jenk: Faye (jen36)
[personal profile] jenk
From Jane Brody's column in the New York Times:
Growing, scientifically sound evidence suggests that people can delay and perhaps even prevent Alzheimer's disease by taking steps like eating low-fat diets rich in antioxidants, maintaining normal weight, exercising regularly and avoiding bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking.

Several other practices - including remaining socially connected and keeping the brain stimulated by reading, doing puzzles and learning new things - also appear to protect the brain against dementia. [...]

Alzheimer's is a progressive brain disorder that gradually destroys a person's memory and ability to learn, reason, make judgments, communicate and carry out normal activities of daily life.

Two changes in the brain are characteristic: abnormal microscopic structures called amyloid plaques that accumulate outside brain cells and tangles of a protein called tau that form inside brain cells. Because these changes are now seen only in autopsies, coming up with early diagnoses and tests for the disorder is a major challenge.

Early signs may include forgetting recently learned information, performing familiar tasks only with difficulty, misplacing things (putting shoes in the refrigerator, for example), fumbling for the right word for an ordinary object (like a toothbrush) and forgetting where you are or how you got there. Personalities can also change, and patients can become paranoid, suspicious, fearful or extremely confused. Some lose their judgment and suffer from mood swings or loss of initiative.

Built for Durability

The brain is a very forgiving organ. It has a very large reserve capacity and can withstand an extraordinary number of "hits" and bounce back from them. Witness how well some people recover from serious strokes and brain trauma. Likewise, autopsies often reveal considerable brain changes associated with Alzheimer's disease among subjects who showed no symptoms of dementia during their lives.

But when the brain is otherwise compromised, it may not be as able to protect itself against the encroaching damage of Alzheimer's. [...]

The presence of vascular disease - the kind that can lead to a heart attack or stroke - seems to decrease the brain's ability to fend off the effects of Alzheimer's-related damage and increase a person's chances of showing obvious signs of dementia.

"Some people," Dr. Coleman said, "have pure Alzheimer's disease and some have pure cerebral vascular disease. But most have a mix of the two." The same risk factors that raise a person's chances of having a heart attack or stroke - high cholesterol and blood pressure, excess weight, smoking, lack of exercise - also raise the risk of developing dementia, she explained.

It's not that circulatory disease causes Alzheimer's, she emphasized. But if the brain lacks a healthy flow of blood through vessels relatively free of atherosclerotic plaques, it is less able to fight off the damage associated with dementia.

Likewise, Dr. Coleman acknowledges that genetic factors may raise a person's risk of Alzheimer's. Taking steps to reduce the risk incurred through genes, though, makes good sense. And that is achieved by controlling known risks for vascular disease.

Some large long-term observational studies, including the Nurses' Health Study and the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study, support the link between risk factors for vascular disease and Alzheimer's. For example, an increased risk of Alzheimer's or an accelerated decline in mental functioning was noted in Japanese-American men with untreated high blood pressure, in American nurses and Dutch study participants with Type 2 diabetes (a result of excess weight), in Finns with high cholesterol and high intakes of saturated fats, and in Europeans who smoked.

A study lasting for decades at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found a sixfold increase in the risk of Alzheimer's in people who were obese and had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

But the most telling evidence comes from an order of nuns, nearly 700 School Sisters of Notre Dame studied over many years by Dr. David Snowdon. All the nuns in the order by and large have similar eating and exercise habits, and all agreed to allow their brains to be autopsied.

These autopsies confirmed what had been suspected from observational studies: a striking relationship between the presence in the brain of cerebral vascular disease and symptoms caused by damage related to Alzheimer's disease.

The sisters with brain abnormalities characteristic of Alzheimer's were more likely to have shown symptoms of dementia if they also had strokes or clogged brain arteries.

Recipe for Success

In addition to controlling weight and fat intake, consuming foods or supplements rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like fatty fish or supplements of DHA, appears to protect against brain deterioration. Likewise, regular exercise - like walking more than two miles a day - seems to delay the degeneration of nerve cells in the brain.

How you spend your leisure time may also make an important difference. Activities that involve mental and social stimulation, like doing crossword puzzles; playing bridge, checkers or chess; learning a language or new skill; taking up knitting or crocheting; and remaining socially involved have all been associated in various studies with preservation of normal brain function.

When these activities are combined with regular physical activity, the benefit appears to be even greater. [...]

Mice and other rodents have been shown throughout their lives to be able to form new cells in the part of the brain involved in learning and memory if they live in an "enriched" environment.

Can you be any less well developed than a mouse?

Profile

jenk: Faye (Default)
jenk

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011 121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 11:41 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios