decline reversed it when they ate blueberries often!

Avoiding excessive mercury intake helps prevent mental decline.

And, ingesting avoidable aluminum and not using it in deodorants may help prevent mental decline too.

It’s hard to say whether the aluminum in beta amyloid caused it to be there or just got stuck onto it as an innocent bystander.  But since is such a definite finding, it seems prudent to avoid ingesting a lot of it. 

There are double acting baking powders and deodorants that have no aluminum in them.  Some pickle contain alum.  But some do not.  And for most applications cast iron pans or stainless steel plans or aluminum core pans clad 100% by stainless steel avoid adding aluminum to your cooking while direct use of aluminum cookware does not.

Whew!

That is a lot to do. 

But all of it not only prevents mental decline, it also prevents cancers and heart attacks and strokes and extends your life.  It also slashes the amount of  excess fat you carry.

So why not gradually build up to doing all of it.

Your brain will work better and last longer and so will the rest of you!   

New reason to quit smoking and other ways to avoid mental decline....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-22-2011

There at least a dozen effective ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of mental decline.

Some literally build up your brain. Some prevent it from harm. Many of those also help prevent Alzheimer’s disease too. Some specifically prevent Alzheimer’s disease. And, some make your brain work well or better if you have any brain left to use. There are ways to reverse some kinds of mental decline that mimic Alzheimer’s or are causing it by removing their causes. Removing mercury from your body is one of these. Ensuring adequate levels of vitamin B12 is another.
There are even a few things that actually help people with early stage Alzheimer’s disease to function better.

This post is in three parts.

The first one lists why smoking is so much worse for you than virtually all smokers know it is.

The second one is about the new information that smoking not only causes mental decline and helps cause Alzheimer’s disease, if you smoke and stop your memory gets better very quickly!

And, the third part lists some of the most important ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and mental decline.

1. Incredibly, I read recently that a third of the people don’t even know tobacco smoke is bad for you. Yikes!

Most of the rest of people and virtually all smokers have no clue whatever that
smoking is as bad for you as it actually is. They think that smoking’s big problem is that it causes cancer. And smokers tend to assume they will be one of the lucky people who don’t get cancer.

Avoid tobacco smoke.

Yes, it produces 30 % of all cancers and 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancers. To be fair, some smokers don’t get cancer.

NEWSFLASH: Tobacco smoke is horribly worse for you than that. And no one exposed to it escapes harm! (Unfortunately few smokers have any clue about the larger dangers from smoking.)

EVERY single exposure to tobacco smoke begins to deposit the plaque in your arteries that causes high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and erectile dysfunction. It also causes you have the lung power and breathing capacity of a MUCH older person. This is true even for teens and brand new smokers!

There’s more too!

Exposure to tobacco smoke triggers heart attacks in people who would have otherwise escaped them.

And second hand smoke harms the people who are exposed to it in all the same ways, including babies and small children.

2. One of the main causes of vascular dementia and mental decline is bad circulation to your brain. There is even some evidence that bad blood flow and the things that cause bad blood flow help to cause Alzheimer’s disease.

One study recent found that people who: avoid soft drinks and fast food and packaged foods and eat real food including nonstarchy vegetables and who use mostly olive oil; exercise regularly; and completely avoid tobacco smoke tended to escape getting Alzheimer’s disease.

These things each tend to protect your heart, lower chronic inflammation, keep your blood sugar from being too high and from your blood vessels being destroyed. Guess what? That means your circulation to your brain stays good. And we now know that regular exercise actually grows new brain cells and nerves.

Another study found a direct link from smoking to getting Alzheimer’s disease.
(Given what we now know about bad circulation helping to cause Alzheimer’s disease and how effective tobacco smoke is in causing your circulation to become worse, this is no surprise!)

But just this week, there was better news or much scarier news depending on your point of view.

People who didn’t smoke or who stopped long enough ago, performed 25% better on tests of memory than people who still smoked.

That means that even if you don’t have mental decline yet, if you smoke, your mental abilities are already noticeably less than they would be if you didn’t smoke!

