Alzheimer's and an Arrant Protein (What's the connection?) Sorry..Long - Alzheimer's Disease & Dementia Message Board Dear Natural 4U Thank you so much for your comments. It is a blessing to me to finally know that I am not nuts, and that I am validated in some way that Scarpies in sheep and Mad Cow disease and those holes in the brains of those cannibals and in Alzheimer's patients, are somehow all related. Yes, I have had this pent up now for sometime. You say that you are not a "victim yet". The anger that I feel is from the very fact that I do understand. Do you think that this anomoly is restricted to Alzheimer's? Now the point of this little story. So, here I sit. I commend you for your research. If our children, grandchildren and their children are to be protected from many of these heartbreaking diseases, then the world has to change. If you want to know who is the next victim.....Look in the mirror If you want to know who's to blame......Look in the mirror. When we quit buying the garbage....It'll stop being jammed down our throats. Or, maybe our children's children will have the brains to.
Daily dose of beet juice promotes brain health in older adults Researchers for the first time have shown that drinking beet juice can increase blood flow to the brain in older adults -- a finding that could hold great potential for combating the progression of dementia. The research findings are available online in Nitric Oxide: Biology and Chemistry, the peer-reviewed journal of the Nitric Oxide Society and will be available in print soon. "There have been several very high-profile studies showing that drinking beet juice can lower blood pressure, but we wanted to show that drinking beet juice also increases perfusion, or blood flow, to the brain," said Daniel Kim-Shapiro, director of Wake Forest University's Translational Science Center; Fostering Independence in Aging. High concentrations of nitrates are found in beets, as well as in celery, cabbage and other leafy green vegetables like spinach and some lettuce. The next day, following another 10-hour fast, the subjects returned to the lab, where they ate their assigned breakfasts.
How My New Favorite Game Can Prevent Alzheimer's And Save The World Last week I was introduced to an intriguing little brain game that could very well prevent Alzheimer's disease, with the nice side effect of helping to save the world. The game was demonstrated no less than three times by a commenter on a previous article reading between the lines of some recent science-related news. What is this new Alzheimer's-busting miracle brain game? Before laying out rules, let's look at an example from the comments: "To opponents who insist no pollution can change the atmosphere, it's important to make the example of inserting 'taxes' for pollution and 'economy' for atmosphere." Do you see what Hank did there? Got the game yet? Confirmation of preexisting beliefs is mentally rewarding. Another example: Some scientists think growing genetically modified salmon would cause net harm to ecosystems if not done right, so we should never allow any GMO fish. Of course, you won't end up changing your viewpoint every time you play our game, nor should you. ***No, really.
New Alzheimer's Prevention Efforts, And Non-Drug Treatments, Featured At 25th Conference Of Alzheimer's Disease International LONDON, March 4, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Beneficial Alzheimer's therapies that don't use drugs, and an update on prevention efforts, are the focus of the second day's plenary sessions at the 25th International Conference of Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI), March 12, 2010 at the Grand Hotel Palace, Thessaloniki, Greece. Prof. Robert Woods of Bangor University, Gwynedd, United Kingdom, says, Psychological therapies have been used with people with dementia for at least 50 years, aiming to improve or maintain cognition, functional abilities, and quality of life, and reduce distress, anxiety, depression and behavioral difficulties. In his presentation at the conference, titled Psychological Interventions with People with Dementia, Woods will share encouraging findings from recent research, including cognitive stimulation and behavioral approaches. Prof. The day's second plenary session will address the topic of Can We Prevent Alzheimer's. - The Prevention Working Group of ADI. Contacts:
How Brain Imaging Could Help Predict Alzheimer's Developing drugs that effectively slow the course of Alzheimer’s disease has been notoriously difficult. Scientists and drug developers believe that a large part of the problem is that they are testing these drugs too late in the progression of the disease, when significant damage to the brain makes intervention much more difficult. “Drugs like Lilly’s gamma secretase inhibitor failed because they were tested in the wrong group of patients,” says Sangram Sisodia, director of the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. People in the mid or late stages of the disease “are too far gone, there is nothing you can do.” New brain imaging research may help solve that problem. “Brain changes that predict progression will hopefully allow us to detect the disease early, before it has caused irreversible damage,” said Sarah Madsen, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, at a press briefing at the conference.
The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? by Marcia Angell The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch Basic Books, 226 pp., $15.99 (paper) Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker Crown, 404 pp., $26.00 Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat Free Press, 256 pp., $25.00 It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives. What is going on here? The authors emphasize different aspects of the epidemic of mental illness.
Age-Related Memory Loss Reversed in Monkeys It happens to the best of us: you walk into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee but get distracted by the mail, and then forget what you were doing in the first place. Aging makes people particularly vulnerable to this kind of forgetfulness, where we fail to maintain a thought in the face of distractions. New research from Yale University uncovers cellular changes that seem to underlie this type of memory loss in monkeys, and shows that it can be reversed with drugs. By delivering a certain chemical to the brain, researchers could make neurons in old monkeys behave like those in young monkeys. Clinical trials of a generic drug that mimics this effect are already underway. The findings support the idea that some of the brain changes that occur with aging are very specific—rather than being caused by a general decay throughout the brain—and can potentially be prevented.
Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was a mashup of different disciplines: fundamental physics, philosophy, neuroscience, complexity theory. Crossing academic disciplines may be overrated, as physicist-blogger Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed out, but it sure is fun. Neuroscientist Kathleen McDermott of Washington University began by quoting famous memory researcher Endel Tulving, who called our ability to remember the past and to anticipate the future “mental time travel.” McDermott outlined the case of Patient K.C., who has even worse amnesia than the better-known H.M. on whom the film Memento was based. Tellingly, not only can he not recall the past, he can’t envision the future. Alas, they couldn’t.