Recent Longevity News for the seven days ending 12/11/13.  You should consult your doctor if you are taking any medications.

35 year study finds exercise reduces risk of dementia - Science Daily, 12/10/13 - "The study identifies five healthy behaviors as being integral to having the best chance of leading a disease-free lifestyle: taking regular exercise, non-smoking, a low body weight, a healthy diet and a low alcohol intake ... The people who consistently followed four or five of these behaviors experienced a 60 per cent decline in dementia and cognitive decline -- with exercise being the strongest mitigating factor -- as well as 70 per cent fewer instances of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, compared with people who followed none"

Smoking Pot May Double Risk for Stillbirth - Medscape, 12/9/13 - "Odds of stillbirth were nearly 2 times higher among women whose fetuses tested positive for any drug metabolite (case patients, 7.0%; control patients, 3.7%; odds ratio [OR], 1.94; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.16 - 3.27). The most common illicit drug was cannabis, which increased the odds of stillbirth by more than twice as much (case patients, 3.9%; control patients, 1.7%; OR, 2.34; 95% CI, 1.13 - 4.81) ... There was a dose–response relationship between maternal smoking and stillbirth, with odds of stillbirth increasing with higher maternal cotinine levels. Exposure to secondhand smoke (lack of maternal smoking history along with cotinine levels less than 3 ng/mL) increased the odds of stillbirth by twice as much (case patients, 5.0%; control patients, 2.7%; OR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.24 - 3.41)"

How 'good cholesterol' stops inflammation - Science Daily, 12/9/13 - "To put it simply, high HDL levels in blood are an important protective factor against sustained inflammation"

Some Gut Bacteria May Affect Colorectal Cancer Risk - Medscape, 12/6/13 - "Because of the potentially modifiable nature of the gut bacteria, our findings may have implications for CRC prevention ... The researchers found decreased microbiome community diversity in patients with CRC , compared with that of healthy participants(P = .02). In an analysis by taxa, patients with CRC had lower relative abundances of Clostridia, at 68.6% compared with 77.8% in people without CRC. In contrast, patients with CRC carried a higher relative abundance of Fusobacterium (31.9% vs 11.7% for control patients) ... A higher relative abundance of Fusobacterium was associated with increased CRC risk (multivariable odds ratio [OR], 4.11 ... Actinobacteria Atopobium (OR, 14.36; 95% CI, 2.78 - 74.30; P < .001) and the Bacteriodetes Porphyromonas (OR, 5.17; 95% CI, 1.75 - 15.25; P = .001) were also associated with CRC risk" - See probiotic products at Amazon.com.

Some Diabetes Drugs May Affect Cancer Risk in Women - WebMD, 12/6/13 - "Cleveland Clinic researchers analyzed data from more than 25,600 women and men with type 2 diabetes ... The drugs included "insulin sensitizers," which lower blood sugar and insulin levels in the body by increasing the muscle, fat and liver's response to insulin. The other drugs analyzed were "insulin secretagogues," which lower blood sugar by stimulating beta cells in the pancreas to make more insulin ... The use of insulin sensitizers in women was associated with a 21 percent decreased cancer risk compared to insulin secretagogues, the investigators found. Furthermore, the use of a specific insulin sensitizer called thiazolidinedione was associated with a 32 percent decreased cancer risk in women compared to sulphonylurea, an insulin secretagogue ... there were no significant differences between men who used insulin sensitizers or secretagogues"

The Surprising Benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar - U.S. News, 12/6/13 - "Weight loss ... Growth Hormone Production ... Iron Use ... Mood Enhancement" - See my vinegar page.  See apple cider vinegar at Amazon.com - 1 Source Natural 500 mg tablet equals 2 teaspoons of vinegar.  4.5 tablets equals about 3 tablespoons by my calculations.

Probiotic therapy alleviates autism-like behaviors in mice - Science Daily, 12/5/13 - "the researchers treated the mice with Bacteroides fragilis, a bacterium that has been used as an experimental probiotic therapy in animal models of GI disorders ... The result? The leaky gut was corrected ... In addition, observations of the treated mice showed that their behavior had changed. In particular, they were more likely to communicate with other mice, had reduced anxiety, and were less likely to engage in a repetitive digging behavior ... The B. fragilis treatment alleviates GI problems in the mouse model and also improves some of the main behavioral symptoms ... This suggests that GI problems could contribute to particular symptoms in neurodevelopmental disorders"

A Low-Fat, Plant-Based Lifestyle and Serum HDL Levels - Medscape, 12/4/13 - "HDL levels decreased by 8.7% (p<0.001) despite significant reductions (p<0.001) in BMI (-3.2%), systolic BP (-5.2%), diastolic BP (-5.2%), triglycerides (TG; -7.7%), FPG (-6.3%), LDL (-13.0%), total cholesterol (TC, -11.1%), TC: HDL ratio (-3.2%), and LDL: HDL ratio (-5.3%). While 323 participants classified as having MetS at program entry no longer had this status after the 30 days, 112 participants acquired the MetS classification as a result of reduction in their HDL levels"

Omega-3 Dietary Supplements Pass Blood-Brain Barrier - Science Daily, 12/4/13 - "omega-3 fatty acids in dietary supplements can cross the blood brain barrier in people with Alzheimer's disease ... The findings are presented in the Journal of Internal Medicine, and strengthen the evidence that omega-3 may benefit certain forms of this seriously debilitating disease ... Thirty-three patients participated in the study, 18 of whom received a daily omega-3 supplement and 15 a placebo for six months. The results show that the first group had higher levels of both DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, another omega-3 fatty acid) in their cerebrospinal fluid (which surrounds the CNS) and blood. No such change was seen in the placebo group ... Moreover, they also found that levels of DHA correlated directly with the degree of change in Alzheimer's disease and inflammatory markers in the cerebrospinal fluid" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.

Prenatal exposure to alcohol disrupts brain circuitry: No safe level of drinking during pregnancy, neuroscientist says - Science Daily, 12/4/13 - "prenatal exposure to alcohol significantly altered the expression of genes and the development of a network of connections in the neocortex -- the part of the brain responsible for high-level thought and cognition, vision, hearing, touch, balance, motor skills, language, and emotion -- in a mouse model of FASD. Prenatal exposure caused wrong areas of the brain to be connected with each other ... Although this study uses a moderate- to high-dose model, others have shown that even small doses alter development of key receptors in the brain ... Huffman's team found dramatic changes in intraneocortical connections between the frontal, somatosensory and visual cortex in mice born to mothers who consumed ethanol during pregnancy. The changes were especially severe in the frontal cortex, which regulates motor skill learning, decision-making, planning, judgment, attention, risk-taking, executive function and sociality"

Abstracts from this week's Doctor's Guide Nutrition/Dietetics plus abstracts from my RSS feeds (Click here for the journals, the PubMed ones at the top):

Longitudinal relationship of diet and oxidative stress with depressive symptoms in patients with metabolic syndrome after following a weight loss treatment: The RESMENA project - Clin Nutr. 2013 Nov 22 - "based on volunteers (n = 55) with metabolic syndrome (age 50 ± 1 y.o.; 38M/17F) ... Participants followed two hypocaloric diets (control diet and RESMENA diet) with the same energy restriction (-30% TCV) for six months ... A higher intake of folate and a decline in malondialdehyde plasma levels during a weight loss intervention, were related to improvements in manifestations of depression" - See folic acid products at Amazon.com.

• Malondialdehyde - Wikipedia - "Malondialdehyde is the organic compound with the formula CH2(CHO)2. The structure of this species is more complex than this formula suggests. This reactive species occurs naturally and is a marker for oxidative stress"

Alcohol consumption and risk of metabolic syndrome: A meta-analysis of prospective studies - Clin Nutr. 2013 Oct 14 - "searched the Pubmed and Embase databases up to May 2013 ... compared with nondrinker, very light drinker was associated with decreased risk of metabolic syndrome [pooled relative risk (RR) 0.86, 95% CI: 0.75-0.99, fixed-effect model] while heavy drinker was associated with increased risk of metabolic syndrome (pooled RR 1.84, 95% CI: 1.34-2.52, fixed-effect model)"

Combined therapeutic benefit of mitochondria-targeted antioxidant, MitoQ10, and angiotensin receptor blocker, losartan, on cardiovascular function - J Hypertens. 2013 Dec 4 - "Eight-week-old male stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSPs, n=8-11) were treated with low-dose losartan (2.5mg/kg per day); MitoQ10 (500μmol/l); a combination of MitoQ10 and losartan (M+L); or vehicle for 8 weeks. Systolic pressure and pulse pressure were significantly lower in M+L rats (167.1±2.9mmHg; 50.2±2.05mmHg) than in untreated SHRSP (206.6±9mmHg, P<0.001; 63.7±2.7mmHg, P=0.001) and demonstrated greater improvement than MitoQ10 or low-dose losartan alone, as measured by radiotelemetry. Left ventricular mass index was significantly reduced from 22.8±0.74 to 20.1±0.61mg/mm in the combination group" - See ubiquinol products at Amazon.com.

Vegetable, fruit and nitrate intake in relation to the risk of Barrett's oesophagus in a large Dutch cohort - Br J Nutr. 2013 Dec 5:1-11 - "The Netherlands Cohort Study recruited 120 852 individuals aged 55-69 years in 1986. Vegetable and fruit intake was assessed using a 150-item FFQ, and nitrate intake from dietary sources and drinking water was determined ... 16.3 years of follow-up ... Men exhibited a lower risk of Barrett's oesophagus in the highest v. the lowest quintile of total (multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio (HR): 0.66, 95 % CI 0.43, 1.01), raw (HR 0.63, 95 % CI 0.40, 0.99), raw leafy (HR 0.55, 95 % CI 0.36, 0.86) and Brassica (HR 0.64, 95 % CI 0.41, 1.00) vegetable intake. No association was found for other vegetable groups and fruits. No significant associations were found between vegetable and fruit intake and Barrett's oesophagus risk among women. Total nitrate intake was inversely associated with Barrett's disease risk in men (HR 0.50, 95 % CI 0.25, 0.99) and positively associated with it in women (HR 3.77, 95 % CI 1.68, 8.45) (P for interaction = 0.04)"

Low serum sex hormone-binding globulin is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in type 2 diabetic patients - Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2013 Nov 4 - "One hundred and twenty patients with NAFLD and 120 age-, sex- and BMI-matched patients with non-NAFLD were enrolled into a case-control study ... Serum SHBG levels were significantly lower in NAFLD group than in non-NAFLD group (24.5 ± 11.0 vs 37.6 ± 14.4 nm, P < 0.001)" - Note:  Everything I've read is that more people are worried about high SHBG than low but I'm not a doctor.

Oral Bisphenol A (BPA) given to rats at moderate doses is associated with erectile dysfunction, cavernosal lipofibrosis and alterations of global gene transcription - Int J Impot Res. 2013 Dec 5 - "In all, 2.5-month-old rats were given drinking water daily without and with BPA at 1 and 0.1 mg kg-1 per day ... Orally administered BPA did not affect body weight, but (1) decreased serum T and E2; (2) reduced the EFS response and increased the drop rate; (3) increased within the corporal tissue the presence of fat, myofibroblasts and apoptosis; (4) lowered the contents of SM and stem cells, but not nerve terminals; and (5) caused alterations in the transcriptional profiles for both mRNA and miRs within the penile shaft. Long-term exposure of rats to oral BPA caused a moderate corporal veno-occlusive dysfunction (CVOD), possibly due to alterations within the corporal tissue that pose gene transcriptional changes related to inflammation, fibrosis and epithelial/mesenchymal transition (EMT)"

Lowered Cancer Risk With ACE Inhibitors/ARBs: A Population-Based Cohort Study - J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2013 Nov 8 - "Using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, 297,688 eligible study patients with essential hypertension were identified. According to their antihypertensive prescriptions, the study patients were stratified into an ACE inhibitor group, an ARB group, or a control group ... In the ACE inhibitor group compared with the control group, the hazard ratio was 0.51 (95% confidence interval, 0.39-0.68). In the ARB group compared with the control group, the hazard ratio was 0.8 (95% confidence interval, 0.65-0.97). Regular use of ACE inhibitors/ARBs was not associated with an increased risk of cancer development and was actually found to decrease overall cancer risk in this study"

Cognition and nutrition - Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2014 Jan;17(1):1-4 - "An increasing body of evidence has supported the role of the Mediterranean diet and extra-virgin olive oil in protecting cognition. A number of nutritional formulations to improve deteriorating memory are being studied. Undernutrition is associated with cognitive decline. Hyperglycemia and hypertriglyceridemia cause cognitive impairment"

Dietary protein and muscle in older persons - Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2014 Jan;17(1):5-11 - "Results from muscle protein anabolism, appetite regulation and satiety research support the contention that meeting a protein threshold (approximately 30g/meal) represents a promising strategy for middle-aged and older adults concerned with maintaining muscle mass while controlling body fat"

Exercise as a remedy for sarcopenia - Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2014 Jan;17(1):25-31 - "Resistance exercise training is more effective in increasing muscle mass and strength, whereas endurance exercises training is superior for maintaining and improving maximum aerobic power. Based on these evidences, recommendations for adult and frail older people should include a balanced program of both endurance and strength exercises, performed on a regular schedule (at least 3 days a week) ... Regular exercise is the only strategy found to consistently prevent frailty and improve sarcopenia and physical function in older adults"

Hypovitaminosis D and nocturnal hypertension in obese children: an interesting link - J Hum Hypertens. 2013 Dec 5 - "Low levels of vitamin D in obese children were associated with a higher BP burden, especially at night" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.

Atorvastatin plus omega-3 fatty acid ethyl ester decreases very-low-density lipoprotein triglyceride production in insulin resistant obese men - Diabetes Obes Metab. 2013 Dec 3 - "In insulin resistant, dyslipidemic, obese men, atorvastatin improves VLDL-TG metabolism by increasing VLDL-TG FCR. The addition of 4 g/day ω-3 FAEE to statin therapy provides further TG-lowering by lowering VLDL-TG PR" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.

Effect of Lactobacillus rhamnosus CGMCC1.3724 supplementation on weight loss and maintenance in obese men and women - Br J Nutr. 2013 Dec 3:1-13 - "The present study investigated the impact of a Lactobacillus rhamnosus CGMCC1.3724 (LPR) supplementation on weight loss and maintenance in obese men and women over 24 weeks ... The intention-to-treat analysis showed that after the first 12 weeks and after 24 weeks, mean weight loss was not significantly different between the LPR and placebo groups when all the subjects were considered. However, a significant treatment × sex interaction was observed. The mean weight loss in women in the LPR group was significantly higher than that in women in the placebo group (P= 0.02) after the first 12 weeks, whereas it was similar in men in the two groups (P= 0.53). Women in the LPR group continued to lose body weight and fat mass during the weight-maintenance period, whereas opposite changes were observed in the placebo group. Changes in body weight and fat mass during the weight-maintenance period were similar in men in both the groups. LPR-induced weight loss in women was associated not only with significant reductions in fat mass and circulating leptin concentrations but also with the relative abundance of bacteria of the Lachnospiraceae family in faeces. The present study shows that the Lactobacillus rhamnosus CGMCC1.3724 formulation helps obese women to achieve sustainable weight loss" - See Garden of Life, Primal Defense at Amazon.com which includes Lactobacillus rhamnosus.