The better news is that if you quit smoking, your memory will get better. And, a 25% difference is a BIG difference.

3. We’ve already listed in parts one and two ways to avoid mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

a) Avoid soft drinks and fast food and packaged foods and eat real food including nonstarchy vegetables and use mostly olive oil; exercise regularly; and completely avoid tobacco smoke.

(The DASH II diet with olive oil instead of oils high in omega 6 such as soy, corn, and canola is one way to eat well and stay healthy. The Mediterranean diet with lots of nonstarchy vegetables and less pasta, bread, and processed meats such as salami works well. The paleo diet but, instead of fatty meats from grain fed animals -- eat meat only from 100 % grass fed animals but in moderation, chicken that has been pasture fed or only skinless chicken if grain fed, some eggs, raw and unsalted nuts if you aren’t allergic, wild caught fish that is low in mercury, and beans for protein; then add some olive oil also works.

You’ll notice these 3 diets tend to overlap and all avoid junk foods and refined grain and excessive sugar. And they also all include health OK protein mostly monosaturated oils and oils high in omega 3; and abundant nonstarchy vegetables.)

b) Regular exercise actually grows new brain cells and nerves. And, that’s in addition to its positive effects on better circulation and blood flow to your brain!

c) Your brain is like the internet. If you keep adding new quality information and interconnections, you can lose more of the hardware and still have the system function. But your brain is also better than the internet. Even people over 80 grow new brain cells and interconnections when they learn new things. Learning and regular exercise actually help you to even add more capacity to your brain!

So, educate yourself in areas you find important or find really interesting. Whether scanning the internet for information or formal courses, keep learning new things almost every week.

And, incredibly, people who converse with other people often not only have lower physical stress which helps prevent mental decline, they actually turn their brains on high and get huge mental exercise effects!

How can something that feels so easy most of the time do that?!

We’ve done it since we were very young kids maybe from before we can remember much as younger toddlers. We’ve done it so long it tends to feel quite easy.

But the brain power you use while conversing and your actually measured mental processing while doing it virtually as high as it is solving complex math problems!

So talk to people! Your brain will be in top shape and you’ll feel less stressed if you do it well. Both things prevent mental decline.

d) Avoid ingesting mercury and get enough B vitamins, particularly vitamin B12.

As much as 30% of all high fructose corn syrup contains mercury because of the way it’s made.

It also tends to spike blood sugar which causes obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Each of these harm your circulation to your brain. And too high levels of blood sugar have been implicated as causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

So, one important way to avoid mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease is to make an extremely strong effort to never eat any high fructose corn syrup! If a treat or other food lists high fructose corn syrup or corn sugar or corn syrup on the label, set it down! Do not buy any or eat or drink any!

Mercury is also in swordfish, shark, and the large King Mackerel although the smaller mackerel tend to not have that much. Don’t eat these three kinds of fish. Tuna are large predatory fish and tend to be moderately high in mercury. If you already have too much mercury or are pregnant or breast feeding, don’t eat ANY tuna. Eating some tuna once or twice a month is likely OK for most people. But be sure not to eat it more often than that!

Vegan vegetarians, people taking the potentially beneficial drug metformin, people taking antacids every week or taking proton pump inhibitor drugs for reflux disease and people over 70 who no longer digest their food well all are at risk of mental impairment from lack of vitamin B12.

People who get way too little vitamin B12 become somewhat mentally impaired. In older people who have been B12 deficient for a good bit, this can even look like Alzheimer’s disease. But it isn’t & getting enough B12 will mostly reverse this kind of mental decline.

If your blood levels of B12 test very low, the most effective way to restore them is to have your doctor who helped you get the test and saw the very low results to give you B12 shots.

You can also take 1,000 mcg a day of a form of B12 in small tablets that dissolve in your mouth and the B12 goes directly into your blood stream. That way if you take antacids every week or taking proton pump inhibitor drugs every day or are old enough your digestion has become less effective, you still get enough B12.

Lastly, if you eat a lot of nonstarchy vegetables or take folic acid or both AND you get enough B12 and avoid tobacco smoke, your homocysteine goes down.

