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brain health

Prediabetes Makes Your Brain Fat

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I have forever been preaching on just how incredibly dangerous prediabetes is to pretty much every organ system in your body.

The disturbing fact is that over HALF of the industrialized world is prediabetic.  The prediabetic condition is largely ignored by mainstream medicine until it crosses that magical point and earns the name diabetes.

Because prediabetes has already been shown to be devastatingly bad for the brain and has been strongly associated with migraines, Parkinson’s disease as well as Alzheimer’s dementia, this particular article should come as no big shocker.  In it, researchers looked at the percentage of palmitate (a fatty associated associated with things like heart disease) in the brains of those people with prediabetes and found the levels 86% higher.

More disturbing, though, is that metformin is the mainstay of treatment of diabetics in the initial course of the disease, but ONLY affects the liver, leaving the fat, bone, muscles, heart and brain (as we see here) in jeopardy.

Red Wine and the Brain

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DO I NEED TO DRINK MORE WINE TO PROTECT MY BRAIN?
It’s no surprise that wine (or specifically, the resveratrol content of red wine) has protective benefits in moderation, but you may not understand exactly how resveratrol works.
Calorie restriction without nutrient restriction has consistently shown to extend lifespan in mammals.  This calorie restriction works by improving the health and number of the mitochondria by activating a set of genes called the Sirtuin genes.
Research on resveratrol has found that it resveratrol activates this same Sirtuin pathway.  In this particular study, researchers looked at the additional ability of resveratrol to protect the brain from a neurotransmitter called glutamate, which can create a wave of brain damage with seizures and migraines.

 

Want to Improve Memory & Put Your Brain on Steroids? Read This

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Sounds like an ad for the latest and greatest “improve your memory” supplement found on Dr. Oz to boost your brain power.

Luckily, the answer has no purchase required and lies in the title.  Yep…read this.

The brain, like our muscles, is a use-it-or-lose-it organ.  You need to challenge it every single day and push the limits of your learning every day.  That means reading my blog articles (ok, so maybe that’s self-serving, but it IS true…) every day.

Better yet, it means challenging what you know or challenging what someone else knows that you think is wrong based on your knowledge and experience (that’s a hint to leave a comment at the end of this blog article debating on whether lifelong learning protects the brain).

Cognitive thought increases blood flow to the brain.  Blood flow to the brain brings nutrients. Nutrients allow your brain to function at full capacity.  It is already well accepted that higher education levels lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia, so this fits.

All this brings us to this particular article.  And I hope you’re strapped in cause this is about to get interesting.  Researchers followed a group of older adults over the course of some 6 years with annual cognitive testing.  At the end of the study, 294 participants had died and had his or her brain looked at under a microscope (surprisingly, no one volunteered earlier) for signs of age related damage to the brain.  This included:

  • Chronic gross infarcts (basically large areas of brain damaged tissue from strokes).
  • Chronic microscopic infarcts (same thing, just smaller).
  • Neocortical Lewy bodies (regions of clumped together, damaged brain tissue).
  • β-amyloid burden and tau-positive tangle density (both proteins associated with Alzheimer’s).

Here’s where it gets interesting.  They then compared the participant’s self-reported late life (as in during the course of the study) and early life engagement in cognitive stimulating activities.  Here’s what they found:

  1. More frequent late-life and early-life cognitive activity led to slower cognitive decline.
  2. As far as the early-life–activity was concerned, the most important timeframes were childhood and middle age.
  3. Luckily, young adulthood cognitive activity was not associated with brain protection (maybe this was just because we don’t engage our brain at all during this time??).

Interestingly, the damage found in the brain and the cognitive reserve were independent of one another.  I’ve got some ideas on this…

It may be possible that childhood cognitive activity increases the overall capacity of the brain to learn and grow, and this protection is lifelong.  Then, later in life, this same type of activity will help the remaining cells that aren’t damaged function optimally.  So basically, build it while you’re young and protect it when you’re older and damn the college years.

 

Natural Help for ADHD: Brain Health Answers

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In the discussion and treatment of kids with ADHD, brain health never seems to come into play.

We talk about behaviors and medications and diagnosing these kids, but never about the critical aspect–improving the health of your child’s brain.

I am certainly willing to entertain the idea that things happen in the womb (specifically, epigenetic changes that modify the way DNA is expressed) due to stress, vitamin D deficiency, poor quality diets and toxic exposures.  I also believe that these changes are later ignited, if you will, by a secondary event such as vaccination or poor nutritional status.

Regardless of the cause or causes that we may all argue over, I’m pretty sure no one would argue that a brain-healthy lifestyle would be a bad approach.

So what does a “brain health lifestyle” look like for a young child?  It can include:

  • An unprocessed diet from of artificial food colorings and flavors (the Feingold diet).
  • Low or no stress (which starts with the parents).
  • Exercise (both physical and brain based).
  • Consistent intake of health fats found in wild caught fish, avocados, nuts and seeds.
  • Good night’s sleep.
  • Supplementation to include a multivitamin, vitamin D and fish oils.

Beyond that, there are additional supplements that may play a role in improving the brain health of your child.

This particular study looked at the ability of phosphatidylserine, a compound found in foods like soy, to improve ADHD symptoms in children, aged 4-14 years of age.  Phosphatidylserine is known to help stabilize the membrane of our brains cells, making them more effective at getting messages in and out when these messages are supposed to be moving in and outside.

Here’s what they found improvements in:

  1. ADHD, Attention disorder and hyperactivity disorder.
  2. Short-term auditory memory.
  3. Inattention (differentiation and reverse differentiation).
  4. Inattention and impulsivity

That’s a pretty impressive list for a single supplement, but keep in mind that this would merely be one tool in the list noted above of a brain-healthy lifestyle.  It is NOT a replacement for those other aspects.

If you have used phosphatidylserine with your child, did it seem to help?

 

Self Help for Depression in Women Begins Years Earlier

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Brain health involves conditions such as migraines & seizures, dementia & Parkinson’s, depression & anxiety. Self help for depression centers on good brain health.

This is certainly not the first time I’ve discussed the research as it relates to functional medicine and depression and / or anxiety.  While many may think that depression is what it is and there is little that we can do to effect it (either positively or negatively), this is far from reality.

As I have mentioned before, exercise is arguably one of the most potent brain tonics on the planet.  Unfortunately, when you’re in the throes of depression, exercise is likely the last thing you’re going to be able to pull off.  I have argued that, in this case, there are clearly lifestyle changes that can be done to improve your mood that even someone in severe depression can adopt.  These can be as simple as avoiding artificial sweeteners and diet soda, as I have covered in a recent article that can be read by clicking here.

Much like everything else when it comes to chronic disease, prevention is always infinitely easier than a cure.  Incidentally, for pancreatic cancer, prevention really is the only answer…

Well, depression is no different.  You need to adopt and maintain the optimal lifestyle to lower your risk of developing depression in the first place.  But it’s all family history and situational, isn’t it?  There’s nothing you can really do to change whether clinical depression will strike or no.

Not according to researchers in this particular study.

Here are the details that researchers put together:

  • 4215 participants in the Whitehall II Study (an ongoing study done in UK civil service employees).
  • Healthy diet scores were computed in 1991–1993 and then again in 2003–2004.
  • For the detail oriented, recurrent depressive symptoms were defined as having a Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale score ≥16 or self-reported use of antidepressants in 2003–2004 and 2008–2009.

Basically, the participants were evaluated according to accepted scales of depression or by his or her use of antidepressant medications over a period of 5 years and compared this to how healthy his or her lifestyle was.  Here are the results:

  1. Better lifestyle was related to a 59% lower risk of recurrent depressive symptoms in women, but not in men (Tweet this).
  2. Women who maintained high lifestyle scores or during the 10-y measurement period had 65% lower odds of subsequent recurrent depressive symptoms.
  3.  Women who improved their scores had a 68% lower risk of another depressive episode within the study timeframes.
  4. Specifically, vegetable, fruit, trans fat, and the ratio of polyunsaturated fat (such as olive oil and nuts) to saturated fat components were associated with recurrent depressive symptoms.

Overall, this study suggests that, at least in women, lifestyle choices (in this case exclusively dietary choices) play a very strong role in preventing depressive episodes and, even more importantly, preventing a second depressive episode.

One could argue that ANY patient who experiences depression and manages some degree of recovery

 

MORE UNDERSTANDING OF THE CAUSES OF EPILEPSY

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Many doctors that deal with epileptic patients will just shake their heads and say that we really do not know what causes seizures and epilepsy.  The best reply to this statement would be to ask this particular doctor what they are personally reading to keep up with the rapidly changing world of medical literature.  The answer is usually less than ideal.

Read the entire article here