HbA1c and Heart Failure Risk among Diabetic Patients - J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Dec 2 - "prospectively investigated the race-specific association of different levels of HbA1c at baseline and during an average of 6.5 years of follow-up with incident HF risk among 17,181 African American and 12,446 White diabetic patients within the Louisiana State University (LSU) Hospital System ... The multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of HF associated with different levels of HbA1c at baseline (<6.0% [reference group], 6.0-6.9%, 7.0-7.9%, 8.0-8.9%, 9.0-9.9%, and ≥10.0%,) were 1.00, 1.02 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.91-1.15), 1.21 (1.05-1.38), 1.29 (1.12-1.50), 1.37 (1.17-1.61), and 1.49 (1.31-1.69) (P trend <0.001) for African American diabetic patients, and 1.00, 1.09 (0.96-1.22), 1.09 (0.95-1.26), 1.43 (1.22-1.67), 1.49 (1.25-1.77), and 1.61 (1.38-1.87) (P trend <0.001) for white diabetic patients, respectively"

Neat Tech Stuff / "How To's":

Best stocking stuffers - CNET Reviews, 12/7/13 - "Haven't you heard? Docks are dead. It's time to go wireless, and the Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver is the easiest way to do it. Connect this $25 dongle to any stereo (or anything with a "line in" or "aux input" port), and you can wirelessly stream music from any Bluetooth-enabled device. That includes all iPads, nearly any smartphone, most iPod Touch models, and most new tablets" - See HomeSpot NFC-enabled Bluetooth Audio Receiver for Sound System which is rated better.

New website lets users check if their online credentials were exposed in hack attacks - PCWorld, 12/6/13 - "The site is called haveibeenpwned.com and was created by Australian software architect Troy Hunt. It allows users to check if their email addresses are present in user databases leaked from Adobe Systems this year, Yahoo in 2012, Sony and Stratfor in 2011 and Gawker in 2010"

Find the right backup drive for your storage needs - PCWorld, 12/6/13 - "I recommend at least twice the capacity of your internal drive, if possible. Multi-computer households or offices should look into network attached storage options ... For greater data protection, look for a multi-drive device that supports RAID 1, also known as mirroring. RAID 1 maintains an exact duplicate of your backups, so that if one drive fails, your data is not lost ... some seem to expect you to have a degree in computer science to manage them properly. If that doesn’t describe you, I recommend Western Digital’s MyCloud drive" - See WD My Cloud 4TB Personal Cloud Storage and WD My Cloud EX4 Diskless: High-Performance NAS, Ultimate Reliability, Personal Cloud Storage.

Dexas Chop and Serve Cutting Board, 12.5 by 20-Inch at Amazon - These are cool. I just bought a second because one is always in the dishwasher. I use it for under my electric slicer for turkey roasts and bread from my bread machine for easy cleanup, for chopping and cutting and as a tray for my food to bring it to my desk or bed.

Health Focus (Alzheimer's Disease):

Related Topics:

• Alzheimer's / Reminyl® (Galantamine hydrobromide) / Seroquel® (quetiapine) / Aricept™ (donepezil hydrochloride) / Exelon (rivastigmine tartrate) / Memantine (investigational) / Procaine HCl

Popular Supplements:

• green tea / DHA / curry / red yeast rice / ginkgo / niacin / melatonin / Huperzine A / SAM-e / phosphatidylserine / acetyl-l-carnitine / folic acid / B-12 / NADH / vitamin E / ginseng / vitamin C / inositol / choline / magnesium / zinc / curcumin / sage

Alternative News:

