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JUNE ‘10 ISSUE #21 Health Corner: Healthy diet could slow or reverse early effects of Alzheimer’s disease “At the end of the study, when we looked at these mice, what we found — very surprisingly — was that switching to a more healthy diet reversed the cognitive impairment that had built up over the first three months of eating the methionine-rich diet,” said Praticò. “This improvement was associated with less amyloid plaques — another sign of the disease — in their brains. Pratico said that the cognitive impairment that had been observed in the mice after three months was completely reversed after two months on the healthier diet, and they were now able to function normally. Today, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for 50 percent to 70 percent of all dementia cases, and is on the rise. In many ways, the rise of Alzheimer’s in the aging population is very similar to the rise of autism in children. The latest 2009 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report estimates that by 2030 nearly 8 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s. Patients in the early to moderate stages of Alzheimer’s Disease could have their cognitive impairment slowed or even reversed by switching to a healthier diet, according to researchers at Temple University. Researchers asked asked the question, “if you had made bad choices in your diet, is there a chance you can slow down or even reverse the disease or is it too late — that there is nothing you could do,”? “We believe this finding shows that, even if you suffer from the early effects of MCI or Alzheimer’s, switching to a healthier diet could be helpful in that memory capacity could be improved,” he said. Pratico stressed that this was not a drug therapy for curing MCI or Alzheimer’s, but that it did demonstrate that a lifestyle change such as diet can improve some of the impairments that have already occurred in the brain. “What it tells us is that the brain has this plasticity to reverse a lot of the bad things that have occurred; the ability to recoup a lot of things such as memory that were apparently lost, but obviously not totally lost,” he said. Pratico also emphasized that the researchers believe that in addition to switching to a healthy diet, patients diagnosed with MCI or Alzheimer’s also need a regiment of physical as well as mental exercises. “This combination won’t cure you, but we believe, as we saw in this study, that it will be 1 JUNE ‘10 ISSUE #21 Health Corner: Healthy diet could slow or reverse early effects of Alzheimer’s disease able to slow down or even possibly reverse the effects on the cognitive impairment,” he said. Maintaining A Healthy Mind - Nutrition Overview 1. Eat a nutritious diet with plenty of organic raw fresh vegetables 2. Eat plenty of high-quality omega-3 fats. Fifty percent of your brain is an omega-3 fat called DHA. 3. Avoid toxins, especially mercury, aluminum and fluoride. Dental amalgam fillings are one of the major sources of mercury, however you should be healthy prior to having them removed )use a highquality biologically trained dentist who is familiar with the removal of amalgam fillings) Aluminum is found in items such as antiperspirants and aluminum cookware, which should also be avoided. 4. Keep your fasting insulin levels below three. There is no question that insulin resistance is one of the most pervasive influences on brain damage, as it contributes massively to inflammation, which will prematurely degenerate the brain. 5. Eliminate all processed foods and sugars, particularly fructose. This includes refraining from eating too many fruits, if you normally eat a lot of them. If you consume more than 25 grams a day of fructose you can damage your cells by creating insulin and leptin resistance and raising your uric acid levels. Berries tend to be lower in fructose, and wild blueberries, for example, are high in anthocyanin and antioxidants, and are well-known for being beneficial against Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases. 6. Challenge your mind daily. Mental stimulation, such as traveling, learning to play an instrument or doing crossword puzzles, is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s. Researchers suspect How Does Exercise Protect Your Brain? Although the mind-body research into the benefits of exercise against dementia may still be in its infancy, there is compelling evidence that regular exercise promotes essential cell and tissue repair mechanisms, including growth of new brain cells. Previous research has also shown that a regular exercise program can slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease by altering the way damaging proteins reside in your brain. Decreasing your risk of heart and blood vessel diseases that can impact brain function In essence, exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by causing your nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage Focusing on your breath and mindfulness along with increasing your flexibility is an important element of total fitness. Physical exercise may also protect against mild cognitive impairment by: • Promoting production of nerve-protecting compounds • Increasing blood flow to your brain • Improving development and survival of neurons So when you’re planning your exercise routine, 2 JUNE ‘10 ISSUE #21 Health Corner: Healthy diet could slow or reverse early effects of Alzheimer’s disease make sure to incorporate the following types of exercise: Aerobic: Jogging, using an elliptical machine, and walking fast are all examples of aerobic exercise. As you get your heart pumping, the amount of oxygen in your blood improves, and endorphins, which act as natural painkillers, increase. Aerobic exercise also activates your immune system, helps your heart pump blood more efficiently, and increases your stamina over time. Interval (Anaerobic) Training: This is also known as sprint cardio. Research shows that the BEST way to condition your heart and burn fat is NOT to jog or walk steadily for an hour. Instead, it’s to alternate short bursts of highintensity exercise with gentle recovery periods. This type of exercise, also known as interval training, or burst type training, can dramatically improve your cardiovascular fitness and fatburning capabilities. Another major benefit of this approach is that it radically decreases the amount of time you spend exercising, while giving you even more benefits. For example, intermittent sprinting produces high levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which allow more fat to be burned from under your skin within the exercising muscles. The resulting increase in fat oxidation increases weight loss. So, short bursts of activity done at a very high intensity can help you reach your optimal weight and level of fitness, in a shorter amount of time 1. Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you’re really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program. You need enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. The weight should be heavy enough that this can be done in fewer than 12 repetitions, yet light enough to do a minimum of four repetitions. It is also important NOT to exercise the same muscle groups every day. They need at least two days of rest to recover, repair and rebuild. 2. Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and 3 JUNE ‘10 ISSUE #21 Health Corner: Healthy diet could slow or reverse early effects of Alzheimer’s disease support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability. Exercise programs like pilates and yoga are great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer. 3. Stretching: There are many types of gentle stretches including yoga to warm up your muscles and increase circulation and agility. Start taking action to preserve your brain function now by implementing the strategies detailed in the guide below. These strategies can also radically reduce your risk of all sorts of chronic diseases, so know that if you make the effort to enact these changes you will reap multiple health- and emotional benefits -- even as you get older. Additional Research: A Protective Diet and Alzheimer Disease Risk Yian Gu, PhD; Jeri W. Nieves, PhD; Yaakov Stern, PhD; Jose A. Luchsinger, MD, MPH; Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, MS Arch Neurol. 2010;67(6):699-706. Published online April 12, 2010 (doi:10.1001/ archneurol.2010.84). Objective To assess the association between food combination and Alzheimer disease (AD) risk. Because foods are not consumed in isolation, dietary pattern (DP) analysis of food combination, taking into account the interactions among food components, may offer methodological advantages. Patients or Other Participants Two thousand one hundred forty-eight communitybased elderly subjects (aged 65 years) without dementia in New York provided dietary information and were prospectively evaluated with the same standardized neurological and neuropsychological measures approximately every 1.5 years. Using reduced rank regression, we calculated DPs based on their ability to explain variation in 7 potentially AD-related nutrients: saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, -3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, -6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamin E, vitamin B12, and folate. The associations of reduced rank regression–derived DPs with AD risk were then examined using a Cox proportional hazards model. Two hundred fifty-three subjects developed AD during a follow-up of 3.9 years. We identified a DP strongly associated with lower AD risk: compared with subjects in the lowest tertile of adherence to this pattern, the AD hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) for subjects in the highest DP tertile was 0.62 (0.43-0.89) after multivariable adjustment (P for trend = .01). This DP was characterized by higher intakes of salad dressing, nuts, fish, tomatoes, poultry, cruciferous vegetables, fruits, and dark and green leafy vegetables and a lower intake of high-fat dairy products, red meat, organ meat, and butter. Conclusion Simultaneous consideration of previous knowledge regarding potentially ADrelated nutrients and multiple food groups can aid in identifying food combinations that are associated with AD risk. 4