Does Double Dutch Delay Dementia?

G’day, Zao shang hao, Bonjour, Kalimera, Boker tov, God morgen, Buon giomo, Bom dia, Zdravstvuyitye, Buenos dias!

Or if you prefer – Good Morning!

No it’s not one of those guess the country viral Facebook quizzes (although we will print the answers at the bottom of this post for those of you who want to play along).  No, the reason for today’s multilingual greetings is because a new study has shown that speaking more than one language can delay the onset of, not one, not two…but three types of dementia.

In the largest study on the topic to date, published this week in the online issue of Neurology, researchers found that people who spoke two languages developed dementia four and a half years later than people who only spoke one language.

“Our study is the first to report an advantage of speaking two languages in people who are unable to read, suggesting that a person’s level of education is not a sufficient explanation for this difference,” said study author Suvarna Alladi. “Speaking more than one language is thought to lead to better development of the areas of the brain that handle executive functions and attention tasks, which may help protect from the onset of dementia.”

For the study, 648 people from India with an average age of 66 who were diagnosed with dementia were evaluated. Of those, 391 spoke two or more languages. A total of 240 had Alzheimer’s disease, 189 had vascular dementia and 116 had frontotemporal dementia, with the remainder having dementia with Lewy bodies and mixed dementia. Fourteen percent were illiterate.

People who spoke two languages had a later onset of Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia than people who spoke only one language. The difference was also found in those who could not read. There was no additional benefit in speaking more than two languages.

The two-language effect on age of dementia onset was shown separately of other factors such as education, gender, occupation and whether participants lived in the city or country.

“These results offer strong evidence for the protective effect of bilingualism against dementia in a population very different from those studied so far in terms of its ethnicity, culture and patterns of language use,” Alladi said.

While the study didn’t show any additional benefit in speaking more than two languages, we don’t think it hurts to try.

How many languages do you speak?

Answers:

G’day [Australia] Zao shang hao [China], Bonjour [France] Kalimera [Greece] Boker tov [Israel] ,God morgen [Denmark], Buon giomo [Italy], Bom dia [Portugal], Zdravstvuyitye [Russia], Buenos dias [Spain]

Sniffing Out Alzheimer’s

A dollop of peanut butter and a ruler might be a way to confirm a diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Jennifer Stamps, a graduate student in the McKnight Brain Institute Center for Smell and Taste, came up with the idea of using peanut butter to test for smell sensitivity.  when she was working with Kenneth Heilman MD, a professor of neurology at the University of Florida.

One of the first places in the brain to degenerate in people with Alzheimer’s disease is the front part of the temporal lobe that evolved from the smell system. This portion of the brain is also involved in forming new memories. The ability to smell is associated with the first cranial nerve – the olfactory nerve.

Because peanut butter is a “pure odorant,” it is only detected by the olfactory nerve.

In a small pilot study, patients sat down with a clinician, a tablespoon of peanut butter and a metric ruler.

The patient closed his or her eyes and mouth and blocked one nostril. The clinician opened the peanut butter container and held the ruler next to the open nostril while the patient breathed normally. The clinician then moved the peanut butter up the ruler one centimeter at a time during the patient’s exhale until the person could detect an odor.

The distance was recorded and the procedure repeated on the other nostril after a 90-second delay.

The clinicians running the test did not know the patients’ diagnoses, which were not usually confirmed until weeks after the initial clinical testing.

Patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease had a dramatic difference in detecting odor between the left and right nostril – their left nostril did not detect the smell until it was an average of 10 centimeters (almost 4 inches) closer to the nose than the right nostril.

This was not the case in patients with other kinds of dementia. These patients had either no differences in odor detection between nostrils or the right nostril was worse at detecting odor than the left one.

Of the 24 patients tested who had mild cognitive impairment, which sometimes signals Alzheimer’s disease and sometimes turns out to be something else, about 10 patients showed a left nostril impairment and 14 patients did not. The researchers said more studies must be conducted to fully understand the implications.

“At the moment, we can use this test to confirm diagnosis,” Stamps says. “But we plan to study patients with mild cognitive impairment to see if this test might be used to predict which patients are going to get Alzheimer’s disease.”