• Aerobic Exercise Improves Memory, Brain Function, Physical Fitness - Science Daily, 11/12/13 - "sedentary adults ages 57-75 were randomized into a physical training or a wait-list control group. The physical training group participated in supervised aerobic exercise on a stationary bike or treadmill for one hour, three times a week for 12 weeks ... By measuring brain blood flow non-invasively using arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI, we can now begin to detect brain changes much earlier than before ... One key region where we saw increase in brain blood flow was the anterior cingulate, indicating higher neuronal activity and metabolic rate. The anterior cingulate has been linked to superior cognition in late life ... Exercisers who improved their memory performance also showed greater increase in brain blood flow to the hippocampus, the key brain region affected by Alzheimer's disease"
• Magnesium levels vital to brain health as population ages - Science Daily,  11/4/13 - "the human brain begins shrinking after age 25. Structural changes and loss of brain synapses lead to rapid decline in cognitive health ... magnesium deficiency in adults may play a more important role in CI, and more seriously, Alzheimer's Disease (AD), than previously thought ... elevation of brain magnesium through dietary intake of magnesium threonate exerts substantial positive effects on brain synapes in a mouse model of AD, actually restoring aging brains to their youthful conditions ... the 'gold standard' of science, demonstrates that dietary supplementation of Magtein, patented magnesium threonate, can significantly enhance human cognitive functions and decrease symptoms of cognitive impairments ... We know that as we age our bodies naturally lose magnesium. For example, drinking coffee or caffeinated products increases the loss" - See Magtein at Amazon.com.
• High Glucose Linked to Poorer Memory, Even Without Diabetes - Medscape, 10/23/13 - "lowering blood glucose levels, possibly even to relatively low levels, might help preserve cognition ... Strategies that help lower blood glucose levels include a healthy Mediterranean-type diet and regular physical activity ... cross-sectional study included 141 healthy persons (mean age, 63.1 years) ... lower performance on 3 memory tasks (delayed recall, learning ability, and consolidation) was associated with higher levels of both the long-term marker of glucose control (HbA1c) and the short-term glucose marker ... For insulin, there was a "general trend going in the same direction" but correlations were less clear, and without the same direct relationship ... How low is it safe to go in terms of blood glucose levels? ... If you're used to low blood sugar levels, you can go quite low ... The idea is that the lower the A1c the better your brain function" - [Science Daily]
• Major Alzheimer's risk factor linked to red wine target - Science Daily, 10/21/13 - "researchers at the Buck Institute found a link between ApoE4 and SirT1, an "anti-aging protein" that is targeted by resveratrol, present in red wine ... ApoE4 causes a dramatic reduction in SirT1, which is one of seven human Sirtuins ... the abnormalities associated with ApoE4 and AD, such as the creation of phospho-tau and amyloid-beta, could be prevented by increasing SirT1" - See resveratrol products at Amazon.com.
• High serum fatty acid protects against brain abnormalities - Science Daily, 10/17/13 - "3,660 people aged 65 and older underwent brain scans to detect so called silent brain infarcts, or small lesions in the brain that can cause loss of thinking skills, dementia and stroke. Scans were performed again five years later on 2,313 of the participants ... silent brain infarcts, which are only detected by brain scans, are found in about 20% of otherwise healthy elderly people ... those who had high long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid content in blood had about 40% lower risk of having small brain infarcts compared to those with low content of these fatty acids in blood ... people who had high long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid content in blood also had fewer changes in the white matter in their brains" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Statins and Cognition: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Short- and Long-term Cognitive Effects - Mayo Clin Proc. 2013 Sep 27 - "A systematic search was performed of MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Central Register from their inception to April 25, 2013 ... Long-term cognition studies included 23,443 patients with a mean exposure duration of 3 to 24.9 years. Three studies found no association between statin use and incident dementia, and 5 found a favorable effect. Pooled results revealed a 29% reduction in incident dementia in statin-treated patients"
• Statin May Prevent Dementia, Memory Loss With Longer Use, Don't Pose Short-Term Cognition Problems - Science Daily, 10/1/13 - "statins do not affect short-term memory or cognition. In contrast, they say that when the drugs are taken for more than one year, the risk of dementia is reduced by 29 percent ... We looked at high-quality, randomized controlled trials and prospective studies that included more than 23,000 men and women with no prior history of cognitive problems. The participants in those studies were followed for up to 25 years ... Vascular dementia is caused by blockages in small blood vessels in the brain that prevent blood flow to certain areas. Medications such as statins that reduce plaque and inflammation in coronary arteries may also be having the same effect on blood vessels in the brain"
• New brain magnesium research and its role in reversing effects of Alzheimer’s - Nutra USA free download, 9/24/13 - "Magtein is the only magnesium compound that has been shown to effectively raise the brain’s magnesium levels, which leads to enhanced learning abilities, working memory, and short- and long-term memory in both young and aged animals. In four published preclinical studies, Magtein was found to improve memory, alleviate anxiety and help prevent the decline and reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s ... Here, we show that increasing brain magnesium using a newly developed magnesium compound (magnesium-L-threonate, Magtein) leads to the enhancement of learning abilities, working memory, and short- and long-term memory in rats" - See Magtein at Amazon.com.
  • Elevation of brain magnesium prevents and reverses cognitive deficits and synaptic loss in Alzheimer's disease mouse model - J Neurosci. 2013 May 8;33(19):8423-41 - "Here, we investigated whether elevation of brain magnesium by the use of a recently developed compound, magnesium-l-threonate (MgT), can ameliorate the AD-like pathologies and cognitive deficits in the APPswe/PS1dE9 mice, a transgenic (Tg) mouse model of AD. MgT treatment reduced Aβ plaque and prevented synapse loss and memory decline in the Tg mice. Strikingly, MgT treatment was effective even when given to the mice at the end stage of their AD-like pathological progression ... Our results suggest that elevation of brain magnesium exerts substantial synaptoprotective effects in a mouse model of AD and may have therapeutic potential for treating AD in humans"
• Fish oil could help protect alcohol abusers from dementia - Science Daily, 9/8/13 - "pooled the results of 143 studies, found that moderate social drinking may reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment. (Moderate drinking is defined as a maximum of two drinks per day for men and 1 drink per day for women.) ... exposed cultures of adult rat brain cells to amounts of alcohol equivalent to more than four times the legal limit for driving. These cell cultures were compared with cultures of brain cells exposed to the same high levels of alcohol, plus a compound found in fish oil called omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Researchers found there was about 90 percent less neuroinflammation and neuronal death in the brain cells exposed to DHA and alcohol than in the cells exposed to alcohol alone" - See Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Therapeutic Potential of Turmeric in Alzheimer's Disease: Curcumin or Curcuminoids? - Phytother Res. 2013 Jul 19 - "Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. There is limited choice in modern therapeutics, and drugs available have limited success with multiple side effects in addition to high cost. Hence, newer and alternate treatment options are being explored for effective and safer therapeutic targets to address AD. Turmeric possesses multiple medicinal uses including treatment for AD. Curcuminoids, a mixture of curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcumin, are vital constituents of turmeric. It is generally believed that curcumin is the most important constituent of the curcuminoid mixture that contributes to the pharmacological profile of parent curcuminoid mixture or turmeric. A careful literature study reveals that the other two constituents of the curcuminoid mixture also contribute significantly to the effectiveness of curcuminoids in AD. Therefore, it is emphasized in this review that each component of the curcuminoid mixture plays a distinct role in making curcuminoid mixture useful in AD, and hence, the curcuminoid mixture represents turmeric in its medicinal value better than curcumin alone" - See curcumin products at Amazon.com.
• Preventing Alzheimer's disease-related gray matter atrophy by B-vitamin treatment - Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 May 20 - "Is it possible to prevent atrophy of key brain regions related to cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease (AD)? One approach is to modify nongenetic risk factors, for instance by lowering elevated plasma homocysteine using B vitamins. In an initial, randomized controlled study on elderly subjects with increased dementia risk (mild cognitive impairment according to 2004 Petersen criteria), we showed that high-dose B-vitamin treatment (folic acid 0.8 mg, vitamin B6 20 mg, vitamin B12 0.5 mg) slowed shrinkage of the whole brain volume over 2 y. Here, we go further by demonstrating that B-vitamin treatment reduces, by as much as seven fold, the cerebral atrophy in those gray matter (GM) regions specifically vulnerable to the AD process, including the medial temporal lobe ... B vitamins lower homocysteine, which directly leads to a decrease in GM atrophy, thereby slowing cognitive decline" - See folic acid products at Amazon.com and vitamin B12 at Amazon.com.
• Low vitamin and carotenoid levels are related to cerebral white matter lesions - J Nutr Health Aging. 2013;17(5):456-60 - "To determine the effects of vitamins and carotenoids on brain white matter lesions (WMLs), we examined the associations between WMLs with vitamin and carotenoid levels in Japanese middle-aged and elderly subjects ... Deep white matter lesions (DWLs) ... Lower gamma-tocopherol levels were significantly associated with DWLs in all subjects. While lower gamma-tocopherol and vitamin C levels were significantly associated with DWLs in males, lower delta-tocopherol levels were associated with DWLs in females. The associations between DWLs and lower gamma- and delta-tocopherol and vitamin C levels were independent of age, hypertension, or smoking. However, the associations between DWLs and lower alfa-tocopherol were not significant following adjustments for smoking" - Note:  Most supplements only contain alfa-tocopherol which had no affect.  See Jarrow FamilE (contains all eight members of the vitamin E family, includes Tocomin) at Amazon.com.
• More Evidence Berries Have Health-Promoting Properties - Science Daily, 4/21/13 - "researchers from the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and University of Maryland Baltimore County recently fed rats a berry diet for 2 months and then looked at their brains after irradiation, a model for accelerated aging ... Berries seem to promote autophagy, the brain's natural housekeeping mechanism, thereby reducing the toxic accumulation" - See Garden of Life, Radical Fruits Antioxidant Complex at Amazon.com.
• Dietary patterns and risk of dementia in an elderly Japanese population: the Hisayama Study - Am J Clin Nutr. 2013 Apr 3 - "dietary pattern 1 was correlated with high intakes of soybeans and soybean products, vegetables, algae, and milk and dairy products and a low intake of rice ... vascular dementia (VaD) ... AD, and VaD were reduced by 0.66 (95% CI: 0.46, 0.95), 0.65 (95% CI: 0.40, 1.06), and 0.45 (95% CI: 0.22, 0.91), respectively, in subjects in the highest quartile of score for dietary pattern 1 compared with subjects in the lowest quartile"
• Explaining how extra virgin olive oil protects against Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 3/20/13 - "Newer research suggested that the actual protective agent might be a substance called oleocanthal, which has effects that protect nerve cells from the kind of damage that occurs in AD ... oleocanthal showed a consistent pattern in which it boosted production of two proteins and key enzymes believed to be critical in removing Aβ from the brain" - See olive leaf extract at Amazon.com.
• Pomegranate Polyphenols and Extract Inhibit Nuclear Factor of Activated T-Cell Activity and Microglial Activation In Vitro and in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Alzheimer Disease - J Nutr. 2013 Mar 6 - "Alzheimer disease (AD) brain is characterized by extracellular plaques of amyloid β (Aβ) peptide with reactive microglia ... Three months of pomegranate feeding decreased the path length to escape of mice compared with their initial 12-mo values (P < 0.05) and their control-fed counterparts (P < 0.05). Brains of the 3-mo study pomegranate-fed mice had lower tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) concentrations (P < 0.05) and lower nuclear factor of activated T-cell (NFAT) transcriptional activity (P < 0.05) compared with controls. Brains of the 3-mo pomegranate or control mice were also compared with an additional control group of 12-mo-old mice for histologic analysis. Immunocytochemistry showed that pomegranate- but not control-fed mice had attenuated microgliosis (P < 0.05) and Aβ plaque deposition (P < 0.05) compared with 12-mo-old mice ... These data indicate that dietary pomegranate produces brain antiinflammatory effects that may attenuate AD progression" - See pomegranate at Amazon.com.
• Citicoline May Improve Memory, Decrease Cognitive Decline - Medscape, 3/5/13 - "The study examined 349 patients older than 64 years from 6 regions in Italy who had memory complaints and evidence of vascular lesions — but who did not have probable Alzheimer's disease ... the participants who received citicoline had significantly better memory scores, as shown on the Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE), up to 9 months after treatment compared with their counterparts who did not receive the treatment ... Of the 349 study participants, 265 received 500 mg of oral citicoline twice daily" - See citicholine at Amazon.com.
• Green tea extract interferes with the formation of amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 3/5/13 - "The aggregation of these proteins, called metal-associated amyloids, is associated with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions ... Lim and an interdisciplinary team of researchers used green tea extract to control the generation of metal-associated amyloid-β aggregates associated with Alzheimer's disease in the lab ... The specific molecule in green tea, ( -- )-epigallocatechin-3-gallate, also known as EGCG, prevented aggregate formation and broke down existing aggregate structures in the proteins that contained metals -- specifically copper, iron and zinc" - See green tea extract at Amazon.com.
• Copper can protect against Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 2/17/13 - "under conditions which are approximately similar to those found in the brain, copper can only protect against beta amyloid forming beta sheets and as such it is highly unlikely that copper is directly involved in the formation of senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease ... The research, published by Nature's online journal Scientific Reports, may also imply that lower levels of copper in the brain may promote the mechanisms whereby beta amyloid is deposited as senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease" - See Jarrow Zinc Balance at Amazon.com.
• Green tea and red wine extracts interrupt Alzheimer's disease pathway in cells - Science Daily, 2/5/13 - "They were able to interrupt this pathway using the purified extracts of EGCG from green tea and resveratrol from red wine ... Alzheimer's disease is characterised by a distinct build-up of amyloid protein in the brain, which clumps together to form toxic, sticky balls of varying shapes. These amyloid balls latch on to the surface of nerve cells in the brain by attaching to proteins on the cell surface called prions, causing the nerve cells to malfunction and eventually die ... The team formed amyloid balls in a test tube and added them to human and animal brain cells ... When we added the extracts from red wine and green tea, which recent research has shown to re-shape amyloid proteins, the amyloid balls no longer harmed the nerve cells" - See green tea extract at Amazon.com and resveratrol products at Amazon.com.
• Vitamin D, omega-3 may help clear amyloid plaques found in Alzheimer's - Science Daily, 2/5/13 - "Our new study sheds further light on a possible role for nutritional substances such as vitamin D3 and omega-3 in boosting immunity to help fight Alzheimer's ... The team incubated the immune cells overnight with amyloid-beta. They added either an active form of vitamin D3 called 1alpha,25–dihydroxyvitamin D3 or an active form of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA called resolvin D1 to some of the cells to gauge the effect they had on inflammation and amyloid-beta absorption ... Both 1alpha, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 and resolvin D1 improved the ability of the Alzheimer's disease patients' macrophages to gobble-up amyloid-beta, and they inhibited the cell death that is induced by amyloid-beta. Researchers observed that each nutrition molecule utilized different receptors and common signaling pathways to do this"
• Mild vitamin B12 deficiency associated with accelerated cognitive decline - Science Daily, 12/5/12 - "examined data from 549 men and women enrolled in a cohort of the Framingham Heart Study, focusing on scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), a short list of questions and tasks commonly used to screen for dementia. The subjects were divided into five groups, based on their vitamin B-12 blood levels ... Being in the two lowest groups was associated with significantly accelerated cognitive decline ... Rapid neuropsychiatric decline is a well-known consequence of severe vitamin B-12 deficiency, but our findings suggest that adverse cognitive effects of low vitamin B-12 status may affect a much larger proportion of seniors than previously thought" - See vitamin B12 at Amazon.com.
• Vitamin D tied to women's cognitive performance - Science Daily, 11/30/12 - "Higher vitamin D dietary intake is associated with a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease ... low vitamin D levels among older women are associated with higher odds of global cognitive impairment and a higher risk of global cognitive decline ... Slinin's group based its analysis on 6,257 community-dwelling older women who had vitamin D levels measured during the Study of Osteopathic Fractures" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.
• This is your brain on exercise - nbcnews.com, 11/26/12 - "Seniors who fit in the most daily physical activity – from raking leaves to dancing – can have more gray matter in important brain regions ... The scientists have images that show people who were the most active had 5 percent more gray matter than people who were the least active. Having more little gray brain cells translates into a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, other studies have shown ... the MRIs showed the differences were in areas of the brain like the hippocampus, which is heavily damaged in Alzheimer’s disease ... No pharmaceutical drug on the market has been shown to have these effects on the brain -- not a single drug ...  And exercise is available to anyone ... And it doesn’t cost anything"
• Effects of supplementation with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on cognitive performance and cardiometabolic risk markers in healthy 51 to 72 years old subjects: a randomized controlled cross-over study - Nutr J. 2012 Nov 22;11(1):99 - "Fish oil n-3 PUFA (3g daily) were consumed during 5weeks separated by a 5 week washout period in a cross-over placebo controlled study, including 40 healthy middle aged to elderly subjects ... Supplementation with n-3 PUFA resulted in better performance in the WM-test compared with placebo (p < 0.05). In contrast to placebo, n-3 PUFA lowered plasma triacylglycerides (P < 0.05) and systolic blood pressure (p < 0.0001). Systolic blood pressure (p < 0.05), f-glucose (p = 0.05), and s-TNF-alpha (p = 0.05), were inversely related to the performance in cognitive tests ... Intake of n-3 PUFA improved cognitive performance in healthy subjects after five weeks compared with placebo. In addition, inverse relations were obtained between cardiometabolic risk factors and cognitive performance, indicating a potential of dietary prevention strategies to delay onset of metabolic disorders and associated cognitive decline" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Vitamin D could hold vital key to arresting development of Alzheimer’s disease - Science Daily, 11/8/12 - "Alzheimer's patients who were not using medication had very poor stores of vitamin D2 -- the type originating from food such as oily fish, rather than that obtained from exposure to the sun. "The vitamin was either non-existent or in such low quantities that it could barely be measured," he explained. "In comparison, people in the study who were either being treated with drugs to control their Alzheimer's or who didn't have the condition at all showed far higher levels."" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.
• Aspirin may slow the decline in mental capacity among elderly patients, Swedish study suggests - Science Daily, 10/22/12 - "Of the 681 women, 129 received a low daily dose of acetylsalicylic acid, equivalent to a fourth of an aspirin, to prevent heart disease. The Gothenburg study shows that acetylsalicylic acid also slowed decline in brain capacity among the elderly women ... At the end of the five year examination period mental capacity had declined among all the women and the portion that suffered from dementia was equally large in the entire group. However, the decline in brain capacity was significantly less and occurred at a slower pace among the women who received acetylsalicylic acid"
• Exercise Protects Aging Brains Better - WebMD, 10/22/12 - "The new research included about 700 people living in the United Kingdom who all had brain scans when they reached the age of 73 ... Three years earlier, at age 70, the study participants were questioned about the leisure and physical activities they engaged in ... People in the study who reported being the most physically active tended to have larger brain volumes of gray and normal white matter, and physical activity was linked to less brain atrophy ... Regular exercise also appeared to protect against the formation of white matter lesions, which are linked to thinking and memory decline"
• Conversion from Mild Cognitive Impairment to Dementia: Influence of Folic Acid and Vitamin B12 Use in the VITA Cohort - J Nutr Health Aging. 2012;16(8):687-94 - "Increased serum homocysteine and low folate levels are associated with a higher rate of conversion to dementia ... The self-reported combined use of folic acid and vitamin B12 for more than one year was associated with a lower conversion rate to dementia. Serum levels of homocysteine and vitamin B12 as measured at baseline or at five years were not associated with conversion. Higher folate levels at baseline in females predicted a lower conversion rate to dementia. The assessment of brain morphological parameters by magnetic resonance imaging revealed higher serum folate at baseline, predicting lower medial temporal lobe atrophy and higher levels of homocysteine at baseline, predicting moderate/severe global brain atrophy at five years. Users of vitamin B12 or folate, independent of time and pattern of use, had lower grades of periventricular hyperintensities and lower grades of deep white matter lesions as compared to non-users" - See folic acid products at Amazon.com and vitamin B12 at Amazon.com.
• Eating lots of carbs, sugar may raise risk of cognitive impairment - Science Daily, 10/16/12 - "People 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have nearly four times the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, and the danger also rises with a diet heavy in sugar, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Those who consume a lot of protein and fat relative to carbohydrates are less likely to become cognitively impaired ... Researchers tracked 1,230 people ages 70 to 89 who provided information on what they ate during the previous year ... A high carbohydrate intake could be bad for you because carbohydrates impact your glucose and insulin metabolism"
• Caffeine may block inflammation linked to mild cognitive impairment - Science Daily, 10/8/12 - "Freund's team examined the effects of caffeine on memory formation in two groups of mice -- one group given caffeine, the other receiving none. The two groups were then exposed to hypoxia, simulating what happens in the brain during an interruption of breathing or blood flow, and then allowed to recover ... The caffeine-treated mice recovered their ability to form a new memory 33 percent faster than the non-caffeine-treated mice. In fact, caffeine had the same anti-inflammatory effect as blocking IL-1 signaling. IL-1 is a critical player in the inflammation associated with many neurodegenerative diseases ... caffeine blocks all the activity of adenosine and inhibits caspase-1 and the inflammation that comes with it, limiting damage to the brain and protecting it from further injury"
• Vitamin D, cognition, and dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis - Neurology. 2012 Sep 25;79(13):1397-405 - "Thirty-seven studies were included; 8 contained data allowing mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores to be compared between participants with vitamin D <50 nmol/L to those with values ≥50 nmol/L. There was significant heterogeneity among the studies that compared the WMD for MMSE but an overall positive effect for the higher vitamin D group (1.2, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.5 to 1.9; I(2) = 0.65; p = 0.002). The small positive effect persisted despite several sensitivity analyses. Six studies presented data comparing Alzheimer disease (AD) to controls but 2 utilized a method withdrawn from commercial use. For the remaining 4 studies the AD group had a lower vitamin D concentration compared to the control group (WMD = -6.2 nmol/L, 95% CI -10.6 to -1.8) with no heterogeneity (I(2) < 0.01; p = 0.53) ... These results suggest that lower vitamin D concentrations are associated with poorer cognitive function and a higher risk of AD" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.
• Melatonin and exercise work against Alzheimer's in mice - Science Daily, 9/26/12 - "The mice were divided into one control group and three other groups which would undergo different treatments: exercise -unrestricted use of a running wheel-, melatonin -a dose equivalent to 10 mg per kg of body weight-, and a combination of melatonin and voluntary physical exercise ... After six months, the state of the mice undergoing treatment was closer to that of the mice with no mutations than to their own initial pathological state. From this we can say that the disease has significantly regressed ... The results, which were published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, show a general improvement in behaviour, learning, and memory with the three treatments ... These procedures also protected the brain tissue from oxidative stress and provided good levels of protection from excesses of amyloid beta peptide and hyperphosphorylated TAU protein caused by the mutations" - Note:  That's a huge amount of melatonin though but then on the other hand it was a short six month period but on the third hand, mice have a much shorter life span so it might interpolate to a much longer time span for humans.  See Source Naturals, Melatonin, 2.5 mg, Peppermint Flavored Sublingual, 60 Tablets which is what I take.
• Higher Free Thyroxine Levels Predict Increased Incidence of Dementia in Older Men: The Health In Men Study - J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Sep 13 - "Men who developed dementia had higher baseline FT(4) (16.5 +/- 2.2 vs. 15.9 +/- 2.2 pmol/liter, P = 0.004) but similar TSH (2.2 +/- 1.4 vs. 2.3 +/- 1.6 mU/liter, P = 0.23) compared with men who did not receive this diagnosis. After adjusting for covariates, higher FT(4) predicted new-onset dementia (11% increased risk per 1 pmol/liter increase in FT(4), P = 0.005; quartiles Q2-4 vs. Q1: adjusted hazard ratio = 1.76, 95% confidence interval = 1.03-3.00, P = 0.04). There was no association between TSH quartiles and incident dementia. When the analysis was restricted to euthyroid men (excluding those with subclinical hyper- or hypothyroidism), higher FT(4) remained associated with incident dementia (11% increase per unit increment, P = 0.03; Q2-4 vs. Q1: adjusted hazard ratio = 2.02, 95% confidence interval = 1.10-3.71, P = 0.024)" - Note:  There is also an association with a low T3/T4 ration and insulin resistance.  I alternate between taking T4 on day and T3 the next.  Doctor's seem to refuse to prescribe both.  See T3 at International Anti-aging Systems.
  • Hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance is associated with low T(3)/T(4) ratio in pre diabetic euthyroid pakistani subjects - J Diabetes Complications. 2012 Jul 11 - "Hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance are associated with low T(3)/T(4) ratio in pre-diabetic euthyroid Pakistani subjects"
• Vitamin C and beta-carotene might protect against dementia - Science Daily, 9/11/12 - "A total of 74 AD-patients and 158 healthy controls were examined for the study that has been published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (JAD) ... The concentration of vitamin C and beta-carotene in the serum of AD-patients was significantly lower than in the blood of control subjects. Whereas no such difference between the groups could be found for the other antioxidants (vitamin E, lycopene, coenzyme Q10)" - See Jarrow Formulas, CarotenALL at Amazon.com and vitamin C at Amazon.com.
• Tocopherols and tocotrienols plasma levels are associated with cognitive impairment - Neurobiol Aging. 2012 Oct;33(10):2282-90 - "Vitamin E includes 8 natural compounds (4 tocopherols, 4 tocotrienols) with potential neuroprotective activity. α-Tocopherol has mainly been investigated in relation to cognitive impairment ... Low plasma tocopherols and tocotrienols levels are associated with increased odds of MCI and AD" - [Nutra USA] - See Jarrow FamilE (contains all eight members of the vitamin E family, includes Tocomin) at Amazon.com.
• Brush your teeth! Dental health linked to dementia risk - MSNBC, 8/21/12 - "Inflammation stoked by gum disease-related bacteria is implicated in a host of conditions including heart disease, stroke and diabetes ... It's thought that gum disease bacteria might get into the brain, causing inflammation and brain damage ... followed 5,468 residents of a Californian retirement community from 1992 to 2010. Most people in the study were white, well-educated and relatively affluent. When the study began, participants ranged in age from 52 to 105, with an average age of 81 ... All were free of dementia at the outset, when they answered questions about their dental health habits, the condition of their teeth and whether they wore dentures ... followed up 18 years later ... Of 78 women who said they brushed their teeth less than once a day in 1992, 21 had dementia by 2010, or about one case per 3.7 women ... In comparison, among those who brushed at least once a day, closer to one in every 4.5 women developed dementia which translates to a 65-percent greater chance of dementia among those who brushed less than daily"
• Plasma long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and atrophy of the medial temporal lobe - Neurology. 2012 Aug 1 - "A total of 281 community dwellers from the Three-City Study, aged 65 years or older, had plasma fatty acid measurements at baseline and underwent MRI examinations at baseline and at 4 years. We studied the association between plasma EPA and DHA and MTL gray matter volume change at 4 years ... Higher plasma EPA, but not DHA, was associated with lower gray matter atrophy of the right hippocampal/parahippocampal area and of the right amygdala (p < 0.05, familywise error corrected). Based on a mean right amygdala volume loss of 6.0 mm(3)/y (0.6%), a 1 SD higher plasma EPA (+0.64% of total plasma fatty acids) at baseline was related to a 1.3 mm(3) smaller gray matter loss per year in the right amygdala. Higher atrophy of the right amygdala was associated with greater 4-year decline in semantic memory performances and more depressive symptoms ... The amygdala, which develops neuropathology in the early stage of AD and is involved in the pathogenesis of depression, may be an important brain structure involved in the association between EPA and cognitive decline and depressive symptoms" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com.
• Supplement May Aid Vascular Dementia Memory Problems - Medscape, 8/1/12 - "at 9 months, there was a significant difference in Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores in citicoline users vs nonusers ... A psychostimulant, citicoline has been shown to inhibit brain cell death associated with cerebral ischemia. It has also been shown to inhibit neurodegeneration and is able to increase neuroplasticity and noradrenaline and dopamine levels in the central nervous system ... Those in the active treatment group received oral citicoline at a dose of 500 mg twice a day" - See citicholine at Amazon.com.
• Medical Food Linked to Memory Improvement in Mild Alzheimer's - Medscape, 7/23/12 - "Administration of a medical food designed to improve synaptic dysfunction is associated with continuous memory improvement in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) ... The once-a-day drink contains a patented nutrient combination with the following ingredients: Eicospentaenoic acid, 300 mg ... Docosahexaenoic acid, 1200 mg ... Phospholipids 106 mg ... Choline, 400 mg ... Uridine monophosphate, 625 mg ... Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol equivalents), 40 mg ... Selenium, 60 µg ... Vitamin B12, 3 µg ... Vitamin B6, 1 µg ... Folic acid, 400 µg"
• Gingko biloba extract EGb 761®: clinical data in dementia - Int Psychogeriatr. 2012 Aug;24 Suppl 1:S35-40 - "Research into Gingko biloba extract EGb 761® has been ongoing for many years. Early studies showed that the extract was superior to placebo in improving symptoms of dementia, and this has been confirmed by more recent research. The GINDEM-NP, GOTADAY and GOT-IT! studies showed that 240 mg/day EGb 761® improved cognitive function, neuropsychiatric symptoms, activities of daily living, and quality of life in patients with mild to moderate dementia compared with placebo, with results reproducible in independent trials. The strength of the effect in terms of improvements in neurosensory symptoms associated with old age and dementia was strong enough to be detected by caregivers and independent clinicians. A combination of 240 mg/day EGb 761® and 10 mg/day (initially 5 mg/day) donepezil was also more effective than either drug alone. Regarding the improvement of neuropsychiatric symptoms, a cross-comparison of studies with different antidementia agents suggests that EGb 761® is at least as effective as memantine, galantamine, and donepezil. Safety data revealed no important safety concerns with EGb 761���������" - See Ginkgo biloba at Amazon.com.
• Metformin May Help Renew Neurons - Medscape, 7/10/12 - "Animal studies showed that metformin activates a key pathway (aPKC-CBP) that promotes neurogenesis and enhanced hippocampus-dependent spatial memory formation in study animals. Results also showed that the drug has similar activity on human neural precursors, increasing the likelihood that it might enhance neurogenesis in the human brain as well ... compared with mice given a control substance, those treated with metformin had about a third more new neurons in the hippocampus, and almost double the number of new neurons produced by stem cells ... in a spatial learning maze test, mice given metformin (200 mg/kg) were significantly better able to learn the location of a submerged platform compared with those given a sterile saline solution" - See metformin at The Antiaging Store.
• Nutrient mixture improves memory in patients with early Alzheimer's - Science Daily, 7/10/12 - "Wurtman came up with a mixture of three naturally occurring dietary compounds: choline, uridine and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA ... These nutrients are precursors to the lipid molecules that, along with specific proteins, make up brain-cell membranes, which form synapses. To be effective, all three precursors must be administered together ... In animal studies, he showed that his dietary cocktail boosted the number of dendritic spines, or small outcroppings of neural membranes, found in brain cells. These spines are necessary to form new synapses between neurons ... 40 percent of patients who consumed the drink improved in a test of verbal memory, while 24 percent of patients who received the control drink improved their performance ... Patients, whether taking Souvenaid or a placebo, improved their verbal-memory performance for the first three months, but the placebo patients deteriorated during the following three months, while the Souvenaid patients continued to improve ... as the trial went on, the brains of patients receiving the supplements started to shift from patterns typical of dementia to more normal patterns. Because EEG patterns reflect synaptic activity, this suggests that synaptic function increased following treatment, the researchers say" - Avoid the patent mark-up.  See citicholine at Amazon.com, uridine at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Diabetes drug may someday repair Alzheimer's damage - MSNBC, 7/6/12 - "The diabetes medication was intended to target a specific pathway in liver cells. In the new study, researchers found that the drug activated that same pathway in brain cells, prompting new cell growth ... The new cells that are produced could help to repair the effects of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease ... new brain cells grew in both living mice and in human brain cell cultures growing in lab dishes. They are now working to set up clinical trials ... A 2008 study found that patients with both diabetes and Alzheimer’s who began taking metformin experienced improvements in their Alzheimer's symptoms after starting on the drug" - See metformin at The Antiaging Store.
• High blood caffeine levels in older adults linked to avoidance of Alzheimer’s disease - Science Daily, 6/4/12 - "The collaborative study involved 124 people, ages 65 to 88, in Tampa and Miami ... These intriguing results suggest that older adults with mild memory impairment who drink moderate levels of coffee -- about 3 cups a day -- will not convert to Alzheimer's disease -- or at least will experience a substantial delay before converting to Alzheimer's ... The results from this study, along with our earlier studies in Alzheimer's mice, are very consistent in indicating that moderate daily caffeine/coffee intake throughout adulthood should appreciably protect against Alzheimer's disease later in life ... We found that 100 percent of the MCI patients with plasma caffeine levels above the critical level experienced no conversion to Alzheimer's disease during the two-to-four year follow-up period ... In addition to Alzheimer's disease, moderate caffeine/coffee intake appears to reduce the risk of several other diseases of aging, including Parkinson's disease, stroke, Type II diabetes, and breast cancer"
• Greater purpose in life may protect against harmful changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease - Science Daily, 5/7/12 - "These findings suggest that purpose in life protects against the harmful effects of plaques and tangles on memory and other thinking abilities. This is encouraging and suggests that engaging in meaningful and purposeful activities promotes cognitive health in old age ... The Rush Memory and Aging Project, which began in 1997, is a longitudinal clinical-pathological study of common chronic conditions of aging. Participants are older persons recruited from about 40 continuous care retirement communities and senior subsidized housing facilities in and around the Chicago Metropolitan area"
• Biosynthetic grape-derived compound prevents progression of Alzheimer’s disease in animal model - Science Daily, 5/1/12 - "Polyphenols, which occur naturally in grapes, fruits, and vegetables, have been shown to prevent the cognitive decline associated with AD in a mouse model, but the molecules are very complex and are extensively metabolized in the body. This is the first study to determine which specific subfraction of these molecules penetrates the animal brain, and demonstrate that a drug compound similar to polyphenols can exert similar bioactivities ... Dr. Pasinetti's team analyzed the structure of this polyphenol by nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and recreated it biosynthetically in the laboratory. Dr. Pasinetti and his collaborators discovered that the synthetic polyphenol generated in the laboratory also promoted plasticity and benefits in learning and memory functions in the brains of the mice" - Note:  Sounds like a way to get rich off a patent when the original natural version is probably better in the first place. - See grape seed extract at Amazon.com.
