[2018]
Ways to Reduce Your Risk for Alzheimer's
1. Drink enough Coffee
2. Have Dental health (healthy gums)
3. Have Intellectual stimulation, an enriched environment
4. Do Cardiovascular exercise
5. Avoid head trauma
6. Meditate, reduce stress (and cortisol)
7. Have enough Vitamin D
8. Get married, socialize
9. Don’t get herpes cold sores (herpes simplex)
Studies have shown associations with each of these. Cause and effect are not guaranteed, but....maybe? We'll cover these in subsequent posts.
News from the International Nutrition and Brain Function Conference
Washington, DC 19 July 2013
>>Vitamin E
Vitamin E is important for brain function, and people with LOW vitamin E intake seem to have more dementia. But Vitamin E supplements don't help, and increase the risk of prostate cancer. Perhaps this is because vitamin E in high levels actually turns around and becomes a pro-oxidant rather than an antioxidant.
>> Enrich your Environment: Preserve Your Brain
"Brain exercise" may help slow down memory loss. But this possibility brings up two issues. What kind of brain work is useful, and how might it work?
Some recent studies attempt to answer these questions. First, epidemiologic studies find an association between social activities and memory. But perhaps people who are losing their memory pull back from social interaction because they don't want to reveal their memory weakness, or they have difficulty following the conversation and fear they might say something 'stupid.' Maybe the association is an effect rather than a cause. There aren't many prospective studies in which one group is made to be more socially active, and the control group is made to be less active. (In fact, none that I could find.) So, while the association is probably real, it's not known if increasing your social activities really will reduce your risk of dementia, or it's just that having a little dementia make people pull back from social activities.
One non-helpful finding is that practicing number games makes a person better at number games. Such studies have not shown that games improve one's memory of what they ate last night, or where they left the car, which is to say, experiential memory, which is lost early in Alzheimer's.
Higher education seems to retard the onset of memory loss. But formal education occurred long before the age when Alzheimer's usually starts to appear. Does it produce long-lasting protection, or is there something else associated with higher education, such as better diet, or the ability to have a healthier lifestyle? These are more unanswered questions.
So far, for the first question, what type of activity is most likely to be helpful, we draw a blank. We just don't know. What about the mechanism?
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> How an Enriched Environment Might Work
One mechanism is pretty clear, at least in mice, and it has to do with a brain system different than the one we usually associate with Alzheimer's.
A recent study found that an "enriched environment" gave wild type mice improved memory-related behavior. "Enriched environment," meant lots of toys and more space to play (think the opposite of an office cubicle). Long term potentiation (LTP) was increased when the mice had the toys. LTP is a brain process that's necessary to convert an impression into a memory. Increased LTP was presumed to be the mechanism for the improved memory. An enriched environment improved LTP which improved memory.
Adrenalin-like stimulation was probably the way LTP was improved. Adrenergic(adrenalin-like) stimulation comes about when beta receptors are stimulated. The memory effect was blunted by a drug that blocked beta 1 receptors (propranolol), and was enhanced by a drug that stimulated beta receptors (isoproterenol). Adrenergic stimulation increases downstream cAMP/PKA signaling in LTP. Adrenergic pathways from the locus ceruleus [coeruleus in England] are diminished in Alzheimer's, so augmenting adrenergic effect makes sense to improve brain function. We usually associate acetylcholine as the brain chemical that is critical in Alzheimer's, but this study implicates adrenalin as well.
Implications
1. Diminished acetylcholine is not the only culprit in Alzheimer's dementia
2. Don't take propranolol, which is a beta 1 blocker, to help you memorize something. If you are already taking propranolol, do not abruptly stop--that may cause a heart attack and death.
3. An enriched environment is not only more fun, but it probably helps you keep your memory.
[ Source: Neuron, Volume 77, Issue 5, 929-941, 6 March 2013]
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