So far, in my view because of how they have tested it, getting enough folate and B12 to lower homocysteine has not yet tested as reversing heart disease.

But lowering homocysteine these 3 ways HAS tested as helping to prevent mental decline.

As you’ve seen, avoiding tobacco smoke and getting enough B12 work in more than one way to prevent mental decline. So does getting enough folate from eating a lot of nonstarchy vegetables each week.

e) There is some evidence that the curcumin in turmeric which is one of the main ingredients in curry spice and getting 4,000 iu to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 not only each help your body prevent the beta amyloid plaques that are part of the process of causing Alzheimer’s disease, they also help your body reverse the process new research has found. Best of all they seem to work even better if you get both of them! (People in India who eat curried foods almost every day hardly ever get Alzheimer’s disease which is how this effect was initially discovered.)

Also, when I added taking curcumin and eating curried food a few times a week and eating some ginger, a cousin of turmeric, most days, my LDL cholesterol fell by 30 points! Dr Dean Ornish notes this effect in his book, The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Gain Health. So the lower LDL from doing these 3 things happens to other people too. And it’s a lot cheaper and dramatically safer way to lower LDL than taking statin drugs.

f) Eating organic blueberries raises your HDL which helps keep your brain’s blood circulation good. But doing this apparently does far more for your brain.

People who have had minor mental decline who start eating a lot of blueberries each week, often reverse several years worth of decline and have measurably better memory.

(I eat a large serving of organic blueberries three times a week. And I take a bilberry supplement once a day. Bilberries are a kind of blueberry.)

Action items to prevent heart disease, diabetes, & cancer....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-15-2011

The current UN meeting on the worldwide crisis in disease and increased health care costs caused by preventable, non-communicable diseases has already released the information that 90% of the diseases and health care costs in the United States are caused by these diseases

This is a timely reminder to consider doing the things yourself that will help you escape these diseases and health care costs!

Consider these.

1. Sugar, refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, and, surprisingly, artificial sweeteners as well, each tend to cause blood sugar surges, lower your protective HDL and increase your harmful triglycerides. These effects tend to make you fat and cause heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

Cut your use of sugar in half. Eliminate any food or drink that contains refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners.

Drink water, tea, coffee, or vegetable juice instead. Eat only 100 % whole grains or eat nonstarchy vegetables or beans instead of refined grains.

Extra benefit: If you have been eating and drinking a lot of these things, this can give you effortless fat loss. The extra fat will leave you; and you’ll NOT be hungrier.

2. The health benefits of the DASH II diet and the Mediterranean diet are very high. They help prevent all these diseases from Alzheimer’s disease to heart disease and high blood pressure. The combination of these two diets is likely the best diet to eat to stay healthy.

The two key things that seem to have the most health benefit are to eat lots nonstarchy vegetables and use only extra virgin olive oil or olive oil.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

a) Add one nonstarchy vegetable one time each day. Add one serving to your lunch or dinner. (Adding more than one a day each week can be faster than your body can adjust to it. So don’t add more than two a day the first week.)

Raw broccoli florets or cauliflower florets help prevent aggressive cancers. Tomato slices are also good for you and taste good. They too are nonstarchy. And there are dozens more nonstarchy vegetables you can try.

Nonstarchy vegetables have truly awesome health benefits and almost zero calories. So they combat diseases and help people avoid fat gain without extra hunger at the same time!

b) Get some mild tasting olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. Use that instead of all other oils or margarine. Use it instead of butter where you can. Where you can’t substitute olive oil for butter, use half as much butter.

(Be sure to never eat anything that contains hydrogenated oils or trans fats as they are proven heart attack starters.)

Using only olive oil increases your HDL, lowers your LDL, and lowers your level of chronic inflammation. Each of those effects protects your heart.

3. Exercise prevents disease, grows new brain cells, and slows aging. And, a surprisingly small amount gives you 40% of the health benefits of an ideal exercise program.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

Try doing some kind of strength training at home for just a few minutes first thing two mornings each week. Take one day off in between. This can range from doing 3 pushups from your knees and 5 half squats each time to 15 or 20 minutes using dumbbells for several exercises each time.

And, three or more days each week take a 15 to 20 minute walk or two 10 minute walks. Walk normally for most of it but trying a few bursts of walking really fast each time.

But get started with something you can do this week!

Once you can do just that much and keep doing it each week, you get 40 % of the health benefits of an ideal program. Of course, once you do that, you can add more if you have time.

4. Avoid tobacco smoke.

Yes, it produces 30 % of all cancers and 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancers. To be fair some smokers don’t get cancer.

NEWSFLASH: Tobacco smoke is horribly worse for you than that. And no one exposed to it escapes harm! (Unfortunately few smokers have any clue about the larger dangers from smoking.)

EVERY single exposure to tobacco smoke begins to deposit the plaque in your arteries that causes high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and erectile dysfunction. It also causes you have the lung power and breathing capacity of a MUCH older person. This is true even for teens and brand new smokers!

There’s more too!

Exposure to tobacco smoke triggers heart attacks in people who would have otherwise escaped them.

And second hand smoke harms the people who are exposed to it in all the same ways, including babies and small children.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

If you smoke, contact the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association and use their help to make a strong, focused, and determined effort to quit. Try the over the counter nicotine products if the nicotine craving gets too bad for you to handle. (Knowing the information above will make it easier for you than it is for most people trying to quit.)

If you smoke and decide not to quit, at least for the next week, make a very strong effort to never smoke in public or around your friends and family. See if you can protect the people around you from second hand smoke even if you keep smoking.

Also, if you are a doctor, for the next week, ask every patient if they smoke. For every one that does, hand them a copy of this information and PRESCRIBE in writing that they quit. Studies show this gets results. Most people respect doctors and often do as they are directed by their doctors.

5. There are supplements that help prevent these diseases as well.

Supplements are not always effective; but those that are can be more effective for prevention than drugs when several are taken in combination. Supplements usually have NO side effects. Even better, the ones with health benefits often protect several parts of your health at the same time!

Here’s an example.

Vitamin D3 has recently been found to help prevent many cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune diseases, and to build your bones better than taking calcium.

They found that’s true IF you take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day. (This helps replace the over 10,000 iu a day people used to get from being out in the sun all day.)

Supplements are food concentrates or pure and consistent versions of folk remedies used safely for hundreds of years or are substances natural to the human body.

Thousands of Americans are preventing many of the most expensive diseases to treat by taking supplements.

Heart attacks, cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease can take over $50,000 each to treat.

Estimating that 30 % of the population takes supplements and at least a third of those or 10% are successfully preventing these diseases, if these supplements were suddenly unavailable nationwide, our health care costs would go up at least 10%.

For example, in 2009, New York City was estimated to have a population of 8,391,881. So it has about 8,400,000 now. If we estimate half of those are adults, that’s 4,200,000 adults. This means that if 10 % of these people who are preventing those diseases with supplements, New York has 420,000 people who are NOT getting these diseases.

The added health care costs each year that would be incurred in New York if everyone were no longer able to get these supplements would run to billions of dollars.

Incredibly, that will happen soon unless it is stopped.

The FDA has just proposed re-classifying almost all supplements as drugs and removing them from the market completely. Only the handful that drug companies successfully get to pass the tests that drugs pass would ever be available again. That would be as much as ten years from when they were removed and they would cost over 10 times as much as now.

Even worse, a simple registration process with the fees for random testing from each supplement company would allow the FDA to find and remove the small number of companies making supplements for weight loss, muscle building, or sexual restoration that contain dangerous drugs not listed on the label.

So consider doing this sometime you schedule now for some time this week.

Write both your US representative and Senator to demand of the FDA that they remove their proposal and use the kind of simple registration process instead that would help the FDA more quickly remove the real problems.

This will save the United States from billions of dollars of new health care costs each year that supplements are now preventing.

Exercise has even MORE health benefits....