Many of the tests used to confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias can be time-consuming, costly, or invasive.  In contrast, according to the researchers their peanut butter and ruler test could be used by clinics that don’t have access to the personnel or equipment to run other, more elaborate tests required for a specific diagnosis.

And of course there’s the benefit that you can eat the test afterwards!

Like this post?  Check back on Monday for more ground breaking Alzheimer’s news.

10 Brain Damaging Habits

According to the World Health Organization here’s 10 habits that can severely damage your brain:

1.  No Breakfast – Skipping breakfast in order to lose weight or save time is totally wrong and directly affects our brain. Those who don’t take breakfast or take unhealthy breakfast having lower blood sugar level and sometime it may cause overweight.

2. Overreacting – causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.

3. High Sugar consumption – Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development by reducing the production of Brain Derived Neutrotrophic Factor, without which the brain cannot learn.

4. Smoking – causes brain shrinkage, damages memory, judgment, learning and thinking powers and may even lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

5. Air Pollution – The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.

6. Sleep Deprivation – Sleep allows our brain to rest. Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells.

7. Head covered while sleeping – Sleeping with the head covered decreases available air space and forces you to start breathing carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. This leads to a rise in intracranial pressure and results in brain hypoxia which may lead to brain damaging effects.

8. Working your brain during illness – Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain. When we are sick the brain is at its weakest and becomes more easily stressed. This stress can also affect memory.

9. Drinking too little water – Water is the main source of energy and is essential for brain function and activity of neurotransmitters. Dehydration can lead to anger, stress, exhaustion, depression and lack of mental clarity.

10. Rarely Talking – Intellectual conversations help to train and promote efficiency of the brain. Conversely, lack of stimulating thoughts may cause brain shrinkage. Reading SRxA’s Word on Health and discussing the content with friends is an excellent way to avoid this!  So grab a glass of water and subscribe today. Consider it free brain fuel!

Drinking our way to brain fitness

As we reported last week, drinking the occasional glass of wine might help to stave off depression. This week we learned how to better protect ourselves from that wine we’ve been drinking!

Previous studies have shown that long-term alcohol abuse increases the risk of dementia. But according to new research from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, omega-3 fish oil might help protect against alcohol-related dementia.

The Loyola study found that in the brain cells of rats exposed to high levels of alcohol, a fish oil compound protected against inflammation and cell death.

The study by Michael Collins, PhD, and colleagues was reported Sept. 8 at the 14th Congress of the European Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism.  An earlier analysis by Collins and Loyola colleague Edward Neafsey, PhD, which pooled the results of 143 studies, found that moderate social drinking may reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment.

It appears that small amounts of alcohol might, in effect, make brain cells more fit. Alcohol in moderate amounts stresses cells and thus toughens them up to cope with major stresses down the road that could cause dementia.

However, as always, moderation is the key! Too much alcohol overwhelms the cells, leading to inflammation and cell death. The study authors defined moderate as one drink per day for women and two for men.

In the new study, Collins and colleagues 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% less neuroinflammation and neuronal death in the brain cells exposed to DHA and alcohol than in the cells exposed to alcohol alone.

Of course, being a health blog we should point out that the best way for an alcohol abuser to protect their brain is to quit drinking or to cut back to moderate amounts.  But as Collins says: “Fish oil has the potential of helping preserve brain integrity in abusers. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt them.”

Forgetting Your Cold Sore?

Cold sores. Annoying, embarrassing, uncomfortable. Enough to drive you crazy?

Not quite. However, according to a new study the virus that causes cold sores may be associated with cognitive problems such as difficulties with memory and thinking.

During the study researchers from New York and Miami tested thinking and memory in 1,625 people. Participants gave blood samples that were tested for five common low grade infections: herpes simplex type 1 (oral) and type 2 (genital), cytomegalovirus, chlamydia pneumoniae (a common respiratory infection) and Helicobacter pylori (a bacteria found in the stomach).  The memory and thinking skills were tested every year for an average of eight years.

The results showed that the people who had higher levels of infection had a 25% increase in the risk of a low score on the Mini-Mental State Examination – a 30-point questionnaire that is commonly used to screen for cognitive impairment and dementia.

In other words, those who had higher levels of anti-viral antibodies in their blood, meaning they had been exposed over the years to various pathogens, were more likely to have cognitive problems than people with lower levels of infection in the blood.

“We found the link was greater among women, those with lower levels of education and Medicaid or no health insurance, and most prominently, in people who do not exercise,” said author Mira Katan, MD. “While this association needs to be further studied, the results could lead to ways to identify people at risk of cognitive impairment and eventually lower that risk.”

The authors suggest that exercise and childhood vaccinations against viruses could decrease the risk for memory problems later in life.

Just one more reason for us all to get vaccinated and stay fit!

iPods help Seniors re live their past and regain memories

For as long as humans have pounded drums and plucked strings, listening to music has affected people’s sense of well-being, lifting their spirits, and calming their nerves.  Now, a new film suggests that the right music can change the lives of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

The documentary “Alive Inside” shows the transformative power of music as several elderly dementia patients are given iPods loaded with their favorite music.

The film follows social worker Dan Cohen, who decides on a whim to bring iPods to a nursing home.  To his and the staff’s surprise many residents suffering from memory loss seem to “awaken” when they are able to listen to music from their past.  The previously unresponsive seniors quickly start to tap their toes, swing their hands, and, incredibly, start having long discussions about their passion for music and its role in their lives.

One man – Henry – becomes especially impassioned when he is asked what music means to him. “It gives me the feeling of love, romance,” he says. “I figure right now the world needs to come into music. The Lord came to me and made me holy, I’m a holy man. So he give me these sounds.”

With great excitement, Dan turns to renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, and the film follows them both as they investigate the mysterious way music functions inside our brains and our lives.

Sacks best known as the author of 12 books, including: The Mind’s Eye, Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Musicophilia says “Music imprints itself on the brain deeper than any other human experience. Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring with it memory and the feeling of life when nothing else can.”

Besides telling a moving story, the film’s producers hope it will encourage widespread adoption of personalized music programs in nursing homes and that it will inspire and educate the millions of people burdened by diseases that affect memory.  They also hope to create a grassroots demand for music therapy and potentially help not only patients but also caregivers across the globe.

Although Alive Inside focuses on one man’s journey, it raises many questions about what it means to be Alive Inside. It questions when we stop being human, and what it takes to re-start a life that has faded away. It asks questions about how we see our elderly, and how we are going to treat an epidemic of these degenerative diseases.

The filmmakers have had an early trailer online for more than a year, but it recently premiered in New York and interest has exploded in recent days, thanks to social media sites such as Facebook and Reddit  They have also been able to raise over $50,000 to make an edited version of the film and obtain copyright approval for songs heard on the film.

Producer /  Director Michael Rossato-Bennett says following the work of Cohen and Sacks was one of the most fulfilling things he has done during his 30-year filmmaking and photography career.

“Usually when you make a film you wait for a moment to make you cry and it might take three months,” he said. “On the first day of filming I cried like five times. There is something in seeing another person awaken. That does something to all of us.”

For more information about the film and music and memory please click here.

The Peak Time for Everything

Not enough hours in your day?  So much to do…so little time?  If you’re anything like me, these will be familiar expressions.

And in which case, you should be interested to learn that maybe, just maybe, you could pack more into each day if you did everything at the optimal time?

A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to your body clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the different times of day when it’s best to perform at specific tasks.

Most people organize their time around everything but the body’s natural rhythms.

But workday demands such as commuting, social events and kids’ schedules inevitably end up clashing with the body’s natural circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping.

And as difficult as it may be to align your schedule with your body clock, it may be worth a try, because there are significant potential health benefits.

Disruption of circadian rhythms has been linked to problems such as diabetes, depression, dementia and obesity.

When it comes to doing cognitive work, for example, most adults perform best in the late morning, says Dr. Steve Kay, a professor of molecular and computational biology at the University of Southern California.  As body temperature starts to rise just before awakening in the morning and continues to increase through midday, working memory, alertness and concentration gradually improve. Taking a warm morning shower can jump-start the process.

