By Simon J. Evans, PhD

This post will be a little different format than our usual ones. On February 25th, in Washington DC, the Institute of Medicine hosted a special summit on Integrative Health. There were some incredible talks and they’re all freely available at http://www.imsummitwebcast.org. The focus was how we can stop so many people from getting sick, instead of just trying to treat people once they get there.

Dr. Dean Ornish gave a great talk that I strongly encourage you to check out – even though it’s 45 minutes long. If you have any interest in getting more of a prevention focus into the broken health care system, you’ll enjoy his talk. Once at the webcast site, click the sessions tab and choose the session called ‘Science’. Dean’s talk is the keynote on that page. Here are some bullet points from his presentation:

• Integrative medicine should bring together lifestyle, stress management and emotional well being into therapeutic strategies.
• We can no longer simply study things in isolation. Here’s an example. Curcumin may help prevent Alzheimer’s and has data to support that, but other studies show it doesn’t do anything. However, when given with black pepper the bioavailability increases 2000%. The way we currently design studies by isolating compounds, misses these interactions.
• “Sometimes it’s more important to know what patient has a disease than what disease the patient has.”
• Social support and stress management play large roles in disease susceptibility and recovery and should be part of a treatment approach.
• “We spend so much time in medicine mopping up the floor from the sink that’s over flowing, instead of just turning off the faucet.”
• The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself if given the tools it needs. Sometimes the low-tech approaches are the most powerful.
• Changing your environment can change your genes. If you have ‘bad’ genes, you just need to make bigger changes. Genes are our predispositions, not our fate.
• Heart and blood vessel diseases kill more people than any other diseases, yet they are almost completely preventable and reversible.

Many of these points, we have spent entire blog posts on in the past, so you may have seen them before. Still I hope you can find the time to check out a couple of the videos at http://www.imsummitwebcast.org. Start with Dean’s.

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by Simon J. Evans, PhD

Alzheimer’s is a debilitating disease where circuits in the brain literally get ‘tangled up’ and cause cognitive problems. Research into the causes and possible treatments for Alzheimer’s is intensive and beginning to provide rays of hope for families hit with this disorder.

The Triple Threat

One tool that researchers have used extensively is a mouse model, which is genetically destined to get Alzheimer’s disease due to three separate genes. There are several paths to Alzheimer’s, but having a gene that increases your risk for getting the disease does not guarantee you will get it. It still depends on many lifestyle factors, including your physical activity, nutrition and level of physical health. However, the Alzheimer’s mouse model, called the 3xTg-AD mouse, has the deck stacked against it with multiple genes increasing its risk and almost guaranteeing disease.

A couple of recent studies used these mice to look at the role of some specific dietary factors in helping or hurting the mice’s chances. The first study looked at low omega-3 to omega-6 ratios in the context of a low or high fat diet. The second study used vitamin B3 (nicotinamide) to try and counter some of the cognitive problems the mice develop as Alzheimer’s progresses.

Fish for Brains

Julien et al. from Lavel University in Quebec published a study in the Neurobiology of Aging, in which they reported a double whammy of low omega-3s and high fat that seems to make the genetically susceptible mice fair worse. Unfortunately, the diet they discovered as further increasing Alzheimer’s risk is not that different from what most westerners are eating.

Many folks in North America eat too much saturated fat and not enough good omega-3 fat from fish. When researchers gave this kind of diet to the Alzheimer’s mice, the brains of the mice had several increased markers of Alzheimer’s pathology. In teasing out the dietary problems, researchers found that either a high fat diet or a diet low in omega-3s, caused problems. When they combined the two, feeding low omega-3s in the context of a high fat diet, those problems compounded.

These data are consistent with previous observational studies in humans that show people who eat less omega-3s have increased rates of Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, studies have not shown success of using omega-3 supplementation to treat Alzheimer’s once it takes hold. However, there has been some success in treating early mild dementia. These studies, along with the new data from mice suggest that we should get plenty of omega-3s into our diet earlier to help drive down the risk of Alzheimer’s later.

Vitamin B3 gets an A

Still, there may be good news on the Horizon for those who are already heading down the Alzheimer’s road. Green et. al. from UC-Irvine published a study in the Journal of Neuroscience that demonstrated some remarkable effects of vitamin B3 at protecting the genetically prone mice from getting Alzheimer’s.

Now, before you rush out and start dosing up, realize this is a preliminary study that used whopping amounts of vitamin B3. Researchers fed mice at about 100 times the RDA and at about 10 times doses previously shown to cause some toxicity in humans. Still, the study is promising because it helps reveal some ways in which we might approach preventing Alzheimer’s disease in high-risk populations.

Researchers dosed up the 3xTg-AD mice with large amounts of nicotinamide, an active form of vitamin B3, in their drinking water. These mice performed as well as normal mice on many memory and other cognitive tests. Conversely, the Alzheimer’s prone mice that didn’t get the vitamin B3 showed the expected cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s.

Food Matters

The cool thing about both of these studies is that they open the door for more research using nutritional approaches to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s disease. It’s clear that genetics plays a role in some, but not all cases of dementia. But it’s also clear that we don’t have to accept our genetic predispositions in many cases. It is not fate. They way we choose to live our lives, including what we choose to eat, will play a large role in our cognitive future.

References:
Journal of Neuroscience (2008), 28(45): 11500-11510.
Neurobiology of Aging (2008), In Press.

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By Simon J. Evans

As the Brain Fitness industry continues to gain momentum, and people explore all the incredible brain-training tools being developed, we hope that enthusiasts don’t take their eye off the importance of the physical health of the brain and all the systems it communicates with. The brain is unique in that it houses our cognitive and emotional capacities in the form of the mind.

It is a ‘cognitive’ organ that hungers for stimulation from new experiences and challenges. Many brain fitness programs strive to satisfy this need. Yet the brain is also a physical organ that plays by many of the same rules as the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. To stay healthy and perform optimally it requires quality nutrition, physical activity and optimal sleep.

The brain, especially, relies on a healthy vascular system to efficiently deliver oxygen and key nutrients and remove waste. In fact, the brain uses approximately 20% of the oxygen we breathe to satisfy its high-energy demands. Given that the brain only weighs about 2% of the body, we can consider it an energy hog and we must cater to its needs very carefully.

Brain Food

Nutrients play key roles in brain function. Several have shown efficacy in clinical trials treating cases of mood disorders, cognitive decline and of course benefiting the physical health of the brain. Nutrients are both the raw materials employed in creating new neural connections and important components in regulating the activity of genes involved in these processes. Specific nutrients involved in mitochondrial efficiency, the energy factories of brain and body cells, are particularly important for many aspects of brain function. Other nutrients are involved in the inner workings of neuronal membranes, responsible for ensuring that electrochemical signals, which make up our thoughts, transmit efficiently and reliably. Finally, antioxidants, important throughout the body, are especially important in the brain due to its high energy production rates and concurrent high capacity for free radical leakage. Keeping this in mind, it is readily apparent that nutrition provides the building blocks for our brain’s structure and function, and therefore cannot be ignored.

Building Brain Muscles

Exercise is a clearly established component for promoting brain health as well. No longer can we think that the brain is completely separate from the brawn. Human studies have shown the value of exercise in controlling stress and maintaining positive mood states; in improving cognitive function, including performance on memory and executive tasks; and in improving the brain’s two-way communication streams with the rest of the body. Some of these benefits are likely due to the positive effects of exercise on neurovascular health, which parallel cardiovascular health. Other benefits seem due to increased grey matter in ‘front office’ functions of the cortex; and neuronal birth, or neurogenesis, in the hippocampus, a brain region that controls aspects of memory and mood regulation. Whatever the mechanism, giving your body a workout will produce substantial benefits in terms of brain health. Remember, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and your brain and body will be together your whole life.

Mental Workouts

Mental activity is an obvious, and critical, ingredient for optimizing and maintaining brain function. Studies have established relationships between the degree of life-time mental activity and late-life cognitive function. It’s clear that those who engage in intellectually challenging endeavors on a regular basis reap the benefits of a clear mind. There is, however a need for each individual to balance sufficient variety with a proper degree of challenge. Without variety and challenge, tasks become too mundane and too easy, eventually growing stale and losing their capacity to adequately stimulate the brain. We must also realize that mental activity goes beyond ‘cognitive’ tasks. Mental activities also include practices like meditative focus, relaxation and stress reduction techniques, as well as social interaction. These active and dynamic processes challenge the mind as well. Mixing cognitive challenges with emotional regulation provides a more complete mental workout that will help you to use it to improve it.

Rest and Regeneration

An often neglected component contributing to brain health is optimal sleep. On average, we sleep approximately 1.5 hours per night less than we did 100 years ago. Modern technology makes it easier to get less sleep and our busy lives encourage us to do it. Sleep is far more than a time of rest, and is too often misclassified as a period of lost productivity. It is an active metabolic period for our brains. Sleep is a time when we consolidate memories of the previous day, a time when we re-synchronize the circadian rhythm of at least dozens, if not hundreds, of hormones controlling our metabolism. Sleep loss is associated with a high percentage of mood disorders and certainly reduces our cognitive efficiencies. We must give ourselves permission to sleep by realizing that it is counterproductive to steal from it.

In BrainFit for Life: A User’s Guide to Life-Long Brain Health and Fitness, we focus equally on the cognitive, emotional and physical health of the brain and all of the lifestyle factors that come into play to maintain them. Today’s aging population is becoming increasingly focused on the maintenance of cognitive health and the value of ‘brain training’ programs. But we must realize that such training is not unlike that of an athlete, who must focus on their diet, sleep needs and psychological preparation in addition to their physical skill development. We explore specific aspects of nutrition, exercise, mental activity and sleep. We discuss how they regulate emotional, physical and intellectual functions of the brain. After all, they are not separable.

“To keep the body in good health is a duty…otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” – Buddha, circa 500 B.C.

BrainFit For Life is available at http://www.brainfitforlife.com/book.php

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