• Eating fish, chicken, nuts may lower risk of Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 5/2/12 - "A new study suggests that eating foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids, such as fish, chicken, salad dressing and nuts, may be associated with lower blood levels of a protein related to Alzheimer's disease and memory problems ... 1,219 people older than age 65, free of dementia, provided information about their diet for an average of 1.2 years before their blood was tested for the beta-amyloid. Researchers looked specifically at 10 nutrients, including saturated fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, mono-unsaturated fatty acid, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta-carotene, vitamin B12, folate and vitamin D ... the more omega-3 fatty acids a person took in, the lower their blood beta-amyloid levels. Consuming one gram of omega-3 per day (equal to approximately half a fillet of salmon per week) more than the average omega-3 consumed by people in the study is associated with 20 to 30 percent lower blood beta-amyloid levels ... Other nutrients were not associated with plasma beta-amyloid levels" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Higher Vitamin D Dietary Intake Is Associated With Lower Risk of Alzheimer's Disease: A 7-Year Follow-up - J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2012 Apr 13 - "Women who developed AD (n = 70) had lower baseline vitamin D intakes (mean, 50.3 +/- 19.3 μg/wk) than nondemented (n = 361; mean intake = 59.0 +/- 29.9 μg/wk, p = .027) or those who developed other dementias (n = 67; mean intake = 63.6 +/- 38.1 μg/wk, p = .010). There was no difference between other dementias and no dementia (p = .247). Baseline vitamin D dietary intakes were associated with the onset of AD (adjusted odds ratio = 0.99 [95% confidence interval = 0.98-0.99], p = .041) but not with other dementias (p = .071). Being in the highest quintile of vitamin D dietary intakes was associated with a lower risk of AD compared with the lower 4 quintiles combined (adjusted odds ratio = 0.23 [95% confidence interval = 0.08-0.67], p = .007) ... Higher vitamin D dietary intake was associated with a lower risk of developing AD among older women" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.
• Does Lithium Prevent Alzheimer's Disease? - Drugs Aging. 2012 Apr 14 - "Lithium salts have a well-established role in the treatment of major affective disorders. More recently, experimental and clinical studies have provided evidence that lithium may also exert neuroprotective effects. In animal and cell culture models, lithium has been shown to increase neuronal viability through a combination of mechanisms that includes the inhibition of apoptosis, regulation of autophagy, increased mitochondrial function, and synthesis of neurotrophic factors. In humans, lithium treatment has been associated with humoral and structural evidence of neuroprotection, such as increased expression of anti-apoptotic genes, inhibition of cellular oxidative stress, synthesis of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), cortical thickening, increased grey matter density, and hippocampal enlargement ... A recent placebo-controlled clinical trial in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) showed that long-term lithium treatment may actually slow the progression of cognitive and functional deficits, and also attenuate Tau hyperphosphorylation in the MCI-AD continuum" - See lithium supplement at Amazon.com.
• Japanese traditional therapy, honokiol, blocks key protein in inflammatory brain damage, study suggests - Science Daily, 3/19/12 - "honokiol (HNK) is able to down-regulate the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and inflammatory enzymes in activated microglia via Klf4, a protein known to regulate DNA ... HNK can easily move across the blood brain barrier and we found that HNK reduced levels of pNF-kb and Klf4 as well as the number of activated microglia in the brains of LPS treated mice" - Note:  Relora (honokiol) is also purported to lower cortisol.  See Relora at Amazon.com.
• Scientists pinpoint how vitamin D may help clear amyloid plaques found in Alzheimer's - Science Daily, 3/6/12 - "vitamin D3 may activate key genes and cellular signaling networks to help stimulate the immune system to clear the amyloid-beta protein ... in both Type I and Type II macrophages, the added 1a,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 played a key role in opening a specific chloride channel called "chloride channel 3 (CLC3)," which is important in supporting the uptake of amyloid beta through the process known as phagocytosis. Curcuminoids activated this chloride channel only in Type I macrophages ... The scientists also found that 1a,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 strongly helped trigger the genetic transcription of the chloride channel and the receptor for 1a,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 in Type II macrophages" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com.
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids Help Brain Age Better - WebMD, 2/27/12 - "the results suggest diets lacking in omega-3 fatty acids may cause the brain to age faster ... people whose DHA levels were in the bottom 25% of the group had lower brain volumes compared with people with higher DHA levels ... In addition, people with both low DHA and all the other omega-3 fatty acid levels scored lower on tests of visual memory, processing, and abstract thinking ... Researchers say the results suggest that low DHA and other omega-3 fatty acid levels are associated with a pattern of memory and brain function problems even in people free of dementia" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Mediterranean Diet May Protect Brain - WebMD, 2/13/12 - "white matter hyperintensity volume (WMHV) ... WMHV is an indicator of small blood vessel damage in the brain and is detected by magnetic resonance screening (MRI) ... researchers compared the brain scans and diets of 966 adults with an average age of 72 ... those who most closely followed a Mediterranean diet had a lower measure of WMHV than those who did not. Each increase in the Mediterranean diet score was associated with a corresponding decrease in white matter hyperintensity volume score ... the aspect of the Mediterranean diet that seemed to matter most was the ratio of monounsaturated fat to saturated fat"
• More vitamin E linked to better mental function: Study - Nutra USA, 1/11/12 - "Alzheimer patients were 85% less likely to have the highest levels of vitamin E, compared with people with normal cognitive function ... There are eight forms of vitamin E: four tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) and four tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) ... the new study is said to be the first to evaluate all the forms of vitamin E in relation to Alzheimer’s disease ... Consumers should be taking a full spectrum vitamin E especially for improving/ preserving cognitive health and performance" - [Abstract] - See Jarrow FamilE (contains all eight members of the vitamin E family, includes Tocomin) at Amazon.com.
• Alzheimer's: Diet patterns may keep brain from shrinking - Science Daily, 12/29/11 - "People with diets high in several vitamins or in omega 3 fatty acids are less likely to have the brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer's disease than people whose diets are not high in those nutrients ... Those with diets high in omega 3 fatty acids and in vitamins C, D, E and the B vitamins also had higher scores on mental thinking tests than people with diets low in those nutrients ... people with diets high in trans fats were more likely to have brain shrinkage and lower scores on the thinking and memory tests than people with diets low in trans fats" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Antioxidant has potential in the Alzheimer's fight - Science Daily, 12/14/11 - "When you cut an apple and leave it out, it turns brown. Squeeze the apple with lemon juice, an antioxidant, and the process slows down ... Simply put, that same "browning" process-known as oxidative stress-happens in the brain as Alzheimer's disease sets in ... an antioxidant can delay the onset of all the indicators of Alzheimer's disease, including cognitive decline. The researchers administered an antioxidant compound called MitoQ to mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's. The results of their study were published in the Nov. 2 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience ... Oxidative stress is believed to cause neurons in the brain to die, resulting in Alzheimer's ... The brain consumes 20 percent of the oxygen in the body even though it only makes up 5 percent of the volume, so it's particularly susceptible to oxidative stress ... MitoQ selectively accumulates in the mitochondria" - Note:  I couldn't find the ingredients but it sounds like a form of co-enzyme Q10.  Here's the form I take: ubiquinol products at Amazon.com
  • Antipodean Pharmaceuticals - MitoQ Technology
• Eating fish reduces risk of Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 11/30/11 - "This is the first study to establish a direct relationship between fish consumption, brain structure and Alzheimer's risk ... people who consumed baked or broiled fish at least one time per week had better preservation of gray matter volume on MRI in brain areas at risk for Alzheimer's disease ... Each patient underwent 3-D volumetric MRI of the brain. Voxel-based morphometry, a brain mapping technique that measures gray matter volume, was used to model the relationship between weekly fish consumption at baseline and brain structure 10 years later ... consumption of baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis was positively associated with gray matter volumes in several areas of the brain. Greater hippocampal, posterior cingulate and orbital frontal cortex volumes in relation to fish consumption reduced the risk for five-year decline to MCI or Alzheimer's by almost five-fold ... Consuming baked or broiled fish promotes stronger neurons in the brain's gray matter by making them larger and health"
• B vitamins may slow cognitive decline: Oxford University study - Nutra USA, 10/25/11 - "A daily combination of folic acid, and vitamins B6 and B12 was associated with a 30% reduction in levels of the amino acid homocysteine, and improvements in a range of mental tests, including global cognition and episodic memory ... One interpretation [of the data] is that lowering homocysteine concentrations by administering B vitamins slows brain atrophy, which in turn slows both cognitive and clinical decline ... The Vitacog study involved 266 people over the age of 70 with diagnosed mild cognitive impairment. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either placebo or a B vitamin supplement providing 0.8 mg per day of folic acid, 0.5 mg of vitamin B12 and 20 mg of vitamin B6" - [Abstract]
• Vitamin B12, cognition, and brain MRI measures: A cross-sectional examination - Neurology. 2011 Sep 27;77(13):1276-82 - "Concentrations of all vitamin B12-related markers, but not serum vitamin B12 itself, were associated with global cognitive function and with total brain volume. Methylmalonate levels were associated with poorer episodic memory and perceptual speed, and cystathionine and 2-methylcitrate with poorer episodic and semantic memory. Homocysteine concentrations were associated with decreased total brain volume. The homocysteine-global cognition effect was modified and no longer statistically significant with adjustment for white matter volume or cerebral infarcts. The methylmalonate-global cognition effect was modified and no longer significant with adjustment for total brain volume ... Methylmalonate, a specific marker of B12 deficiency, may affect cognition by reducing total brain volume whereas the effect of homocysteine (nonspecific to vitamin B12 deficiency) on cognitive performance may be mediated through increased white matter hyperintensity and cerebral infarcts. Vitamin B12 status may affect the brain through multiple mechanisms" - See vitamin B12 at Amazon.com.
• Low vitamin B12 levels may lead to brain shrinkage, cognitive problems - Science Daily, 9/26/11 - "Older people with low blood levels of vitamin B12 markers may be more likely to have lower brain volumes and have problems with their thinking skills ... An average of four-and-a-half years later, MRI scans of the participants' brains were taken to measure total brain volume and look for other signs of brain damage ... Having high levels of four of five markers for vitamin B12 deficiency was associated with having lower scores on the cognitive tests and smaller total brain volume ... On the cognitive tests, the scores ranged from -2.18 to 1.42, with an average of 0.23. For each increase of one micromole per liter of homocysteine -- one of the markers of B12 deficiency -- the cognitive scores decreasedby 0.03 standardized units or points" - See vitamin B12 at Amazon.com.
• Omega-3 may ease depression symptoms, slash dementia risk: RCT - Nutra USA, 9/23/11 - "recruited 50 people over the age of 65 to participate in their six-month double-blind, randomized controlled trial ... Participants received daily supplements of EPA- or DHA-rich fish oil, or the omega-6 linoleic acid (LA, 2.2 grams per day). The EPA-rich supplement provided 1.67 grams of EPA and 0.16 grams of DHA, while the DHA-rich supplement provided 1.55 grams of DHA and 0.40 grams of EPA ... compared with the group receiving the LA supplements, the EPA-rich supplement group displayed higher scores on the Geriatric Depression Scale ... On the other hand, the DHA group displayed improvements in verbal fluency ... These results indicate that DHA-rich and EPA-rich fish oils may be effective for depressive symptoms and health parameters, exerting variable effects on cognitive and physical outcomes" - [Abstract] - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Aerobic exercise may reduce the risk of dementia, researchers say - Science Daily, 9/7/11 - "Researchers examined the role of aerobic exercise in preserving cognitive abilities and concluded that it should not be overlooked as an important therapy against dementia ... Examples include walking, gym workouts and activities at home such as shoveling snow or raking leaves ... We culled through all the scientific literature we could find on the subject of exercise and cognition, including animal studies and observational studies, reviewing over 1,600 papers, with 130 bearing directly on this issue ... brain imaging studies have consistently revealed objective evidence of favorable effects of exercise on human brain integrity"
• Natural Alzheimer's-fighting compound created inexpensively in lab - Science Daily, 8/25/11 - "Until now, researchers have only been able to derive small amounts of the compound directly from the Huperzia serrata plant, or had to resort to lengthy and cumbersome methods to synthesize it in the lab ... Now researchers at Yale have developed a practical and cost-effective method to synthesize huperzine A in the lab. The process requires just eight steps and produces a yield of 40 percent. Previously, the best synthetic techniques had required twice as many steps and achieved yields of only two percent ... In addition, the Herzon lab and the firm are working with the U.S. Army, which is interested in huperzine A's potential in blocking the effects of chemical warfare agents ... Other Alzheimer's treatments based on enzyme inhibitors are currently prescribed in the U.S., but huperzine A binds better, is more easily absorbed by the body and last longer in the body than other treatments ... We believe huperzine A has the potential to treat a range of neurologic disorders more effectively than the current options available" - See huperzine at Amazon.com.
• Treatment with vitamin C dissolves toxic protein aggregates in Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 8/18/11 - "The brains of people with Alzheimer's disease contain lumps of so-called amyloid plaques which consist of misfolded protein aggregates. They cause nerve cell death in the brain and the first nerves to be attacked are the ones in the brain's memory centre ... When we treated brain tissue from mice suffering from Alzheimer's disease with vitamin C, we could see that the toxic protein aggregates were dissolved ... The notion that vitamin C can have a positive effect on Alzheimer's disease is controversial, but our results open up new opportunities for research into Alzheimer's and the possibilities offered by vitamin C" - See vitamin C products at Amazon.com.
• Fish oil's impact on cognition and brain structure identified in new study - Science Daily, 8/17/11 - "Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital's Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center have found positive associations between fish oil supplements and cognitive functioning as well as differences in brain structure between users and non-users of fish oil supplements ... compared to non-users, use of fish oil supplements was associated with better cognitive functioning during the study. However, this association was significant only in those individuals who had a normal baseline cognitive function and in individuals who tested negative for a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's Disease known as APOE4. This is consistent with previous research ... The unique finding, however, is that there was a clear association between fish oil supplements and brain volume ... In other words, fish oil use was associated with less brain shrinkage in patients taking these supplements during the ADNI study compared to those who didn't report using them" - See Mega Twin EPA at Amazon.com and Jarrow Max DHA at Amazon.com.
• Natural chemical found in grapes may protect against Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 7/16/11 - "grape seed polyphenols -- a natural antioxidant -- may help prevent the development or delay the progression of Alzheimer's disease ... This is the first study to evaluate the ability of grape-derived polyphenols to prevent the generation of a specific form of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide, a substance in the brain long known to cause the neurotoxicity associated with Alzheimer disease ... administered grape seed polyphenolic extracts to mice genetically determined to develop memory deficits and Aβ neurotoxins similar to those found in Alzheimer's disease. They found that the brain content of the Aβ*56, a specific form of Aβ previously implicated in the promotion of Alzheimer's disease memory loss, was substantially reduced after treatment" - See grape seed extract at Amazon.com.
• The Body Odd - Coffee buzz protects brain from Alzheimer's - MSNBC, 6/29/11 - "the equivalent of four to five cups of caffeinated coffee every few days led to much improved memories in the Alzheimer’s mice ... Earlier research by Arendash and his colleagues showed that caffeine could at least partially block the production of beta amyloid, the sticky protein that clogs the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. They also found that a substance called granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, or GCSF, sparked the production of new axons, the communication cables that link nerve cells together, as well as new nerve cells themselves"
• Lithium profoundly prevents brain damage associated with Parkinson's disease, mouse study suggests - Science Daily, 6/24/11 - "lithium has recently been suggested to be neuroprotective in relation to several neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and has been touted for its anti-aging properties in simple animals" - See lithium supplements at Amazon.com.
• Nutritional Supplement Boosts Cognition in Healthy Women - Medscape, 6/21/11 - "Citicoline, a naturally occurring substance found in the brain and liver and marketed as a nutritional supplement, enhanced aspects of cognition in healthy women and may have a role in mitigating the cognitive decline associated with normal aging ... It may also improve the attention deficits associated with psychiatric disorders ... The women were divided into 3 groups of 20 and randomly assigned to receive a daily oral citicoline dose of 250 mg (low dose) or 500 mg (high dose) or placebo for 28 days ... participants who received low- or high-dose citicoline showed improved attention, demonstrating fewer commission and omission errors on the CPT-II compared with the placebo group" - See citicholine at Amazon.com.