Today's Post: Friday, 5-21-2010

Last week, Prevention Magazine posted an article they titled,

“17 Ways Exercise Sends Health Soaring”

Why schedule several sessions of exercise that are doable for you into your week and be sure you do each session 95% of the time or more?

For starters, since recent studies found only 5% of Americans do this.

In my opinion, besides the competing pressures on their time, most of the other 95% neither know how incredibly much exercise actually will do for them or even close. They also don’t know how badly they will suffer from what being sedentary and NOT exercising will otherwise do TO them.

So I thought I’d summarize their 17 points in yesterday’s post.

But, I only had time to do the first 7. So here are the remaining 10.

8. “Slash Cold Risk 33% Build up your body's defenses”

“Moderate exercise doesn't just rev your metabolism--it boosts your immune system, too, helping your body fight off cold bugs and other germs. Women ages 50 to 75 who did 45 minutes of cardio, 5 days a week, had a third as many colds as those who did once-weekly stretching sessions, a University of Washington study found."

Sessions of briefer and more vigorous exercise also work. Regular exercise that you recover from moderately easily of any kind boosts your immune system.

But if you compete in athletics or sometimes train or work out that hard, you will often get LESS immunity. So, if you do either, also take a multivitamin and an additional 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. That will make the impact of that kind of physical effort lower your immune system less. The extra vitamin D3 recent research found is quite effective in boosting your immune system’s killer cells that do away with bad bacteria and viruses.

Taking an extra 1,000 to 2,000 mg of vitamin C and a good probiotic supplement have also resulted in getting colds less often.

9. “Improve Vision
Carrots are great, but exercise might be better

What's good for your heart is good for your eyes. An active lifestyle can cut your risk of age-related macular degeneration by up to 70%, according to a British Journal of Ophthalmology study of 4,000 adults. This incurable disease makes reading, driving, and seeing fine details difficult, and it's the most common cause of blindness after age 60.

Do this: Protect your eyes during all outdoor activities (if you're a walker, shoot for a mile a day). Be sure to wear UVA/UVB-blocking sunglasses all year long.“

Wearing a broad-brimmed hat can also help. So does eating blueberries and taking bilberry supplements

10. “Reach the Deep-Sleep Zone
Decent shut-eye is not a far off dream

Say good night to poor sleep. Women age 60 and older who walked or danced for at least an hour, four times a week, woke up half as often and slept an average 48 minutes more a night than sedentary women, according to a study in the journal Sleep Medicine. That is good news for the many women who toss and turn more as they get older. As you age, sleep patterns start shifting, so you spend more of the night in lighter sleep phases, says Shawn Youngstedt, PhD, an assistant professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina.”

Regular exercise works wonders in making it easier to fall asleep and get decent sleep quality.

Since being too fat can cause sleep apnea that trashes restful sleep. If you have excess fat to lose, do be SURE to exercise regularly & also add several kinds of moderate and doable calorie restriction that you practice doing every week.

Don’t drink soft drinks at all; don’t eat things containing high fructose corn syrup or refined grain flour; cut back a good bit on regular sugar; and keep adding nonstarchy vegetables until you eat 3 or more servings a day.

11. “Never Get Diabetes
Walk to keep your blood sugar in check

Walking 2 miles 5 times a week may be more effective at preventing diabetes than running nearly twice as much, report Duke University researchers. Because fat is the primary fuel for moderate exercise, walking may better improve the body's ability to release insulin and control blood sugar.

Do this: Start a walking program” the Prevention article suggests.

Do it if you can find time for it. But much shorter sessions of strength training and/or interval cardio also work well. In one study even two one minute sets of interval cardio a day lowered blood sugar as measured by the very accurate HBA1C test.

12. “Eliminate Belly Bloat
Shrink the muffin top

The next time you feel puffy around the middle, resist the urge to stay put. A study from Spain's Autonomous University of Barcelona suggests that mild physical activity clears gas and alleviates bloating. That's because increasing your heart rate and breathing stimulates the natural contractions of the intestinal muscles, helping to prevent constipation and gas buildup by expediting digestion.