The ability to focus and concentrate typically starts to slide soon thereafter. Most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4 p.m.

Alertness tends to slump after eating a meal, and sleepiness tends to peak around 2 p.m.  But you may want to rethink taking a nap at your desk.  It turns out, somewhat surprisingly, that fatigue may boost creative powers.

For most adults, problems that require open-ended thinking are often best tackled in the evening when they are tired. According to a 2011 study when students were asked to solve a series of two types of problems, requiring either analytical or novel thinking, their performance on the second type was best when they were tired.

Mareike Wieth, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Albion College in Michigan who led the study says, “Fatigue may allow the mind to wander more freely to explore alternative solutions.”

Of course, not everyone’s body clock is the same. Morning people tend to wake up and go to sleep earlier and to be most productive early in the day. Evening people tend to wake up later, start more slowly and peak in the evening.

Communicating with friends and colleagues online has its own optimal cycles, research shows. Sending emails early in the day helps beat the inbox rush.  6 a.m. messages are most likely to be read.

Reading Twitter at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. can start your day on a cheery note. That’s when users are most likely to tweet upbeat, enthusiastic messages, and least likely to send downbeat tweets steeped in fear, distress, anger or guilt.

Other social networking is better done later in the day. If you want your tweets to be re-tweeted, post them between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., when many people lack energy to share their own tweets and turn to relaying others’ instead. And posts to Facebook  at about 8 p.m. tend to get the most “likes,” after people get home from work or finish dinner.

When choosing a time of day to exercise, paying attention to your body clock can also improve results. Physical performance is usually best, and the risk of injury least, from about 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Muscle strength tends to peak between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. as does lung function which is almost 18% more efficient at 5 p.m. than at midday.

Is there a best time to eat? Experts suggest limiting food consumption to hours of peak activity to keep from packing on pounds.  Perhaps we are not only what we eat, we are when we eat!

Diabetes Drug may Repair Injured Brains

Here’s a good brain teaser for a Wednesday.  What do an old diabetes drug, brain injury and Alzheimer’s Disease have in common?

Here’s some clues to help you solve the riddle.

(i)           Metformin is a widely used treatment for type II diabetes

(ii)          An increasing proportion of people with Alzheimer’s Disease also have diabetes

(iii)         Hyperinsulinemia (excess levels of insulin in the blood) may enhance the onset and progression of neurodegeneration

Have you solved it?  If so, congratulations!

If not, the answer, according to data just published in the journal Cell Stem Cell is that the former may hold the clue to treating the latter.

In other words, the study suggests that metformin, an anti-diabetes drug first discovered in the 1920’s, is able to help activate the mechanism that signals stem cells to generate brain cells.

Principal investigator, Freda Miller, a Professor from the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto
says “If you could take stem cells that normally reside in our brains and somehow use drugs to recruit them into becoming appropriate neural cell types, then you may be able to promote repair and recovery in at least some of the many brain disorders and injuries for which we currently have no treatment.”

The research involved laboratory experiments using both mouse and human brain stem cells, as well as learning and memory tests performed on live mice given the drug.

Miller and her colleagues started by adding metformin to stem cells from the brains of mice, then repeated the experiment with human brain stem cells generated in the lab. In both cases, the stem cells gave rise to new brain cells.

They then tested the drug in lab mice and found that those given daily doses of metformin for two or three weeks had increased brain cell growth and outperformed rodents not given the drug in learning and memory tasks.

In the key experiment, mice were forced to learn the position of a platform hidden under the surface of a water-filled maze and then asked rapidly to learn a new position.

Mice were injected with either metformin or saline for 38 days. On days 22 through 38, they learned the initial position of the platform, which provided an escape from the water-filled maze.  Then the platform was moved to the opposite side of the maze, and the animals were asked again to learn its position. In both tasks, the mice learned the platform positions with equivalent speed.

But when they were put back in the maze – this time with the platform removed – control mice spent more time searching for it in the original position, while the metformin-treated animals preferentially looked in the new region.