Other News:

• High Blood Sugar Makes Alzheimer’s Plaque More Toxic to the Brain - Science Daily, 10/29/13 - "While neuronal involvement is a major factor in Alzheimer's development, recent evidence indicates damaged cerebral blood vessels compromised by high blood sugar play a role. Even though the links among Type 2 diabetes, brain blood vessels and Alzheimer's progression are unclear, hyperglycemia appears to play a role ... Researchers studied cell cultures taken from the lining of cerebral blood vessels, one from normal rats and another from mice with uncontrolled chronic diabetes. They exposed the cells to beta amyloid and different levels of glucose and later measured their viability. Cells exposed to high glucose or beta amyloid alone showed no changes in viability. However, when exposed to hyperglycemic conditions and beta amyloid, viability decreased by 40 percent"
• Blood pressure drugs decrease risk of Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 10/16/13 - "people over the age of 75 with normal cognition who used diuretics, angiotensin-1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors showed a reduced risk of AD dementia by at least 50 percent ... Beta blockers and calcium channel blockers did not show a link to reduced risk"
• Long-term use of statins reduces the risk of hospitalization for dementia - Atherosclerosis. 2013 Oct;230(2):171-6 - "A population-based, nested case-control study was carried out by including the cohort of 152,729 patients from Lombardy (Italy) aged 40 years or older who were newly treated with statins between 2003 and 2004. Cases were the 1380 patients who experienced hospitalization for dementia disease from initial prescription until 2010 ... Compared with patients who had very short statins coverage (less than 6 months), those on 7-24, 25-48, and >48 months of coverage respectively had risk reductions of 15% (OR: 0.85; 95% CI: 0.74 to 0.98), 28% (OR: 0.72; 95% CI: 0.61 to 0.85), and 25% (OR: 0.75; 95% CI: 0.61 to 0.94). Simvastatin and atorvastatin were both associated with a reduced risk of dementia, while no similar evidence was observed for fluvastatin and pravastatin"
• High Blood Sugar and Dementia: No Diabetes Needed - Medscape, 9/19/13 - "The group who did not have diabetes had an average blood sugar of about 100 mg/dL as opposed to the diabetics whose levels were in the 170s. There was a J-shaped relationship between blood sugar and dementia in the diabetics. People who had a blood sugar of 140 mg/dL on average had more dementia, but the rates of dementia then went down to essentially zero and then went up again as the blood sugar rose higher. The nondiabetics had more of a straight-line correlation from the lowest level to the highest level"
• Statins and Cognitive Decline in Older Adults with Normal Cognition or Mild Cognitive Impairment - J Am Geriatr Soc. 2013 Sep 3 - "Research volunteers with normal cognition at baseline evaluated an average 4.1 times over 3.4 years (1,244 statin users, 2,363 nonusers) and with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) at baseline evaluated an average 3.9 times over 2.8 years (763 users, 917 nonusers) ... Cognitive performance was assessed according to 10 neuropsychological indices and the Clinical Dementia Rating Sum of Boxes (CDR-SOB) ... Of participants with normal cognition at baseline, statin users performed significantly better across all visits in attention (Trails A) and had significantly slower annual worsening in CDR-SOB scores (P = .006) and slower worsening in Mini-Mental State Examination scores than nonusers (which was not significant after adjusting for multiple comparisons, P = .05). For participants with MCI, statin users performed significantly better across all visits on attention measures (Trail-Making Test Part A), verbal skills (Category Fluency), and executive functioning (Trail-Making Test Part B, Digit Symbol, and Digits Backward), but there were no differences in cognitive decline between users and nonusers"
• Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors and Alzheimer's Disease Progression in Older Adults: Results from the Réseau sur la Maladie d'Alzheimer Français Cohort - J Am Geriatr Soc. 2013 Sep 3 - "Memory clinics from 16 university hospitals in France ... Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) ... Continuous ACE-Is users had a 4-year decline in MMSE of 6.4 +/- 1.6 points (P < .001), intermittent ACE-Is users of 7.9 +/- 1.1 points (P < .001), continuous or intermittent users of other antihypertensive drugs of 8.8 +/- 0.7 points (P < .001), and never-users of 10.2 +/- 0.6 points (P < .001). MMSE decline between the four groups was significantly different (adjusted P = .02) ... The use of ACE-Is in older adults with AD is associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline independent of hypertension"
• High dose statins prevents dementia, study suggests - Science Daily, 8/31/13 - "the current study examined whether statin use was associated with new diagnoses of dementia. The researchers used a random sample of 1 million patients covered by Taiwan's National Health Insurance ... The adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for dementia were significantly inversely associated with increased daily or total equivalent statin dosage. The HRs for the three tertiles of mean equivalent daily dosage (lowest to highest) were 0.622, 0.697 and 0.419 vs control ... Patients who received the highest total equivalent doses of statins had a 3-fold decrease in the risk of developing dementia ... Almost all the statins (except lovastatin) decreased the risk for new onset dementia when taken at higher daily doses. A high mean daily dosage of lovastatin was positively associated with the development of dementia, possibly because lovastatin is a lipophilic statin while the anti-inflammatory cholesterol lowering effect of lovastatin is not comparable to that of atorvastatin and simvastatin" - Note: The brand names are Mevacor (lovastatin), Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium), Zocor (simvastatin), etc.
• Plasma cortisol in Alzheimer's disease with or without depressive symptoms - Med Sci Monit. 2013 Aug 19;19:681-9 - "Cortisol is presumed to be a risk factor for stress- and age-related disorders, such as depressive disorder and Alzheimer's disease (AD) ... Plasma cortisol concentration was measured in 80 AD patients (35 of them with depressive symptoms), 27 elderly depressive patients without AD, and 37 elderly controls ... Compared to controls, a significant increase of mean plasma cortisol was found in AD patients but not in depressive patients. Plasma cortisol was positively correlated with cognitive impairment in AD patients. We confirmed a U-shaped association between plasma cortisol and major depression and a linear association between plasma cortisol and AD without depressive symptoms. Significantly increased relative risk of disease in people with high plasma cortisol was found for AD with depressive symptoms and for AD with mild dementia"
• Dementia risk tied to blood sugar level, even with no diabetes - Science Daily, 8/7/13 - "more than 2,000 Group Health patients age 65 and older in the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study ... in people without diabetes, risk for dementia was 18 percent higher for people with an average glucose level of 115 milligrams per deciliter compared to those with an average glucose level of 100 mg/dl. And in people with diabetes, whose blood sugar levels are generally higher, dementia risk was 40 percent higher for people with an average glucose level of 190 mg/dl compared to those with an average glucose level of 160 mg/dl ... The most interesting finding was that every incrementally higher glucose level was associated with a higher risk of dementia in people who did not have diabetes" - [Abstract]
• Antihypertensive drugs decrease risk of Alzheimer disease: Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory Study - Neurology. 2013 Aug 2 - "Secondary longitudinal data analysis of the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory Study in older adults at least 75 years of age with normal cognition (n = 1,928) or MCI (n = 320) over a median 6.1-year period ... Hazard ratio for incident AD dementia among participants with normal cognition was 0.51 in diuretic (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.31-0.82), 0.31 in ARB (95% CI 0.14-0.68), 0.50 in ACE-I (95% CI 0.29-0.83), 0.62 in CCB (95% CI 0.35-1.09), and 0.58 in BB (95% CI 0.36-0.93) users and was not significantly altered when mean systolic blood pressure was above 140 mm Hg" - Note:  Sounds like the ARB's left the others in the dust.  See my telmisartan as a first line treatment page.
• Insulin Resistance, Brain Atrophy, and Cognitive Performance in Late Middle-Aged Adults - Diabetes Care. 2012 Oct 15 - "Insulin resistance dysregulates glucose uptake and other functions in brain areas affected by Alzheimer disease. Insulin resistance may play a role in Alzheimer disease etiopathogenesis. This longitudinal study examined whether insulin resistance among late middle-aged, cognitively healthy individuals was associated with 1) less gray matter in Alzheimer disease-sensitive brain regions and 2) worse cognitive performance ... higher insulin resistance was related to medial temporal lobe atrophy. Atrophy itself corresponded to cognitive deficits in the RAVLT. Temporal lobe atrophy that was predicted by higher insulin resistance significantly mediated worse RAVLT encoding performance ... These results suggest that insulin resistance in an asymptomatic, late middle-aged cohort is associated with progressive atrophy in regions affected by early Alzheimer disease. Insulin resistance may also affect the ability to encode episodic information by negatively influencing gray matter volume in medial temporal lobe"
• ARBs May Curb Amyloid Deposition in the Brain - Medscape, 9/13/12 - "In 2011, a large British study confirmed this result, finding a 53% lower risk for AD in older adults prescribed an ARB compared with those prescribed other antihypertensive agents ... until now, the mechanism for the apparent protective effect of ARBs on the brain was unclear ... Compared with use of other antihypertensive medications, use of ARBs was associated with a 32% to 35% lower likelihood of AD diagnosis, depending on the criteria used. This was also true when the researchers compared patients treated with ARBs vs untreated patients ... Patients treated with ARBs, with or without a diagnosis of AD, also had significantly less amyloid deposition than untreated patients and those treated with non-ARB antihypertensive medications" - See telmisartan at OffshoreRx1.com.
• Even in normal range, high blood sugar linked to brain shrinkage - Science Daily, 9/3/12 - "The study involved 249 people age 60 to 64 who had blood sugar in the normal range as defined by the World Health Organization. The participants had brain scans at the start of the study and again an average of four years later ... Those with higher fasting blood sugar levels within the normal range and below 6.1 mmol/l (or 110 mg/dL) were more likely to have a loss of brain volume in the areas of the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas that are involved in memory and cognitive skills, than those with lower blood sugar levels. A fasting blood sugar level of 10.0 mmol/l (180 mg/dL) or higher was defined as diabetes and a level of 6.1 mmol/l (110 mg/dL) was considered impaired, or prediabetes ... blood sugar on the high end of normal accounted for six to 10 percent of the brain shrinkage"
• Link between metabolic disorders and Alzheimer's disease examined - Science Daily, 6/14/12 - "individuals with T2D have a nearly twofold higher risk of AD than nondiabetic individuals"
• Brain insulin resistance contributes to cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 3/23/12 - "This is the first study to directly demonstrate that insulin resistance occurs in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease ... Our research clearly shows that the brain's ability to respond to insulin, which is important for normal brain function, is going offline at some point ... We believe that brain insulin resistance may be an important contributor to the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's disease ... The risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is increased by 50 percent in people with diabetes ... insulin resistance of the brain occurs in Alzheimer's disease independent of whether someone has diabetes ... The investigators used samples of postmortem brain tissue from non-diabetics who had died with Alzheimer's disease, stimulated the tissue with insulin, and measured how much the insulin activated various proteins in the insulin-signaling pathways ... three insulin-sensitizing medicines are already approved by the FDA for treatment of diabetes. These drugs readily cross the blood-brain barrier and may have therapeutic potential to correct insulin resistance in Alzheimer's disease and MCI" - Note:  I suspected this for a long time.  It doesn't say what those three drugs are but I'm guessing metformin and Actos are two of them.  I don't have diabetes but I take low doses of both.  My doc says I'm crazy.  See metformin and pioglitazone (Actos) at OffshoreRx1.com.
• More Evidence That ARBs Have Cognitive Benefits - Medscape, 3/23/12 - "After stopping their antihypertensive medications, the patients were randomly assigned to the ARB candesartan (n = 20), the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) lisinopril (n = 18), or the diuretic hydrochlorothiazide (n = 15) ... After adjustment for age and baseline score on the Mini-Mental State Examination, patients taking candesartan showed the greatest improvements on tests assessing executive function ... Our findings further support observational data showing that ARB use is associated with lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease compared with the use of ACEIs or other antihypertensives ... As reported previously by Medscape Medical News, Dr. Kehoe and colleagues recently published a study showing a 53% lower risk for Alzheimer's disease in older adults prescribed an ARB compared with those prescribed other antihypertensive agents"
• Flu may boost Alzheimer's risk, research suggests - MSNBC, 2/16/12 - "Viruses such as influenza and herpes may leave brain cells vulnerable to degeneration later in life, and increase the risk of developing diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, research suggests. That's because these the viruses can enter the brain and trigger an immune response — inflammation — which can damage brain cells"
• Diabetes linked to cognitive impairment in older adults, study suggests - Science Daily, 11/8/11 - "in older patients with diabetes, two adhesion molecules -- sVCAM and sICAM -- cause inflammation in the brain, triggering a series of events that affect blood vessels and, eventually, cause brain tissue to atrophy. Importantly, they found that the gray matter in the brain's frontal and temporal regions -- responsible for such critical functions as decision-making, language, verbal memory and complex tasks -- is the area most affected by these events ... at the age of 65, the average person's brain shrinks about one percent a year, but in a diabetic patient, brain volume can be lowered by as much as 15 percent ... Diabetes develops when glucose builds up in the blood instead of entering the body's cells to be used as energy. Known as hyperglycemia, this condition often goes hand-in-hand with inflammation ... Once chronic inflammation sets in, blood vessels constrict, blood flow is reduced, and brain tissue is damaged"
• Diabetes may significantly increase the risk of dementia - Science Daily, 9/19/11 - "people with diabetes were twice as likely to develop dementia as people with normal blood sugar levels ... the risk of developing dementia significantly increased when blood sugar was still high two hours after a meal"
• Link between high cholesterol and Alzheimer's disease revealed in new study - Science Daily, 9/12/11 - "high cholesterol levels were significantly related to brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease ... the cholesterol levels were tested for 2,587 people age 40 to 79 who had no signs of Alzheimer's disease. Then they examined 147 autopsied people who died after a long observation period (10 to 15 years) ... People with high cholesterol levels, defined by a reading of more than 5.8 mmol/L, had significantly more brain plaques when compared to those with normal or lower cholesterol levels. A total of 86 percent of people with high cholesterol had brain plaques, compared with only 62 percent of people with low cholesterol levels ... insulin resistance, a sign of diabetes, may be another risk factor for brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease"
• Humans Alone See Brains Shrink With Age, Researchers Find - WSJ, 7/26/11 - "they found the human brains lost significant volume over time, while the chimpanzees didn't ... Stress can affect brain size. So can depression, research shows. Diet can be a factor, too. More broadly, though, humanity's unusual shrinking brain just may be the price our species pays for living so much longer than other primates ... During those extra decades of life, natural cell-repair mechanisms may wear out and neural circuits wither, the researchers said. As the brain normally ages, it acquires the neural equivalent of sore knees and stiff fingers. Natural grooves in the brain widen. Healthy swellings subside. And tangles of damaged neurons become dense thickets of dysfunctional synapses"
• Hemoglobin level in older persons and incident Alzheimer disease: Prospective cohort analysis - Neurology. 2011 Jul 13 - "When compared to participants with clinically normal hemoglobin (n = 717), participants with anemia (n = 154) had a 60% increased hazard for developing AD (95% CI 1.02-2.52), as did participants with clinically high hemoglobin (n = 10, HR 3.39, 95% CI 1.25-9.20). Linear mixed-effects models showed that lower and higher hemoglobin levels were associated with a greater rate of global cognitive decline (parameter estimate for quadratic of hemoglobin = -0.008, SE -0.002, p < 0.001). Compared to participants with clinically normal hemoglobin, participants with anemia had a -0.061 z score unit annual decline in global cognitive function (SE 0.012, p < 0.001), as did participants with clinically high hemoglobin (-0.090 unit/year, SE 0.038, p = 0.018) ... In older persons without dementia, both lower and higher hemoglobin levels are associated with an increased hazard for developing AD and more rapid cognitive decline"
• Stress may increase risk for Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 5/26/11 - "Fewer than ten percent of Alzheimer cases have a genetic basis. The factors that contribute to the rest of the cases are largely unknown ... life events (stress) may be one trigger ... stress, and the hormones released during stress, can accelerate the development of Alzheimer disease-like biochemical and behavioural pathology"
• Plasma homocysteine and cognitive decline in older hypertensive subjects - Int Psychogeriatr. 2011 May 6:1-9 - "Higher homocysteine showed an independent association with greater cognitive decline in three domains: speed of cognition (β = -27.33, p = 0.001), episodic memory (β = -1.25, p = 0.02) and executive function (β = -0.05, p = 0.04). The association with executive function was no longer significant after inclusion of folate in the regression model (β = -0.032, p = 0.22). Change in working memory and attention were not associated with plasma homocysteine, folate or B12. High homocysteine was associated with greater decline with a Cohen's d effect size of approximately 0.7 compared to low homocysteine. Conclusions: In a population of older hypertensive patients, higher plasma homocysteine was associated with cognitive decline"
• Midlife and Late-Life Blood Pressure and Dementia in Japanese Elderly: The Hisayama Study - Hypertension. 2011 May 9 - "We followed up a total of 668 community-dwelling Japanese individuals without dementia, aged 65 to 79 years, for 17 years and examined the associations of late-life and midlife hypertension with the risk of vascular dementia and Alzheimer disease using the Cox proportional hazards model ... The age- and sex-adjusted incidence of vascular dementia significantly increased with elevated late-life blood pressure levels (normal: 2.3, prehypertension: 8.4, stage 1 hypertension: 12.6, and stage 2 hypertension: 18.9 per 1000 person-years; P(trend)<0.001), whereas no such association was observed for Alzheimer disease (P(trend)=0.88). After adjusting for potential confounding factors, subjects with prehypertension and stage 1 or stage 2 hypertension had 3.0-fold, 4.5-fold, and 5.6-fold greater risk of vascular dementia, respectively, compared with subjects with normal blood pressure. Likewise, there was a positive association of midlife blood pressure levels with the risk of vascular dementia but not with the risk of Alzheimer disease. Compared with those without hypertension in both midlife and late life, subjects with midlife hypertension had an ≈5-fold greater risk of vascular dementia, regardless of late-life blood pressure levels. Our findings suggest that midlife hypertension and late-life hypertension are significant risk factors for the late-life onset of vascular dementia but not for that of Alzheimer disease in a general Japanese population. Midlife hypertension is especially strongly associated with a greater risk of vascular dementia, regardless of late-life blood pressure levels"
• Packing on the pounds in middle age linked to dementia - Science Daily, 5/2/11 - "people who were overweight or obese at midlife had an 80 percent higher risk of developing dementia, Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia in late life compared to people with normal BMI"
