If your Mama was anything like mine, you no doubt grew up with the constant admonition that “you are what you eat.” And despite the silly position of the AMA back in the early 1980s that there was no evidence to support the idea that diet has any direct relationship with health, almost all mothers know better. Thus it’s not entirely unexpected that medical science should be learning about the many ways that diet does indeed affect health, but it is welcome to wise Moms everywhere.
First up, a paper published in the journal Science by a research team at the University of Wisconsin demonstrates that simply reducing the amount of food eaten works to blunt the effects of aging and significantly delay onset of age-relatted conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and brain atrophy. The research was conducted over 20 years on Rhesus monkeys at the National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison.
Conclusion? A restricted calorie diet will help you live longer and stay healthier.
The American Dietetic Association has also released an updated position paper on vegetarian diets that concludes a well-planned meatless diet is both healthful and nutritionally adequate and can help prevent or even treat chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease.
Vegetarian diets have long been associated with lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Because such diets are low-fat and generally provide more vitamins and minerals than a meat-based diet, the ADA has concluded that a meatless diet is appropriate for all stages of the human life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy and for athletes.
With ever increasing evidence that fewer calories, less meat and more fruits and vegetables can lead to a longer and healthier life, the number of vegetarians or semi-vegetarians among the population is expected to increase significantly over the next decade. Perhaps the most important take-away lesson from the evidence and research is that indulging in high-calorie processed foods and fatty meats to the point where a majority of the population weighs twice what they should weigh causes a huge chunk of the medical issues people suffer in the U.S.
Researchers at the University of Manchester in England have discovered that the herpes simplex virus – the virus that causes cold sores – is a major cause of the beta amyloid protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s sufferers, suggesting new methods of treatment.
Cold Sore Virus Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease: New Treatment, or Even Vaccine Possible
A majority of people are infected with the herpes simplex virus, which remains in the peripheral nervous system for the life of the person, occasionally showing up to cause cold sores. It is treated, usually when the sores show up, with antiviral agents such as acyclovir, and outbreaks can often be shortened by taking L-Lysine amino acid supplements. The discovery of a connection between herpes simplex and the amyloid plaques of AD lends hope to the idea that Alzheimer’s may one day soon be treatable with antiviral drugs, or even that a vaccine could be developed against both the herpes infection and AD.
The research team examining plaques and neurofibrillary tangles from AD patients discovered that HSV1 viral DNA was found in 90% of those abnormal protein structures. The same team had previously found that HSV1 infection of nerve cells induces deposition of the plaques. Previous treatments for this dread disease of aging have focused on symptoms of the disease rather than any root causes. As the population ‘bump’ known as the “Baby Boom” generation ages, this discovery may help to prevent a great deal of suffering both for victims of the disease and their families.
The Manchester team hope to receive funding that will enable them to investigate in detail the effect of treating early Alzheimer’s patients with antiviral agents. The paper was published in the Journal of Pathology, Volume 217, entitled Herpes simplex virus type 1 DNA is located within Alzheimer’s disease amyloid plaques.
Scientists at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that some people who have the plaques in their brain associated with AD still manage to score well on tests of cognitive ability if they spent more years in school, and put their cognitive abilities to work on a regular basis. Those with less education, who may not regularly exercise their brains than better educated people, tend to display more symptoms of cognitive decline.
Strong Educatiion Blunts Effects of Alzheimer’s Disease -
“As expected, those whose brains showed little evidence of plaque buildup scored high on all the tests. But while most participants with high levels of brain plaque scored poorly on the tests, those who had done postgraduate work still scored well. Despite signs that Alzheimer’s might already be ravaging the brains of this subgroup, their cognitive abilities had not declined and they had not become demented.”
So get busy, all you aging Boomers! Now that the nation’s economy is tanking and the government’s printing enough money to deforest the Amazon basin [snark], it’s time to go back to school! Or just audit some courses that interest you. Or take some online courses, just for fun. Download that computerized Scrabble game, do crossword puzzles, join a book discussion clutch, whatever. I want to see you put the burn to that flabby brain, whip it into shape!
…and the payoff just might be that you keep more of your mind later in your life than you otherwise would!
In the year 2030, what’s left of us ‘Baby-Boomers’ will be in our late 70s and early 80s. We will not likely be the largest demographic bump in the general population at that time, as more than half of us will have died off by then. 2030 is also the year that researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, along with researchers at other institutions, project that 86% of Americans could be obese if current trends continue.
Worse, projections show that 96% of non-Hispanic black women and 91% of Mexican-American men will be in those numbers. The costs of this situation amount to nearly a trillion dollars’ worth of obesity-related health care spending, or 1 in every 6 health care dollars.
The projection is based on three decades’ worth of collected data from national surveys. As the obese population ages the health care costs related to being fat will more than double every decade. In addition to hypertension, heart disease and stroke, there is also the link between being overweight and type-2 diabetes. Not to mention the fact that obese children – an increasing problem – have a shorter life expectancy than healthy children.
Obesity and obesity-related diseases – particularly type-2 diabetes – are quickly increasing in all developed countries enjoying a ‘modern’ diet of junk food. Among the dietary factors associated with diabetes, sugar-sweetened and fruit beverages appear to be among the worst, possibly due to the amount of fructose in fruit juices and high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks. Fructose more easily contributes to fatty tissue than other forms of sugar.
At the same time, research shows that actually eating fresh fruits and vegetables significantly reduces the chances of developing diabetes. Low-fat diets don’t seem to change the odds much, though significant weight loss itself does help reduce chances of developing diabetes.
Perhaps the best advice anyone could follow is simply not to get fat – or lose weight and get fit. Eat less, exercise more, eat more whole foods and less processed foods. Your body will thank you for it, and so will your pocketbook!
USPS Alzheimer’s Stamp
Rapid Alzheimer’s Improvement After New Immune-based Treatment
The open access journal BMC Neurology published research this week detailing some amazing results from the use of the anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha [TNF-alpha] drug to treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease from a novel immune system approach. Researchers documented improvement in language function within minutes of administering the drug, tending to confirm preliminary evidence that disrupted neural communication in Alzheimer’s patients may be reversible.
This is a very hopeful development, as are results from clinical drug trials in recent years slowing the progression of the disease in elderly patients as well as ongoing research into substances that may help clear the beta amyloid placques in the brain tissue, characteristic of the disease. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, it is estimated that up to 10 million of them will get this awful disease.
Some doctors are expressing concern about unduly raising hopes in patients and their families on these very early findings. Dr. Sam Gandy, chairman of the Alzheimer’s Association’s medical and science council, has expressed suspicion due to the private nature of the research because the lead researcher has a financial interest in the drug. It is hoped that other laboratories and scientists will be able to duplicate the results, but that more rigorous clinical work remains to be done.
UCLA associate professor of neurology John Ringman and colleagues have reported in the journal Neurology that there may be a way to detect Alzheimer’s even before symptoms appear by measuring the level of certain proteins in the blood and spinal fluid. These proteins are potentially useful biomarkers to identify and track progression of the disease before the patient shows any signs of deteriorating mental acuity.
The amount of suffering for the families of those 10 million people could be reduced drastically if there were effective treatments, so there is a good deal of public and private research ongoing. Hopefully when the Boomers reach an age where they have ready access to medical care via Medicare, diagnosis and treatment will be available to them.
• Nearly 50% of the bacteria in your body (and humans harbor 3 times more bacterial cells than human cells) live on the surface of your tongue, which (by the way) is the strongest muscle in your body. Probably a good reason why Mommy-Kisses work better than Mommy-Licks on boo-boos.
• The incidence of immune system diseases has increased more than 200% in the last five years. Yikes! Is that environmental?
• By the time a person is 35 years old, s/he begins losing about 7,000 brain cells a day which are never replaced. Whoa. I’d say something profound about that, but I forgot what the subject was…
• A moderate sunburn damages blood vessels in the skin so seriously that it takes between four and fifteen months for them to heal. The reason I keep SPF 50 on hand all summer.
• Right-handed people live an average of nine years longer than left-handed people. Need I remind readers that correlation does NOT equal causation?
Go on over to One Big Health Nut and read the rest for yourself!
It started way back in 2002, when researchers at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University discovered some Compounds That Rejuvenate Rats, May Aid Humans. Actually, it was a combination of dietary supplements that dramatically improved the activity, energy level and cognitive function of old lab rats. The micro-nutrient compounds were identified as acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha lipoic acid.
Lipoic acid comes naturally in organ meats as well as spinach, broccoli and potatoes. Acetylcarnitine is found in red meats, milk, fish and chicken. Best vegetable sources are avacado, whole wheat and asparagus.
By 2005 the NIH and National Institute on Aging were reporting that Diet, Exercise, Stimulating Environment Helps Old Dogs Learn. That study focused on beagles, and the same antioxidant supplements were added to their diet to cause significant rejuvenate behaviors in the dogs. The study had been ongoing for two years.
“…older beagles performed better on cognitive tests and were more likely to learn new tasks when they were fed a diet fortified with plenty of fruits, vegetables and vitamins, were exercised at least twice weekly, and were given the opportunity to play with other dogs and a variety of stimulating toys.”
Of course, the reasons why scientific researchers would go from rats to dogs in an effort to find out what might work best for people makes perfect sense, even to us non-scientific dog-lover types…
“…Like humans, dogs engage in complex cognitive strategies and have a more complicated brain structure than many other animals. Dogs also process dietary nutrients in ways similar to humans. And like people, dogs are susceptible to age-related declines in learning andmemory, and can develop neuropathology similar to Alzheimer’s disease.”
As if we didn’t know. Anyway, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology reported just today (September 27) that yes, You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks — With The Right Diet.
It’s those same rat-researchers at Linus Pauling Institute, joining the University of Toronto, the University of California/Berkeley, Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and a company (who thought someone wouldn’t want to market this?) called Juvenon, Inc. It’s the same acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha lipoic acid too.
Findings showed that these supplements (available on the health/nutrition market right now for humans and dogs) – believed to play a role in slowing mitochondrial decay in cells – significantly increase the ability of ‘geriatric’ beagles to learn new tricks.
It’s not the first time that supplements for my older dogs have been made a regular part of my own daily routine, either. I’m older than any of those dogs! When my sister’s dear aged border collie named Angus came to live out his last year with us, he had been prescribed daily doses of Glucosamine. I got the human variety at Eckerd’s, since there’s no real difference in that and the veterinary version except that the vet version can cost more. We had to put him down finally when he simply could no longer stand, but I still take the Glucosamine every other day or so for my swollen fingers and stiff joints.
Since this study was funded by private industry (companies that produce these compounds), one might legitimately be suspicious, per the issues highlighted in the Who’s Responsible for Irresponsible Science News. Or, since these are micronutrients obtained originally from food sources (probably synthesized now), an occasional dose might not hurt.
I figure I’ll get some for my rescue-pup girl-dogs (both in double digits now) and might pilfer a few of those too. Lord knows I could sure make good use of the ability to learn new tricks!
Links:
You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks — With The Right Diet