Do this: Walk or pedal lightly on a bike until you feel better. “

You can also get this effect with running or jumping rope or jumping on a minitrampoline.

Losing belly fat can be done also. But you need more exercise to do it. And, you need to do well on eating right with some calorie restriction for it to work at all.

13. “Clear Out Brain Fog
Build your mental muscle

Exercise is linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease among older people; now, new research shows it can prevent brain fog at a much younger age too. Japanese researchers assigned sedentary young adults to two groups; one took aerobic exercise classes, and the other did not. After 4 months, MRIs revealed that the nonexercising group experienced shrinkage of gray matter in some areas of the brain, while the active participants had no change.

Do this: Try a new fitness routine, or sign up for a new class at the gym. Besides the obvious benefit of getting a workout, trying something fresh can help stimulate the growth of brain cells.”

Virtually all exercises grow new brain cells. Strength training and interval cardio also release growth hormone to your whole body.

And, eating a heart protective diet such as the DASH II or Mediterranean diets plus taking certain supplements AND doing regular exercise sharply increase blood flow to your brain. It then tends to work a LOT better and be much more likely to keep working.

Taking both at least 2,000 iu of vitamin D3 and taking a curcumin or turmeric supplement every day and eating curried foods several times a week cuts your chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease dramatically.

So does taking omega 3 supplements, particularly DHA.

14. “Save Your Heart
Reduce dangerous inflammation

Sedentary, obese women age 50 and older who began exercising lowered their levels of C-reactive protein-an inflammatory blood marker linked to heart disease-by 10% after 1 year, found research recently published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. “

See our other posts for the many other ways to lower inflammation.

15. “Add Years to Your Life
Stay healthy and active for years to come

Being physically fit can actually change how your body works. Vigorous exercisers have longer telomeres-cellular biomarkers that shorten as we age-compared with healthy adults who rarely work out.”

The end result has been tested recently and the research was published. Regular exercisers look younger and live longer than the very similar people who don’t do any regular exercise at all. And, the effect is quite large -- the exercisers lived more than 10 years longer on the average.

16. “Ease Your Ailments
Heal your body with yoga

Yoga has a well-earned reputation as a surefire stress reducer (particularly when combined with meditation), and new studies show the simple stretching regimen can also help treat and prevent a number of other ailments, from back pain to diabetes. Other research reveals regular yoga practice can put an end to mindless eating by creating an outlet for emotions that can lead to binging. Unfortunately, less than 15% of women over age 35 say they do yoga frequently, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. “

Tai Chi also works to lower stress and ease joint pain; it increases your ability to control your body and be physically coordinated; it burns more calories than yoga usually; and the injury rate for Tai Chi is MUCH less than for yoga. With yoga, it’s quite common to get injured from overdoing the stretches. Besides muscle and tendon injuries people injure their backs doing yoga.

Our recommendation is to either do Tai Chi instead OR be extremely careful and gentle ONLY if you do yoga stretches and positions.

17. “Survive Breast Cancer
Increase your defenses against the disease

Exercise not only reduces breast cancer risk, it can also save your life if you're diagnosed. Overweight women who were exercising more than 3 hours a week before they were diagnosed were 47% less likely to die than those who exercised less than a half hour per week.”


The Prevention article closed with this.:

“Do this: Sneak in mini bouts of exercise. Take a quick walk when you get the morning paper, hit the stairs before lunch, or knock out a few pushups and crunches while watching TV. Just two to three 10-minute workouts a day is enough to fill your quota for the week.”

If you do it regularly, even starting with three five minute sessions of exercise a WEEK will get you started and is WAY better than no exercise at all.

That’s particularly true if the sessions are vigorous strength training such as doing as many pushups as you can until you can’t do the next one and then doing 100 crunches or doing an interval cardio exercise such as several 30 second rounds of jumping rope. You do have to begin where you are and add more gradually. But you can literally start only able to do one or two push ups and build up to doing over 40 or 50. The same is true of crunches or jumping rope.

One woman who used Dr Sears’ advice began with ONE set of a 45 second walk! She gradually improved until she did enough more in each session to lose 45 pounds!