• Treating high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes may lower risk of Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 4/13/11 - "After five years, 298 people developed Alzheimer's disease. The others still had mild cognitive impairment. People with risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease and high cholesterol were two times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those without vascular risk factors. A total of 52 percent of those with risk factors developed Alzheimer's disease, compared to 36 percent of those with no risk factors ... Of those with vascular risk factors, people who were receiving full treatment were 39 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those receiving no treatment. Those receiving some treatments were 26 percent less likely to develop the disease compared to people who did not receive any treatment ... Although this was not a controlled trial, patients who were treated for their high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes had less progression of their memory or thinking impairment and were less likely to develop dementia"
• Study links inflammation in brain to some memory decline - Science Daily, 4/13/11 - "adults with measureable levels of C reactive protein recalled fewer words and had smaller medial temporal lobes ... Scientists don't know if the inflammation indicated by the C reactive protein is the cause of the memory loss, if it reflects a response to some other disease process or if the two factors are unrelated. But if inflammation causes the cognitive decline, relatively simple treatments could help"
• Indications of Alzheimer's disease may be evident decades before first signs of cognitive impairment - Science Daily, 3/28/11
• Hearing loss associated with development of dementia - Science Daily, 2/14/11 - "follow-up of 11.9 years ... for every 10 decibels of hearing loss, the extra risk increased by 20 percent ... "A number of mechanisms may be theoretically implicated in the observed association between hearing loss and incident dementia," the authors write. Dementia may be overdiagnosed in individuals with hearing loss, or those with cognitive impairment may be overdiagnosed with hearing loss. The two conditions may share an underlying neuropathologic process. "Finally, hearing loss may be causually related to dementia, possibly through exhaustion of cognitive reserve, social isolation, environmental deafferentation [elimination of sensory nerve fibers] or a combination of these pathways.""
• Insulin metabolism and the risk of Alzheimer disease: The Rotterdam Study - Neurology. 2010 Nov 30;75(22):1982-7 - "Diabetes mellitus has been associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer disease (AD), but how it exerts its effect remains controversial ... Levels of insulin and insulin resistance were associated with a higher risk of AD within 3 years of baseline. After 3 years, the risk was no longer increased. Glucose was not associated with a higher risk of AD"
• Bilingualism delays onset of Alzheimer's symptoms - Science Daily, 11/8/10
• New findings pull back curtain on relationship between iron and Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 10/6/10 - "there is a very close link between elevated levels of iron in the brain and the enhanced production of the amyloid precursor protein, which in Alzheimer's disease breaks down into a peptide that makes up the destructive plaques ... it had been known that an abundance of iron in brain cells somehow results in an abundance of amyloid precursor protein, or APP, and its destructive peptide offspring"
• Low testosterone linked to Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 10/5/10 - "Low levels of the male sex hormone, testosterone, in older men is associated with the onset of Alzheimer's disease"
• Mild memory loss is not a part of normal aging, new research finds - Science Daily, 9/15/10 - "Simply getting older is not the cause of mild memory lapses often called senior moments ... even the very early mild changes in memory that are much more common in old age than dementia are caused by the same brain lesions associated with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias ... The very early mild cognitive changes once thought to be normal aging are really the first signs of progressive dementia"
• Insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes linked to plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 8/25/10 - "People with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes appear to be at an increased risk of developing plaques in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer's disease ... people who had abnormal results on three tests of blood sugar control had an increased risk of developing plaques. Plaques were found in 72 percent of people with insulin resistance and 62 percent of people with no indication of insulin resistance" -  [Abstract]
• Gum inflammation linked to Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 8/3/10 - "cognitively normal subjects with periodontal inflammation are at an increased risk of lower cognitive function compared to cognitively normal subjects with little or no periodontal inflammation ... subjects with Alzheimer's disease had a significantly higher level of antibodies and inflammatory molecules associated with periodontal disease in their plasma compared to healthy people ... the Digit Symbol Test, or DST, a part of the standard measurement of adult IQ ... periodontal inflammation at age 70 was strongly associated with lower DST scores at age 70. Subjects with periodontal inflammation were nine times more likely to test in the lower range of the DST compared to subjects with little or no periodontal inflammation" - Note:  See my dental page.  Gum disease has been linked to several other heath conditions including diabetes and heart disease.  Over the years I've tried several methods for gum disease including floss, Periostat and Arestin and here is the only method that worked:
  • Periogard - Needs a prescription but is usually available at you dentist for around $10.
  • Sunstar Butler Proxabrush GUM Eez-Lok Handle
  • Sunstar Butler Proxabrush GUM Eez-Lok Handle - a better model than the above
  •  Sunstar Butler GUM Proxabrush Refill Ultra Wide (618) - use this wide brush for the back teeth
  • Butler 612 Soft Picks or Butler Ultra-Fine - use these narrower brushes for the front teeth
  • Soak the brush in the Periogard than run it between your teeth.
• Abdominal fat at middle age associated with greater risk of dementia: Obesity linked to lower total brain volume - Science Daily, 5/20/10 - "excess abdominal fat places otherwise healthy, middle-aged people at risk for dementia later in life ... 24.3 million people have some form of dementia, with 4.6 million new cases annually"
• Lowering Systolic BP in Midlife Reduces the Risk of Late-Life Dementia - Medscape, 5/17/10 - "17.7% of cases could be attributed to prehypertension (systolic BP 120 to <140 mm Hg), regardless of treatment status, or 11 excess cases per 1000"
• Homocysteine is associated with hippocampal and white matter atrophy in older subjects with mild hypertension - Int Psychogeriatr. 2010 Apr 7:1-8 - "In older hypertensives, plasma homocysteine levels are associated with increased rates of progressive white matter and hippocampal atrophy"
• Severe Hypoglycemia Raises Dementia Risk in Type 2 Elderly - Clinical Psychiatry News, 3/10 - "compared with patients who had no severe hypoglycemic episodes were 1.7 for those with at least one episode, 2.2 for two or more, and 2.6 for three or more episodes. Further adjustment for diabetes-related comorbidity, HbA1c level, diabetes treatment, and years of insulin use modestly attenuated the effect but it remained “statistically significant and clinically relevant” with hazard ratios of 1.3, 1.8, and 1.9, respectively"
• Diabetes Accelerates Conversion of Mild Cognitive Impairment to Dementia - Medscape, 1/11/10 - "Our study demonstrates that individuals with mild cognitive impairment and diabetes are at increased risk of developing dementia"
• Hypertension Drugs May Cut Alzheimer's Risk - WebMD, 1/12/10 - "The patients taking an angiotensin receptor blocker had a 19% lower risk of developing dementia compared to those taking lisinopril and a 24% lower risk compared to use of other blood pressure/heart medications. People taking both an ACE inhibitor and an angiotensin receptor blocker, which both target the angiotensin system, had a 46% lower risk of dementia compared with those taking other medications"
• Dementia linked to high blood pressure years earlier - Science Daily, 1/12/10 - "Women who, at the start of the study, were hypertensive, meaning a blood pressure of 140/90 or higher, had significantly more white matter lesions on their MRI scans eight years later than participants with normal blood pressure. Lesions were more common in the frontal lobe, the brain's emotional control center and home to personality, than in the occipital, parietal or temporal lobes"
• Hypertension Linked to White-Matter Disease Progression: Study - Medscape, 1/7/10 - "Long-standing hypertension is strongly associated with progression of white-matter hyperintensity (WMH), which is known to be associated with new or worsening cognitive impairment and dementia"
• Delaying the aging process protects against Alzheimer's disease - Science Daily, 12/10/09 - "Aging is the single greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. In their latest study, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that simply slowing the aging process in mice prone to develop Alzheimer's disease prevented their brains from turning into a neuronal wasteland ... he slowed the aging process in a mouse model for Alzheimer's by lowering the activity of the IGF-1 signaling pathway ... mice with reduced IGF-1 signaling live up to 35 percent longer than normal mice ... Although long-lived mice didn't show any of the cognitive or behavioral impairments typical of Alzheimer's disease till very late in life, their brains were riddled with highly compacted plaques"
• Alzheimer's: Destructive amyloid-beta protein may also be essential for normal brain function - Science Daily, 11/23/09 - "Alzheimer's disease is thought to be caused by the build-up of a brain peptide called amyloid-beta. That's why eliminating the protein has been the focus of almost all drug research pursuing a cure for the devastating neurodegenerative condition ... amyloid-beta is also necessary to maintain proper brain functioning"
• Statins Show Dramatic Drug And Cell Dependent Effects In The Brain - Science Daily, 10/28/09 - "Besides their tremendous value in treating high cholesterol and lowering the risk of heart disease, statins have also been reported to potentially lower the risks of other diseases, such as dementia ... statin drugs can have profoundly different effects on brain cells -both beneficial and detrimental ... simvastatin reduced the expression of the cholesterol transporter ABCA1 by approximately 80% in astrocytes, while pravastatin lowered expression by only around 50%. Another interesting difference was that while both statins decreased expression of the Tau protein -associated with Alzheimer's disease -- in astrocytes, they increased Tau expression in neurons; pravastatin also increased the expression of another Alzheimer's hallmark, amyloid precursor protein (APP)"
• Antihypertensive Therapy Slows Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer Disease - Medscape, 9/29/09 - "patients using antihypertensive treatments had significantly higher MMSE scores at 1, 2, and 3 years, compared with patients not taking antihypertensive treatments"
• High Cholesterol Linked to Alzheimer's - WebMD, 8/4/09 - "Adults with even moderately elevated cholesterol in their early to mid-40s appear to have an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias decades later ... Total cholesterol in the high range at study entry was associated with a 66% increase in Alzheimer's risk, while having borderline high cholesterol raised the risk for vascular dementia by 52% ... total cholesterol of 240 or higher is considered high, and a cholesterol of 200 to 239 is considered borderline high" - Maybe that's why most studies on statins show that statins reduce the odds of having Alzheimer's. - Ben
• Cognitive Deficit in Amyloid-{beta}-Injected Mice Was Improved by Pretreatment With a Low Dose of Telmisartan Partly Because of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-{gamma} Activation - Hypertension. 2009 Jul 27 - "Taken together, our findings suggest that even a low dose of telmisartan had a preventive effect on cognitive decline in an Alzheimer disease mouse model, partly because of PPAR-gamma activation"
• Statin Drugs May Cut Dementia Risk - WebMD, 7/14/09 - "people who took statin drugs were 58% less likely to develop dementia than those who did not ... So what is going on? A risk factor for dementia is high insulin; one theory is that statins may lower the high insulin levels in the brain. Statins have also been shown to reduce levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation that has been linked to the pathology that can lead to dementia"
• Inflammation May Trigger Alzheimer's Disease - Science Daily, 7/8/09 - "Inflammation, which is part of the body's natural immune response, occurs when the body activates white blood cells and produces chemicals to fight infection and invading foreign substances ... We induced inflammation in mice and found that it turned off the LRP pump that lets amyloid beta protein exit the brain into the bloodstream. It also revved up an entrance pump that transports amyloid beta into the brain. Both of these actions would increase the amount of amyloid beta protein in the brain"
• Very Low Blood Sugar Linked to Dementia - WebMD, 4/17/09 - "Compared to patients with no history of low blood sugar requiring treatment, patients with a single episode of hospital-treated hypoglycemia were found to have a 26% increase in dementia risk ... Patients treated three or more times for hypoglycemia had nearly double the dementia risk of patients who had never been treated"
• Diabetes Linked To Cognitive Deterioration - Science Daily, 3/5/09 - "people with diabetes were 1.5 more likely to experience cognitive decline, and 1.6 more likely to suffer from dementia than people without diabetes ... suggests that higher-than-average levels of blood glucose (blood sugar) may have a role in this relationship ... in people with type 2 diabetes, higher levels of haemoglobin A1C (a measure of average blood glucose) are significantly associated with poorer performance on three cognitive tasks which require memory, speed and ability to manage multiple tasks at the same time. A higher A1C level was also associated with a lower score on a test of global cognitive function ... lowering A1C levels could slow the accelerated rate of cognitive decline experienced by people with diabetes"
• Drug Found That Could Reduce Risk Of Alzheimer's - Science Daily, 2/2/09 - "daily injections of hydroxyfasudil ... Both dosed groups performed significantly better than control-group rats given saline solution. On this same test, the high-dose group showed the best learning (fewest total errors) and best working memory (measured two different ways)"
• Getting Diabetes Before 65 More Than Doubles Risk For Alzheimer's Disease - WebMD, 1/28/09 - "getting diabetes before the age of 65 corresponds to a 125 percent increased risk for Alzheimer's disease"
• Antipsychotic Drugs Double Risk Of Death Among Alzheimer's Patients - Science Daily, 1/8/09 - "New research into the effects of antipsychotic drugs commonly prescribed to Alzheimer’s patients concludes that the medication nearly doubles risk of death over three years"
• Old Gastrointestinal Drug Slows Aging, Researchers Say - Science Daily, 1/6/08 - "Recent animal studies have shown that clioquinol – an 80-year old drug once used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders – can reverse the progression of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases ... clioquinol acts directly on a protein called CLK-1, often informally called "clock-1," and might slow down the aging process ... Because clock-1 affects longevity in invertebrates and mice, and because we're talking about three age-dependent neurodegenerative diseases, we hypothesize that clioquinol affects them by slowing down the rate of aging ... clioquinol was withdrawn from the market after being blamed for a devastating outbreak of subacute myelo-optic neuropathy (SMON) in Japan in the 1960s. However, because no rigorous scientific study was conducted at the time, and because clioquinol was used safely by millions before and after the Japanese outbreak, some researchers think its connection to SMON has yet to be proven" - I Googled clioquinol and I don't think it's available anywhere.
• Rosiglitazone reverses memory decline and hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor down-regulation in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model - Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2008 Dec 22 - "An early down-regulation of GR, not related to elevated plasma corticosterone levels, was found in different hippocampal subfields of the transgenic mice and this decrease was prevented by rosiglitazone. In parallel with behavioural studies, rosiglitazone also normalized GR levels in older animals. This effect may contribute to explain the attenuation of memory decline by PPARgamma activation in an AD mouse model" - Note:  That's another reason I take rosiglitazone's competitor, pioglitazone which has less chance of causing heart problems.
• Epilepsy Drug Shows Potential For Alzheimer’s Treatment - Science Daily, 12/8/08 - "Sodium valproate - which is marketed as the anti-seizure drug Epilim - has been shown by scientists at the University of Leeds to reactivate the body’s own defences against a small protein called amyloid beta peptide, which is the main component of the brain plaques characteristic in Alzheimer’s"
• Does Growth Hormone Drug Slow Alzheimer's Disease? - Science Daily, 11/17/08 - "A new study shows that a drug that increases the release of growth hormone failed to slow the rate of progression of Alzheimer's disease in humans"
• Statins Reduce Dementia & Cognitive Impairment Risk - Physician's Weekly Article, 10/13/08 - "Patients who had used statins were about half as likely as those who did not use the drugs to develop dementia or CIND"
• Possibilities -- But No Proof -- To Prevent Alzheimer’s - Science Daily, 10/8/08 - "Physical activity and healthy living ... Diet ... Alzheimer’s vaccine ... Cardiovascular therapies ... Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) ... Estrogen ... Mental fitness"
• Statins May Prevent Dementia in Older Adults - Doctor's Guide, 7/29/08 - "People at high risk for dementia who took statins were half as likely to develop dementia as those who do not take statins"
• Angiotensin Receptor Blockers Are Lower Incidence, Progression Of Alzheimer's Disease - Science Daily, 7/27/08 - "Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have, for the first time, found that angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs)—a particular class of anti-hypertensive medicines—are associated with a striking decrease in the occurrence and progression of dementia" - Note:  Telmisartan, which I've been saying should be a first line treatment, is an ARB.  See telmisartan at OffshoreRx1.com.
• To Avoid Dementia, Watch Your Weight - WebMD, 5/8/08 - "obese people have an 80% increased risk for Alzheimer's disease compared to those with normal weight"
• Using Anti-cholinergic Drugs May Increase Cognitive Decline In Older People - Science Daily, 4/17/08 - "Anticholinergic drugs, such as medicines for stomach cramps, ulcers, motion sickness, and urinary incontinence, may cause older people to experience greater decline in their thinking skills than people not taking the drugs"
• High Cholesterol In Your 40s Increases Risk Of Alzheimer's Disease - Science Daily, 4/16/08 - "people with total cholesterol levels between 249 and 500 milligrams were one-and-a-half times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those people with cholesterol levels of less than 198 milligrams. People with total cholesterol levels of 221 to 248 milligrams were more than one-and-a-quarter times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease"
• Alzheimer's Starts Earlier For Heavy Drinkers, Smokers - Science Daily, 4/16/08 - "the combination of heavy drinking and heavy smoking reduced the age of onset of Alzheimer's disease by six to seven years, making these two factors among the most important preventable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease"
• Insulin Trouble Tied to Alzheimer's - WebMD, 4/9/08 - "the men took fasting glucose tests to show how well their body used insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar ... Men who had a weaker insulin response to that test were 31% more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease later in life" - See my Insulin and Aging page.
• Big Bellies Linked to Alzheimer's Disease - washingtonpost.com, 3/26/08 - "People who have big bellies in their 40s are much more likely to get Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia in their 70s" - [Science Daily]
• More Brain Research Suggests 'Use It Or Lose It' - Science Daily, 2/7/08 - "It appears that if a cell is not appropriately stimulated by other cells, it self-destructs ... This self-destruct process is also known to be an important factor in stroke, Alzheimer's and motor neuron diseases, leading to the loss of essential nerve cells from the adult brain"
• Telomere length in white blood cells, buccal cells and brain tissue and its variation with ageing and Alzheimer's disease - Mech Ageing Dev. 2008 Jan 31 - "We observed a significantly lower telomere length in white blood cells (P<0.0001) and buccal cells (P<0.01) in Alzheimer's patients relative to healthy age-matched controls (31.4% and 32.3%, respectively)"
• Rosiglitazone increases dendritic spine density and rescues spine loss caused by apolipoprotein E4 in primary cortical neurons - Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Jan 22 - "rosiglitazone significantly increased dendritic spine density in a dose-dependent manner in cultured primary cortical rat neurons. This effect was abolished by the PPAR-gamma-specific antagonist, GW9662, suggesting that rosiglitazone exerts this effect by activating the PPAR-gamma pathway. Furthermore, the C-terminal-truncated fragment of apoE4 significantly decreased dendritic spine density. Rosiglitazone rescued this detrimental effect. Thus, rosiglitazone might improve cognition in AD patients by increasing dendritic spine density"
• High Blood Pressure Associated With Risk For Mild Cognitive Impairment - Science Daily, 12/12/07 - "Hypertension (high blood pressure) was associated with an increased risk of all types of mild cognitive impairment that was mostly driven by an increased risk of non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment ... Preventing and treating hypertension may have an important impact in lowering the risk of cognitive impairment"
• High Blood Pressure May Heighten Effects Of Alzheimer's Disease - Science Daily, 11/28/07 - "Having hypertension, or high blood pressure, reduces blood flow in the brains of adults with Alzheimer's disease"
• Copper Damages Protein That Defends Against Alzheimer's - Science Daily, 11/7/07 - "Copper can damage a molecule that escorts out of the brain a substance called amyloid beta that builds up in toxic quantities in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease ... having appropriate levels of copper in our body is crucial for our health. Copper helps keep our bones our strong and our skin toned, and it helps our nerves fire crisply and our cells to generate the energy we need to live. It helps keep our blood healthy so we can get the oxygen we need to all our organs. And it plays a role in keeping our immune system strong"
• Maternal Link to Alzheimer's Disease Found - Doctor's Guide, 11/6/07 - "People who have a mother with Alzheimer's disease appear to be at higher risk for getting the disease than those individuals whose fathers are afflicted ... People with an affected parent have a 4- to 10-fold higher risk compared to individuals with no family history. It isn't known why people with a family history are more susceptible to the disease"
• High Blood Pressure Or Irregular Heartbeat Linked To Alzheimer's Disease Progression - Science Daily, 11/5/07 - "10 with high blood pressure (systolic pressure over 160) at the time of AD diagnosis showed a rate of memory loss roughly 100 percent faster than those with normal blood pressure ... 10 with atrial fibrillation at the time of the diagnosis showed a rate of memory decline that was 75 percent faster than those with normal heartbeats"
• Drugs For Hypertension May Help Prevent And Treat Alzheimer's Disease - Science Daily, 10/26/07 - "mice genetically determined to develop Alzheimer's disease beta-amyloid production and subsequent cognitive deterioration, significantly benefit from the treatment with the anti-hypertensive agent Valsartan, found to pharmacologically prevent beta-amyloid production in the brain even when delivered to Alzheimer's disease mice at doses 3-4 fold lower than the minimal equivalent dose prescribed for the treatment of hypertension in humans. Other anti-hypertension drugs with beneficial results included Propranolol HCI, Carvedilol, Losartan, Nicardipine HCI, Amiloride HCI and Hydralazine HCI" - Note:  I'm big on Micardis (telmisartan).  Valsartan and losartan (generic names so they shouldn't have been capitalized) are also ARBs.  I'm wondering if telmisartan was in the study.
• Statins May Help Alzheimer's Patients - washingtonpost.com, 9/11/07 - "Those patients who had taken statins before they died showed significantly lower levels of tangles in their brains ... Our data says these drugs appear to be doing something in the human brain ... Whether this will translate into behavioral changes, we can't say ... subjects had taken statins for only five years or less. It may be that longer use of statins would offer more protection" - See atorvastatin at OffshoreRx1.com.
• New Alzheimer's findings: High stress and genetic risk factor lead to increased memory decline - Doctor's Guide, 8/27/07 - "High stress levels may contribute to memory loss among people at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease"
• Statins May Cut Alzheimer's Disease - WebMD, 8/27/07 - "participants who had taken statins were 80% less likely to have brain changes typical of Alzheimer's disease than those who hadn't taken statins"
• Zocor vs. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - WebMD, 7/18/07 - "In patients over age 64, those who took Zocor were 54% less likely to get Alzheimer's disease and 49% less likely to get Parkinson's disease than were matched patients not taking statin drugs ... Those who took Lipitor were 9% less likely to get Alzheimer's disease" - See simvastatin at OffshoreRx1.com.
• Blood Inflammation Plays Role in Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 5/29/07 - "The participants' blood was tested for levels of cytokines, which are protein messengers that trigger inflammation. Those with the highest amount of cytokines in their blood were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease as those with the lowest amount of cytokines"
• Some Hypertension Drugs May Help Reduce Dementia Risk - Science Daily, 5/5/07 - "Centrally acting drugs include captropril (Capoten®), fosinopril (Monopril®), lisinopril (Prinivil® or Zestri®), perindopril (Aceon®), ramipril (Altace®) and trandolapril (Mavik®) ... The study found a link between taking centrally active ACE inhibitors and lower rates of mental decline as measured by the Modified Mini-Mental State Exam, a test that evaluates memory, language, abstract reasoning and other cognitive functions"
• Estrogen Use Before 65 Linked To Reduced Risk Of Alzheimer's Disease - Science Daily, 5/2/07 - "women who used any form of estrogen hormone therapy before the age of 65 were nearly 50 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease or dementia"
• Testosterone May Slow Alzheimer's - WebMD, 12/19/06 - "The mice that couldn't make testosterone developed more brain plaque, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. Those mice also had more trouble in a maze test"
• High Cholesterol Linked to Increased AD Risk - Medscape, 11/6/06 - "With a 3- to 4-fold increase in the number of memory errors, normal mice on the high-fat diet had significantly poorer memory performance than controls ... This finding indicates it may not be increased cholesterol levels per se that adversely affect memory but the associated inflammation"
• Antidiabetic Agents Show Some Promise in Treating Alzheimer's Disease - Medscape, 7/27/06 - "The findings in these studies clearly support the growing paradigm shift regarding the pathogenesis of AD, ie, that AD is caused by insulin resistance and insulin deficiency in the brain"
• Benefits of Cholinesterase Inhibitors Extend for Almost 3 Years - Doctor's Guide, 7/23/06
• Prediabetes May Raise Risk for Alzheimer's - Intelihealth, 7/17/06 - "people who had prediabetes at the beginning of the study had a 70% increased risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer's ... doctors tend to ignore the slightly high sugar levels until the levels reach the stage of full-blown diabetes"
• Diabetes Drug Shows Promise in Treating Alzheimer's - Doctor's Guide, 7/17/06 - "Treatment of high blood sugar may have a scientific connection to memory loss that could, one day, benefit millions of people with Alzheimer's Disease ... The drug, called pioglitazone HCl"
• Antihypertensive Agents May Be Linked to Decreased Risk for Alzheimer Disease - Medscape, 5/9/06 - "The use of any antihypertensive medications significantly reduced the risk of developing AD (adjusted HR, 0.64). This result did not vary by sex, APOE status, subjects' blood pressure values, or the duration of antihypertensive use ... potassium-sparing diuretics had the most significant affect on the risk of AD ... this effect was almost entirely due to the effects of potassium-sparing agents"
• Alzheimer's patients put diabetes pill [Avandia] to the test - MSNBC, 5/1/06 - "The new theory: The metabolism of neurons’ internal power factors, called mitochondria, go awry so that those cells don’t use enough sugar. That eventually leads to impaired brain cell function, including the buildup of that gunky beta-amyloid. It also means that neurons in youth and middle age don’t sprout enough communication connections, providing less “cognitive reserve” once their neurons start dying off" - See my Avandia page.
• Sustained Blood Pressure Treatment Lowers Dementia Risk In Elderly - Science Daily, 4/10/06 - "each year of treatment reduced the risk of developing dementia during the follow-up period by about 3 percent. Compared with men who were never treated for hypertension, the risk of developing dementia during the follow-up period was: ... 60 percent lower in those treated more than 12 years -- similar to the risk in a control group of 446 men with normal blood pressure"
• Insulin Sensitizers Cut Cognitive Decline in AD - Clinical Psychiatry News, 4/06 - "There is a critical relationship between insulin resistance and key aspects of brain function ... patients taking rosiglitazone performed significantly better than those taking placebo on a delayed memory task (the Buschke Selective Reminding Test)" - See OffshoreRx1.com.
• Use of Potassium-Sparing Diuretics Cuts AD Risks - Clinical Psychiatry News, 4/06 - "The risk of developing AD was significantly smaller in those who took antihypertensive medications than in those who did not (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.64). When the results were broken down by drug class, diuretics showed the greatest protective effect against AD"
• Anxiety in Alzheimer's Disease Patients is Not Being Recognized - Doctor's Guide, 3/29/06
• Hypertension Drugs May Cut Alzheimer's - WebMD, 3/13/06 - "People taking drugs for high blood pressure -- especially certain diuretics -- were less likely to have developed Alzheimer's"
• Alzheimer's Found To Be Mostly Genetic: Largest Twin Study Ever Undertaken Confirms Highest Estimates Of Genetic Risk - Science Daily, 2/7/06 - "Alzheimer disease has a genetic cause in up to 80 percent of cases"
• Alzheimer Patients Treated With Testosterone In UCLA-led Study Show Improved Quality Of Life - Science Daily, 1/10/06 - "Alzheimer patients treated with testosterone showed significant improvement on a quality-of-life instrument that encompasses memory, interpersonal relationships, physical health, energy, living situation and overall well-being compared with patients who received a placebo"
• Testosterone May Ease Alzheimer's - WebMD, 12/12/05 - "testosterone replacement therapy improved the mood, overall well-being, and personal relationships of men with Alzheimer's disease"
• Effects of Testosterone on Cognition and Mood in Male Patients With Mild Alzheimer Disease and Healthy Elderly Men - Arch Neurol. 2006;63 - "For the patients with AD, the testosterone-treated group had significantly greater improvements in the scores on the caregiver version of the quality-of-life scale"
• Cholesterol Drugs May Slow Alzheimer's - WebMD, 11/17/05 - "Those taking cholesterol drugs had the smallest drop in test scores ... No one was assigned to take any drug. The researchers just tracked the patients' medications and test scores"
• Hypertension Control May Lower Risk of Dementia - Clinical Psychiatry News, 10/05 - "effective antihypertensive therapy may reduce cognitive decline in these patients"
• High Cholesterol May Raise Alzheimer's Risk - WebMD, 10/10/05 - "If further studies confirm these results, researchers say cholesterol management may be incorporated in to treatments for Alzheimer's disease"
• Homocysteine and folate as risk factors for dementia and Alzheimer disease - Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Sep;82(3):636-43 - "Elevated plasma tHcy concentrations and low serum folate concentrations are independent predictors of the development of dementia and AD"
• Blood Flow to Brain Linked to Dementia - WebMD, 8/30/05 - "The average blood flow into the brain among the dementia group was 443 milliliters per minute, which was 108 milliliters per minute lower than older adults of the same age with good brain function. In comparison, average blood flow in the brain was 742 milliliters per minute among the healthy, young adults"
• Obesity Today, Alzheimer's Disease Tomorrow? - WebMD, 8/8/05 - "people with high insulin levels -- long before they get diabetes -- already are on the road to Alzheimer's disease"
• Elevated Insulin Levels Appear to Increase Levels of Inflammatory Markers and Beta-Amyloid, Which May Contribute to Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 8/8/05 - "Moderately elevated levels of insulin increase the levels of inflammatory markers and beta-amyloid in plasma and in cerebrospinal fluid, and these markers may contribute to Alzheimer's disease"
• Signs found 10 years in advance of Alzheimer's - USATODAY.com, 7/31/05 - "The first hints of impending Alzheimer's include not just forgetfulness but lags in attention and other subtle problems that can show up 10 years before an official diagnosis"
• Atypical Antipsychotics Effective for Behavioral Aspects of Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 6/1/05
• Next Alzheimer's Disease Drug: Lipitor? - WebMD, 5/9/05 - "How could Lipitor help Alzheimer's patients? Excess cholesterol in the brain seems to play a role in Alzheimer's disease progression"
• New Study Shows That Most Older People With Mild Cognitive Impairment Have Alzheimer’s Disease Or Cerebral Vascular Disease - Science Daily, 3/17/05 - "Mild cognitive impairment in older people is not a normal part of growing old but rather appears to be an indicator of Alzheimer's disease or cerebral vascular disease"
• Exercise, Learning May Fight Off Alzheimer's - WebMD, 3/10/05
• Drugs Used To Treat Alzheimer's In Nursing Homes Are Worsening Sufferers' Illness - Science Daily, 3/8/05 - "Quetiapine, a drug commonly used in nursing homes to treat agitation and related symptoms in people with Alzheimers' disease actually worsens patients' illness, speeding up their rate of decline significantly"
• Diabetes Drug Appears to Slow Cognitive Decline - Clinical Psychiatry News, 2/05 - "subjects who received rosiglitazone remembered significantly more words than did the placebo subjects at 4 months (5.7 vs. 5.4) and 6 months"
• Cholesterol Drugs May Lower Alzheimer's Risk - WebMD, 1/10/05 - "long-term use of the cholesterol-lowering drugs may help reduce risk of memory-robbing deposits and Alzheimer's disease"
• Cholesterol-lowering Drug May Slow Alzheimer's Progression - Science Daily, 11/17/04 - "The cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin slowed down mental decline and improved depressive symptoms in people with Alzheimer’s disease"
• Blood Pressure Drug May Slow Alzheimer's - WebMD, 10/11/04 - "patients who took blood pressure pills known as ACE inhibitors showed a slower deterioration in thinking and memory than patients who took other types of high blood pressure drugs ... particularly Aceon and Capoten"
• Drinking and Dementia: Is There a Link? - WebMD, 9/3/04 - "Drinking alcohol in middle age may increase the risk of late-life dementia in people who are genetically predisposed to develop Alzheimer's disease"
• No Clear-Cut Answers on Statins as Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 7/19/04 - "Alzheimer mice treated with simvastatin regain their ability to navigate mazes"
• Estrogen and Estrogen-Related Drugs May Protect Against Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 6/21/04 - "the researchers believe the results support the use of estrogen, or SERMs, for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease"
• Depression Liked to Alzheimer's Risk - Physician's Weekly, 7/28/03 - "People who have experienced depression are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than their relatives who have never shown signs of depression ... People who have experienced depression are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than their relatives who have never shown signs of depression"
• A dose of hope vs. Alzheimer's - USA Today, 7/27/03
• Common Drugs May Raise Alzheimer's Risk - Doctor's Guide, 7/25/03 - "The drugs -- called anticholinergic agents -- slow electrical impulses in nerve cells. They're used to help Parkinson's disease patients control unwanted movement such as tremors. These drugs also help with bladder control and dizziness. But other common drugs have anticholinergic activities, too. These include older allergy drugs and tricyclic antidepressants ... examined the brains of deceased Parkinson's patients for the plaques and tangles seen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients ... Those who took anticholinergic drugs for more than two years had significantly more plaque and tangles than those who never took the drugs"
• Simvastatin May Retard Progression of Severe White Matter Changes - Doctor's Guide, 5/26/03 - "Simvastatin may slow down the progression of severe white matter changes in the brain, and may therefore retard cognitive decline ... The most common type of vascular dementia is due to the hardening of the arteries deep inside the brain which causes white matter changes... and its been shown that this can lead to executive dysfunction" - Note:  Red yeast rice is a non-prescription statin.
• Antipsychotics Effective for Elderly Patients With Dementia - Psychiatric News, 4/18/03 - "atypical antipsychotics have been used to alleviate deteriorating behavioral symptoms in dementia patients, such as agitation and aggression. New research that she cited shows some atypical antipsychotics can actually improve cognition through activating the release of acetylcholine in the cortex. Clozapine, olanzapine, and risperidone, she reported, robustly increased acetylcholine release in the cortex, while ziprasidone only moderately increased levels, compared with haloperidol and thioridazine, which did not elevate acetylcholine levels at all ... atypical antipsychotics increase cortical dopamine and cholinesterase inhibitors at the very least increase cortical acetylcholine action, leading to an improvement in memory and thinking, as well as improvement in psychosis and behavior"
• Diabetes Linked to Development of Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 4/8/03 - "people with diabetes had a 73% greater chance of developing Alzheimer s disease compared to controls ... people with diabetes had a 51% greater rate of decline in perceptual speed" - See my diabetes page for preventative measures.
• Cholesterol Metabolism May Provide Alzheimer’s Clue - Psychiatric Times, 3/21/03 - "The CYP46 enzyme regulates levels of brain cholesterol ... a change of just one base in the CYP46 gene from cytosine (C) to thymine (T)—leads to a decrease in functioning of CYP46, causing cholesterol levels in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid to reach higher-than-normal levels ... other research has shown that depletion of brain cholesterol leads to a reduction in Aß ... The results, he wrote, "suggest the possibility that LOAD [late onset Alzheimer's disease], the most common degenerative disease of the brain, is a general end point for abnormalities that increase the amount of cholesterol in the central nervous system. If so, inhibiting cholesterol metabolism in the brain might represent a viable treatment for LOAD.""
• Personality Changes, Depression May Be Prodromal Signs Of Alzheimer's Disease - Doctor's Guide, 3/17/03
• Higher Pulse Pressure Tied To Dementia Risks - Doctor's Guide, 3/17/03 - "Higher pulse pressure in older adults is linked with increased risk for Alzheimer disease (AD) and dementia, which is probably caused by artery stiffness and severe atherosclerosis" - Note:  Pulse pressure is the difference between the systolic (high number) and diastolic (low number).
• HDL Cholesterol Level Linked To Longevity, Cognitive Function - Clinical Psychiatry News, 2/03 - "A group of centenarians maintained significantly higher than normal HDL cholesterol levels, and within the group the parameter was strongly correlated with cognitive function ... The centenarians' offspring were also significantly healthier than their spouses: They were half as likely to have diabetes or heart attacks and had significantly lower blood pressure. No strokes occurred among the offspring ... The presence of HDL might explain the health and longevity in these families. The serum concentration of HDL typically declines with age by a mean of 5 mg/dL every 8 years ... Had the decline followed the normal pattern, the centenarians' HDL would have been about 20 mg/dL. But the actual mean value in the group was 55 mg/dL" - See my HDL page for ways to raise it.
• Targeting 5HT Receptors Might Control Alzheimer's Dementia - Doctor's Guide, 2/19/03 - "Compromised serotonergic function might contribute significantly to cognitive decline in senile dementia and in ageing ... acute tryptophan depletion impaired tasks of working memory in both groups"
• Studies have mixed message for diet and Alzheimer's risks - USA Today, 2/17/03 - "The study of antioxidants involved 980 Medicare patients in New York, averaging age 75, who were asked about their food intake during the first year of the four-year study ... Thies said the results don't rule out the possibility of an Alzheimer's-related benefit from antioxidants ... it is not what you're doing in your late 70s that's going to affect your risk of dementia, it's what you're doing in your 50s and 60s"
• Low Blood Pressure and Risk of Dementia in the Kungsholmen Project: A 6-Year Follow-up Study - Archives of Neurology, 2/03 - "Subjects with very high systolic pressure (>180 vs 141-180 mm Hg) had an adjusted relative risk of 1.5 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.0-2.3; P = .07) for Alzheimer disease, and 1.6 (95% CI, 1.1-2.2) for dementia ... high diastolic pressure (>90 mm Hg) was not associated with dementia incidence, whereas extremely low diastolic pressure (65 vs 66-90 mm Hg) produced an adjusted relative risk of 1.7 (95% CI, 1.1-2.4) for Alzheimer disease and 1.5 (95% CI, 1.0-2.1; P = .03) for dementia"