Who would have thought that a few days on a high fat diet could affect your memory? As if we needed another reason to make us feel guilty eating high fat foods.

The published study was on rats, but according to the NYT, an unpublished follow-up study in humans (healthy young men) show the same thing.

The researchers trained rats to navigate a complex maze that contained 8 different food rewards within it. After the rats had mastered the maze, half were given a high fat diet (55% fat) the rest remained on a regular diet (7.5% fat).

After only 9 days on high fat diet, the rats were not performing as well in the maze test, as they had previously. Those rats remaining on regular diet continued to perform well.

It had previously been shown that a long duration high fat diet reduced brain function in memory and learning tasks in humans and rats (Neurobiol. Aging, 26 Suppl 1 42-5 & 46-9, 2005). However, now it appears that the weakened brain function starts pretty quickly.

The rats on the high fat diet also ran 35% less time on a treadmill after 9 days on the diet.

This fast, and big change, in activity level indicates that a decline in physical performance on a high fat diet is due to some rapid internal change in the body, not purely weight related. The researchers showed that the level of a protein called uncoupling protein 3 (UCP3) increased in the muscle of the rats.

The researchers do not give an explanation for the effects of high fat consumption on brain function.

So this raises the question in humans. Does simply binging on high fat foods make you stupider?

Is the high fat effect reversible? If so, how long does it take to reverse?

Should you eat a low fat diet for a week or two before an important exam or other activity that requires learning and/or critical thinking?

Was I stupider after my recent vacation than I was before, since I ate a lot more rubbish than usual?

photo credit: tsuihin – TimoStudios ©

Technorati Tags: high fat diet, brain function, memory, maze, physical performance, activity level, uncoupling protein, UCP3

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The happiness boosting experiment assigns participant randomly to one of four groups. Each group, fills in a short questionnaire and then views a short video and is giving simple “happiness” tasks to do for five days. At the end of the five days their happiness is reassessed.

The URL is www.ScienceOfHappiness.co.uk

For some reason these big mass, messy experiments always appeal to me. So I clicked on the link and did the survey and watched the video.

The survey is about half a dozen simple choose “where you are on the scale” questions. My video was just over 30 seconds long. So it didn’t take long.

I don’t know whether you are supposed to say what your tasks are. Mine is to say or do something nice to somebody, once a day for the five days.

Curious to see whether it makes me any happier. I don’t think I am normally a particularly gloomy person, but more happiness is always good.

Why not try and be happier?

photo credit: thanker212

Technorati Tags: happiness experiment

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Many people are taking blood pressure drugs for lowering blood pressure. Now there is a evidence that some members of the class of drugs known as ACE inhibitors may help protect against dementia.

The type of ACE inhibitors that seem to be effective are those that enter the brain. The brain is protected by a barrier called the blood-brain barrier, which stops many things entering the brain. This is a mechanism to protect the brain. The ACE inhibitors that can get into the brain are called “centrally-acing”.
Centrally-acting ACE inhibitors include captropril (Capoten®), fosinopril (Monopril®), lisinopril (Prinivil® or Zestri®), perindopril (Aceon®), ramipril (Altace®) and trandolapril (Mavik®). The other ACE inhibitors are not centrally acting.

The study found that those taking centrally-acting ACE inhibitors had less mental decline and dementia, than those taking other blood pressure medications. The other medications studied, including non centrally-acting ACE inhibitors had no effect on the rate of mental decline or dementia. Patients were taking other blood pressure medications were no different from those not taking blood pressure medication.

This study seems to suggest that if you have to take blood pressure medicine you might as well slow your potential mental decline and risk of dementia as the same time. Before we all rush out to change our blood pressure medicine; this is only one study and different blood pressure drugs have different effectiveness in different people.

When a heart attack occurs there is damage to the heart. The heart seems to have only a limited capacity to repair itself. This is one of the promises of stem cells. The idea is that you would bank your own stem cells at birth, and then they could be used later in life for problems such as a heart attack. (In the media stem cells seems to equal embryonic stem cells. In reality, most research is done on stem cells that did not come from embryos.)

Now researchers have shown that injecting a growth factor called neuregulin 1 may help with repairing the heart. Neuregulin 1 is a growth factor that is important for the growth and development of the heart in the fetus. In the experiments mice that had had heart attacks showed more repair if they had been injected daily with neuregulin 1, than those that had no received the growth factor. The neuregulin 1 treated mice regained much better heart function than the other mice.

Getting more heart function back after a heart attack would make a huge difference in quality of life for a large number of people. It would save money too. Lets hope that a treatment like neuregulin 1 is found to be safe and effective and become widely available soon.

photo credit: ♪ Sleeping Sun ♪

Technorati Tags: ACE inhibitors, centrally-acting ACE inhibitors, blood-brain barrier, mental decline, dementia, heart attack, neuregulin 1, growth factor, heart function

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A series of research papers presented at the 2009 International Conference of Alzheimer’s Disease suggest that diet (and physical activity level) can the risk of mental decline.

You have probably heard of the DASH diet. The name stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The diet was developed to help lower blood pressure naturally. High blood pressure is considered a risk factor for both Alzheimer’s and some other forms of mental decline.

The DASH diet is a healthy diet, high in fruits, vegetables and beans, low in salt and has moderate consumption of meat and low-fat dairy products. (If you want more info here is a general overview of the diet and a detailed pdf with complete information, a weekly diet plan, recipes etc.)

In the study adults over 65 were assessed for cognitive abilities and how close their diet was to the DASH diet.

The researchers found that the closer a person’s diet was to the DASH diet, the more likely they were to have higher mental function.

Further analysis of the diets found that it was the higher levels of consumption of vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and nut/legumes were related to better mental function. Interestingly there was no mention of fruit, suggesting that a high intake of fruit was not related to higher mental cognitive function.

The research suggests that feeding your brain a healthy diet conserves its function, and slows its rate of aging. Yet another reason to try and improve your diet.

photo credit: gina pina

Technorati Tags: Alzheimer’s, mental decline, DASH diet, cognitive function, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, nut/legumes

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The connection between mind and body is a key part of many ancient religions, and was generally accepted until relatively recently. The rise of the science and “rational thinking”, changed this. The dogma was that thoughts, emotions, etc., did not significantly impact body processes and had only a small role to play in disease.

The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way. Now, there is quite a bit of evidence that the mind does play a role in our health.

For instance, the role that stress plays in our health is now a major subject of research. Short-lived (acute) stress is usually good. It helps us respond to things that need an immediate response. It is the continual chronic stress that negatively affects the body.

A new study shows that those who had a high level of “dispositional energy”, have much lower levels of an inflammatory molecule called interleukin 6, shortened to IL6.

High dispositional energy is usually a characteristic of extroverts, and is active engagement with life. Dispositional energy has been called the life force. Other characteristics of extroverts such as being happy, and liking to be around other people did not affect the levels of IL6.

Since inflammation is a key player in a number of diseases including heart disease and diabetes, having a lower of inflammation lowers the risk of serious effects from these diseases. The new research suggests more dispositional energy, with less inflammation leads to a lower risk of inflammatory diseases.

There is a question that needs to be answered. If we all started to be more engaged and increase our dispositional energy will our risk having major heart disease or diabetes? Or do we need to have been born with high dispositional energy levels?

photo credit: quantumdtell

Technorati Tags: personality, dispositional energy, mind, body, inflammation, health

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The trouble is that after a period of stress, it sometimes almost becomes addictive. We get a stress response, which makes us more sensitive to stress. We then over-respond to new stress and so the whole thing snowballs. The more stressed we are, the more we get stressed.

A friend of mine, at work, is a prime example of somebody who has a really strong stress response. She certainly has some reasons to be stressed. Her father has dementia and is hard to look after. However, she will get worked up about everything. We will have a department meeting about something trivial that does not affect her. But she will nearly always find something to get upset and stressed about during the meeting. I can usually expect her to visit my office afterwards, and stress about something that nobody else care about. Her levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, must be through the roof.

Short term stress is very useful to us, but if it persists then it is bad for us. It can make us irritable, make us tense muscles, make it harder to concentrate, give us insomnia, headaches, increase heart rate, upset our digestive system, and often make us make bad food and drink choices.

How can you reduce stress? Of course, there are a number of drugs out there, but what can you do without drugs?

Exercise is a great stress reducer. Part of stress responses are based on the fight or flight response. Consequently, we are primed by stress for activity. Once we manage to get moving, it will help reduce stress. The hardest part is getting going. Get out and go for a walk.

Something that you have to concentrate on, is good too. Doing yoga is an example. In yoga moving through and holding poses with the correct alignment takes concentration. When you are concentrating on your body, you are letting go of what is stressing you.

Yoga and most forms of meditation are also useful in that you have control and slow your breathing. In addition to the concentration required, the slow breathing has a calming effect. Meditation reduces heart rate, blood pressure and drops the level of cortisol. Meditation is now starting to be used in medical settings for treatment of stress, insomnia and pain management.

Get away from the stress-causing situations. Take a break and go somewhere else. Go to a concert, visit a local attraction, go camping, get a pedicure, or whatever takes your fancy.

Rule your stress. Don’t let it rule your life.

photo credit: leunix

Technorati Tags: stress, yoga, meditation, cortisol, breathing, concentrate, insomnia, exercise

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Nobody wants to get to the stage where they can’t remember what was just said or keep getting confused.

There is an interesting article and short video in the NYT today that talks about a study started in 1981 by the University of Southern California. This study, called the 90+ Study, has enrolled more than 14,000 people aged 65 and older, and more than 1,000 aged 90 or older. The study is designed to look at both health and mental ability.

Now that the study has been more than 25 years and the younger participants have aged, the researchers are starting to try to tease out which factors, including lifestyle factors, affect health and mental sharpness.

For mental sharpness, of particular interest, are those who are 90+ and have no traces of dementia. The study suggests that those who spend a lot of time at activities that require concentration, and are mentally challenging such as crosswords, card games and Sudoku have a lower risk of developing dementia. Additionally, for those that are going to get dementia, it delays the onset.

One thing that I have noticed working in research at several universities is how sharp the oldest professors remain. Research is quite mentally challenging and requires periods of concentration. Those that chose not to retire seem to keep their mental abilities into their 70’s and even 80’s. This in consistent with the brain having “a use it or lose it” component.

Of course there is always the chicken and the egg. Are those who like mentally challenging things less likely to get dementia, or does keeping mental challenged stop dementia? Hopefully this and other research studies will answer this question soon.

Perhaps we should watch a bit less TV. Is the rerun of something we have already seen, that important? Maybe doing something a bit more challenging, that we enjoy, may be a good investment for the future.

photo credit: me and the sysop

Technorati Tags: dementia, mental sharpness, mental abilities, mentally challenging, concentration

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The theory of the study was that it is perception problems, such as poor eyesight, that interfere with the ability to perform, leading to apparent loss of intelligence with aging.

There were two sets of experiments in the study.

In the first, 30 college students and 30 older adults, with an average age of 70, were given some tests. In these tests, numbers and letters were assigned symbols of different complexity. The test participants had to do understand, remember and then search for symbols.

The second test was 60 college age students – but 30 had a digital filter, while doing the test, that approximated the visual problems common in the elderly.

As expected the college students in the first test and those with no digital filter had similar test scores.

However, the college students with the digital filter had similar test results to the elderly adults, and scored much worse than the college students without the filter. This strongly suggest that is not intelligence that drops as we age, but declining perception abilities interfere with functioning, and hence give the impression of lower intelligence.

This study is really good news. It is comforting to know that we don’t automatically get stupid as we get older. With the current rapid advances in assistive technologies for hearing, eyesight etc., hopefully when we are in our 90’s we are going to look and act just as smart as we did when we were 18.

photo credit: apdk

Technorati Tags: IQ, intelligence, aging, age, test scores, digital filter, perception problems

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According to an article about research at the Department of Homeland Security, our brains all have their own soundtrack. This soundtrack varies between individuals.

The aim of the research is to improve the reactions and reflexes of first responders while at an incident, and also to help them relax and de-stress afterwards.

The program called “Brain Music” analyzes brain waves of study participants, and then makes two musical compositions, for each participant. One composition is designed for when under stress, needing to focus and be productive and has a “Mozart sound”. The other composition is for reducing stress and relaxing, and has more of Chopin sonata feel to it.

This music is initially going to be tested on firefighters.

If the Brain Music is found to be effective, then it could have all sorts of uses.

You could have Brain Music that helps with insomnia, winding down after a hard day at work (cheaper and better for you than a couple of beers?) and coping with pain and health problems. The Brain Music could also help you with deadlines at work, driving in heavy traffic and playing sports. Your life would have its own personal soundtrack.

Listen to some alert Brain Music at http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/multimedia/snapshots/st_brain_music_active.mp3

photo credit: Carlos Daniel Gomero

Technorati Tags: Brain Music, soundtrack, productive, stress, insomnia

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A deteriorating sense of balance, and at a later stage a loss of muscle strength in the legs are the main causes of becoming frightened of falling over.

Fear of falling over is aging for two reasons. First, it starts to limit horizons, the world becomes smaller and more restricted. Rough ground, steep stairs, and crowded places are examples of places that are avoided. Not being able to be easily able and comfortable going where you want is a feature of the aging process for many people.

Second, in a more obvious way, fear of falling changes body posture and gait. If you are frightened of falling you look down a lot more, which will increase the tendency to get the characteristic curved spine, head down look. Young people look up and around not just in front of their feet, and have straighter backs. Fear of falling also tends to make for a slower, smaller step style of walking. Often, eventually developing a shuffling gait.

There are a number of studies that have shown that yoga, tai chi and similar exercise types can make a significant difference to the elderly in terms of improving their walking abilities and reducing the fear of falling. Statistics from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the leading causes of both non-fatal injury, and admission to hospital for trauma in those 65 years and older, is falling.

So why not start to do a little tai chi or yoga, even before you develop the fear of falling? Yoga, tai chi, etc., definitely will help delay or even prevent developing a strong fear of falling.

Obviously, yoga and tai chi help improve the sense of balance. As we age our sense of balance deteriorates. However, balance training can restore our sense of balance to a level that is similar to when we were much younger. (I will do another post soon on aging and balance since it has several facets.)

One important part of balance is flexibility. If you can flex you are much less likely to fall over. When we are standing, we are balancing on our feet and constantly correcting our balance. If you are very inflexible then it is hard to correct from a wavering away from the center of balance – think ninepin. If you can flex then it is easy to bend the body in a way that will correct the imbalance and remain standing or walking.

Another advantage of these types of exercises is that they strengthen the legs. Aging results in a decrease in muscle mass and strength, called sarcopenia. Often the elderly will develop a shuffling gait, not picking their feet up properly. This is partly due to lack of muscle strength. Look at an elderly person’s legs; they are usually really thin and spindly. Everybody will undergo sarcopenia, and have a decline in muscle mass as they age. Fortunately, exercises that strengthen muscles will significantly slow the decline.

The increase in muscle strength and the movements and postures of these disciplines will also help strengthen the core, chest shoulders and back and improve posture, stopping or slowing the development of an older body shape.

So get a yoga or tai chi or qi gong (or anything that takes your fancy) DVD, book or go to a class once a week. A small amount of time will have a big benefit.

Not only will yoga, or whatever, help with stress, which itself is aging, but it will really slow one aspect of aging, fear of falling.

photo credit: j / f / photos

Technorati Tags: fear of falling, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, sense of balance, sarcopenia, posture, gait

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