LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Alzheimer's

HOW TO PREVENT PARKINSON’S AND ALZHEIMERS DISEASES?

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Preventing Parkinson’s.  Diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers are diseases caused by lifestyle.  Unfortunately, this info rarely makes it to the general public, and, even worse, never makes it to the children of patients being diagnosed.  Which means this rapid increase in the incidence of neurodegenerative disorders will not stop for several generations because the ones that need to be educated NOW to prevent the disease in 20 years and not being educated.

The bottom line is that oxidative damage to brain cells leads to cell death.  Great when it happens for a few years in college, but years upon years of poor dietary choices, toxic environmental exposures and prediabetes (YES–prediabetes is a large risk factor) leads to accumulated deaths of cells in important regions of the brain.  Answers lie in stress management, “brain exercising,” high phytonutrient diet, exercising, strong intake of healthy fats, no intake of unhealthy fats and minimizing our exposure to chemicals.

Read entire article here

WHAT ARE THE RISKS INVOLVED IN VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY?

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Losing your mind? Could be Vit D deficiency. Study on nursing home residents found twice the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s and stroke in those low on Vit D.  Despite the massive research on Vit D, we are still slow to adopt decent levels of supplementation.  2,000 is a pretty standard dose (and VERY cheap–don’t ever pay more than $20 for a year’s worth!) and it just goes up from there.  I personally take 4,000 IU / day (due to a genetic uniqueness in my VDR receptor, for those who care) plus get good sun exposure.

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WANT TO LOWER RISK OF DEMENTIA BY 91%?

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Let’s get one thing straight.  Just like diabetes, most of the cases of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are because of the choices we’ve made in our lives.  To some, this may sound harsh, but the research continues to support this concept.  This particular study goes even further.

Exercise is well known to be good for just about everything except for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (and if you don’t know what this is, it probably means you don’t have it…).  Protecting our brain and emotional function is no different.

This particular study, while referring to congnitive impairment and not the more severe Alzheimer’s disease, shows just how strikingly powerful exercise is.  Basically, those with the highest level of daily energy expenditure, when compared to those with the lowest, had a 91% lower risk of cognitive impairment.

Go back and re-read that number.  91%.  Noventa y uno.  Quatre-vingt-onze.  You get the idea… 

This does not include other protective factors like supplementation, positive dietary choices and meditation.  Add in these and you begin to see how much power we have over the chronic diseases we may or may not deal with as we age.

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INFLAMMATION LEADS TO DEPRESSION IN ELDERLY

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Psychological problems seem to be everywhere in today’s society.  The knee jerk reaction is to medicate.  The problem with these drugs is that they really don’t hold up to well against placebo.  As a matter of fact, for the vast majority of patients, they are just plain ineffective.

Before we go into the gist of this article, we need to cover some basic neurochemistry.  There are certain amino acids that our body’s use to convert to neurotransmitters.  The most famous of which is probably tryptophan, which the body uses to convert to serotonin.  Tyrosine gets converted to epinephrine and norepinephrine (adrenaline) in the adrenals as well as dopamine in the dopaminergic cells of the brain.  Using this knowledge, you can actually use supplements containing tryrosine and / or 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) to help manage depression or anxiety.

This particular study takes an interesting look at what inflammation does to these amino acids in the elderly.  The enzyme indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) breaks down tryptophan, keeping it from being used to make serotonin.  Inflammation seem to speed up this enzyme, breaking down tryptophan before it can be used to produce serotonin and help the brain and our moods function better.

The enzyme guanosine-triphosphate-cyclohydrolase-1 (GTPCH1) is required to produce a compound called BH4, which the body then uses to produce, ultimately, tyrosine and the neurotransmitters noted above.

If all this seems a little too complex for dinner conversation, just remember that inflammation is a major player in much of what goes on in our bodies and brains.  Managing any concern or condition (in this particular case, psychological problems in the elderly) needs to incorporate methods to lower inflammation.

This means a plant based diet.  Lowering of omega-6 fatty acids and increased intakes of omega-3.  It means no processed foods.  Exercise.  Stress management.  The list is almost endless. 

The bottom line is that treatment of any psychological problem needs to encompass the entire body to be the most effective it can be.  Anything short of this is not good medicine.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322310012783

DO THIS TO PREVENT ALZHEIMER’S

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From a society standpoint, the “company line” is that we don’t know what causes Alzheimer’s and we don’t know how to prevent it.  Untold dollars go to finding a cure.  A recent approach was geared towards vaccination against amyloid plaques (AP) that accumulate in Alzheimer’s.  The results were disappointing.

The AP accumulate as a result of the process.  They do NOT cause Alzheimers, but are merely the side effect.  So a vaccination to get rid of the APs, which did work at lowering the amount of plaques in the brain, did nothing to affect the symptoms of Alzheimers in these patients.

The reality is that we have a very good grasp on what causes Alzheimers.  It starts with breakdown of the ability of brain cells to produce energy (in the form of ATP from the mitochondria if you happened to stay awake in high school biology).  The brain cell can no longer survive and begins to die off.  Great if it’s just a single brain cell.  But what if this is a pattern that occurs over the course of decades and in specific regions of the brain (in the case of Alzheimers this region is the hippocampus and neocortex)?  You slowly lose function and at some point the diagnosis of Alzheimers is on the table.

So anything that harms the mitochondria (stress, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, processed foods, smoking, excess calories etc..) is to be avoided.  Anything that protects the mitochondria (high quality diet w/ lots of fruits/veggies/spices, less calories, healthy fats, mutlivitamins, etc..) is good.

Using this template, seeing in this particular study that a diet low in saturated fats and refined carbs led to better markers of AP, while a high saturated fat and refined carb diet clearly showed an increase in these markers. 

Bottom line is that it is NOT genetic, it is lifestyle.  The research is well beyond the point where any sane person concerned about Alzhemiers disease would definately adopt healthier lifestyle changes to lower their risk rather than wait for the “experts” to de

http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/68/6/743