The implication  is that metformin helped the mice form their new memories of the second platform position. Further analysis showed that their enhanced ability was paralleled by an increase in the number of  neurons.

In a separate study researchers have shown that metformin can increase lifespan and delay the onset of cognitive impairment in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease.

Taken together, these findings raise the possibility that metformin’s ability to enhance neurogenesis might have a positive impact in some nervous system disorders.

Miller’s team is already planning a pilot study to test metformin in young patients with acquired brain damage, either as result of treating a childhood brain tumor or from a traumatic head injury.

We will report back to you with results, as they are published.

Nutty about Brain Health?

Last year, we posted news of an epigenetic diet rich in broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, fava beans and kale that claimed to reduce cancer and degenerative brain changes.  Despite its alleged health benefits, the diet has found few followers among your average American carnivore.

And although it’s unlikely that we will ever see nutritionists advocating a hamburger, beer and potato chip diet, maybe more people will be tempted to reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s disease and memory problems by following the dietary advice of a new study published in the May 2, 2012, online issue of Neurology®.

This research showed shows that eating foods such as fish, chicken, salad dressing and nuts, which contain omega-3 fatty acids, is associated with lower blood levels of beta-amyloid, a protein related to Alzheimer’s.

The study followed 1,219 people 65 and older, who were free of dementia. Participants, provided information about their diet for an average of 1.2 years before their blood was tested for beta-amyloid.

The 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.

They found that the more omega-3 fatty acids a person ate, the lower their blood beta-amyloid levels. Consuming one gram of omega-3 per day – the equivalent of approximately half a fillet of salmon per week, lowered blood beta-amyloid levels by 20-30%.

“It was a continuous association.  More and more intake of omega-3s was associated with lower and lower levels of beta-amyloid in the blood.  There was no threshold effect,” author Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, from  Columbia University Medical Center

The association between omega-3 consumption and beta-amyloid was unaffected by whether or not a person took supplements – meaning if two people consumed the same amount of omega-3s, one through food and the other through supplements, the person who consumed more omega-3 rich foods typically had lower blood levels of beta-amyloid.

Other nutrients were not associated with changes in plasma beta-amyloid levels. And results stayed the same after adjusting for age, education, gender, ethnicity, amount of calories consumed and presence of the APOE gene, a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

The beneficial impact of omega-3 on brain health would fall in line with past studies of the nutrient.  “Previous studies have suggested that omega-3s and other aspects of diet may be related to brain function,” Scarmeas said. “Here we demonstrate one possible mechanism could be through amyloid, the main biological mechanism that relates to Alzheimer’s disease.”

Scarmeas speculated that omega-3s may be able to reduce oxidative stress on the brain and the resulting vascular damage, or even have some kind of impact on beta-amyloid in the brain.

And although there is not enough data yet to suggest omega 3’s and beta-amyloid are directly related, I, for one, will be ordering the pecan crusted chicken salad for lunch today, dressing on the plate!

Wouldn’t You Like to Know!

If you had a family history of developing Alzheimer’s disease, would you take a genetic test that would give you more information about your chances?

Increasingly it seems, people are saying ‘yes’. The controversial genetic test is based on Apolipoprotein E (APOE).  Having certain variants of the APOE gene has been found to significantly increase a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

However, possession of the APOE variant is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause Alzheimer’s disease. This limitation, along with a general lack of treatment options for Alzheimer’s, has raised concerns that the genetic information could burden rather than benefit patients. Consequently, there are a lot of consensus statements and articles against the use of APOE genotyping for predicting Alzheimer’s risk.

Nevertheless, a recent study has shown that patients want to learn about their APOE test results and are not overtly distressed by them.  The Risk Evaluation and Education for Alzheimer’s disease Study (REVEAL), showed that even if the test does not have clinical utility it has personal utility.  Study participants who discovered they have an elevated risk, not only accepted the news but were more likely to initiative preventative life-style measures and more likely to consider retirement planning and purchase long term care insurance.  Knowing their risk also helped patients to have informed discussions with their partners and families.

SRxA’s Word on Health would like to know: