The MMM of aging: mood, memory, movement

The seven effects of ketone bodies making them powerful neuroprotectors

Books by Alexander Luria in English

A serious reason to avoid energy drinks: they can cause seizures

Comparison of lactate kinetics in vitro and in vivo is to be done

LEFT   ………………………………………   RIGHT

primarily verbal                                 primarily non-verbal

‘mathematical and numerical’         ‘musical and spatial’

concerned with details                      concerned with paradox and pattern

prefers reductionism concepts         prefers holistic concepts

What they name left brain’s linear knowledge and right brain’s holistic knowing are not necessarily alternative, they can be mutually enriching.  Making hemispheres working together, even on very simple tasks including the movement ones, helps to promote their interactions.

An important bundle of nerve fibers called the “corpus callosum” is situated between the right and left hemispheres.  The left and right sides of the brain communicate with each other via this neural pathway.  It is thought that ‘crossing’ movements, when the right and left sides of the body work reciprocally, force hemispheres to cooperate.  The pattern “right arm-left leg, then left arm-right leg” is used, for example, in walking.  This pattern is generated by nervous system at the level as low as the spinal cord, so we consider this movement task automatic.  Spinal cord is perfectly symmetrical.  No wonder that there is no problem of right-left halves interaction in spinal cord, the both halves are perfectly cooperative.

When we try to perform unfamiliar movement pattern requiring the reciprocity, it is not enough to use the spinal cord only.  The hemispheres have to work using the corpus callosum and cooperating.  The more sophisticated right-left movement interplay we have to imply, the more we exercise right-left hemisphere interaction.  All kinds of movement patterning figure eight, especially with the whole body participation and the eyes following the fingertips, are ideal for this exercising.  Remember  —  horizontal figure eight is a symbol of Eternity?  This type of movement has especially flowing, meditative character and feels very calming.

It has been suggested that nutrition may play a role in age-related hearing loss and that it may be associated with poor micronutrient status. For example, Vitamin B-12 or folate deficiencies may negatively influence blood flow to the cochlea, leading to age-related hearing loss. Australian researchers showed that people with hearing loss were more likely to be exposed to workplace noise, be a current smoker, have a doctor-diagnosed history of stroke or type 2 diabetes, and to have Vitamin B-12 (1).

In Finland, two groups of 40-59-year olds were studied, 1) one on a diet high in saturated animal fats, 2) the other on a diet high in polyunsaturated fats. After 5 years of follow up, blood vessel condition was better in the group 2 and the participants hearing ability was also significantly better in all frequencies. After that, the diets in the two groups were reversed. Four years after the diet reversal the hearing in the now low-fat group was improved and the hearing in the now high-fat group was deteriorating. The authors concluded that a diet high in polyunsaturated fats may stop, if not reverse, hearing loss (2).

In a recent Dutch study, 720 participants 50–70 years of age without hearing loss were tested for levels of polyunsaturated fats, very long-chain n-3 PUFA in their plasma. In high sound frequencies, there was no correlation of hearing acuity and PUFA concentrations in plasma. However, in the low frequencies, the higher PUFA levels corresponded to better hearing abilities. The authors found their results “encouraging, but requirig confirmation from future studies.” (3)

1. Serum Homocysteine and Folate Concentrations Are Associated with Prevalent Age-Related Hearing Loss. Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 140, No. 8, 1469-1474, Aug, 2010
2. DIETARY PREVENTION OF HEARING LOSS. Acta Otolaryng 70: 242-247, 1970
3. PLASMA VERY LONG-CHAIN N-3 POLYUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS AND AGE-RELATED HEARING LOSS IN OLDER ADULTS. THE JOURNAL OF NUTRITION, HEALTH & AGING Volume 14, Number 5, 347-351, 200

Intermittent fasting is popular today. One of the aspects of this calorie restriction techniques is periodic ketosis, which is proved to be  neuroprotective. Another aspect is periodic interruption of glycolysis, which is also good for the brain. However, the Hellers were first to empirically formulate the idea and make it very dieter-friendly: Rachael F. Heller, Richard F. Heller. The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet: The Lifelong Solution to Yo-Yo Dieting. Signet (1993)

<– Carbohydrate Addict Diet Food Pyramid

This diet is for you if you have:

• forceful hunger
• craving for carbohydrate-rich foods
• need for starches
• desire for snack foods, junk food, or sweets?

Do you have problems:

• staying away from food between meals
• staying away from snacks at night
• stopping a meal containing starches and sweets
• eating tasty food while not being hungry
• staying alert after a large meal
• staying alert early afternoon
• keeping your weight off after losing weight due to dieting

Do you tend to overeat these foods:

• Breads
• Bagels
• Cakes
• Cereal
• Chocolate
• Cookies
• Crackers
• fruit
• juice
• ice cream
• potatoes
• pasta
• rice
• popcorn
• sodas?

Do you indulge in:

• sugar substitutes
• alcohol
• monosodium glutamate?

If you answered “yes” to at least one of the questions in each category, the CAD might be right for you.

The diet prescribes two meals, called Complementary Meals, which limit carbohydrate generally same way most low carb diets do. Most people choose breakfast and lunch for their complementary meals. The diet allows one Reward Meal not limiting carbohydrate content but limiting this meal’s duration to strictly one hour. It is believed that with this meal planning you body is tricked into releasing less insulin. Thus, it better controls blood sugar levels and therefore stores less fat.

The diet starts with the Entry Plan. You eat two complementary meals and a reward meal, no snacks, for a week, then you weigh. Your plan for the next week will depend on your weight loss and your weight loss goal. For instance, if you loss was around 2 pounds, you go to the Plan A, which is essentially same plan, but you are allowed to have a low carb snack.

If after following the Entry Plan for a week you lost 0.5 lb. To 2 lb., you go to the Plan B, which is in fact staying on the Entry Plan for one more week.

If you didn’t lose any weight on Entry Plan, you go to the Plan C and this is an interesting part. All you do differently comparing with the Entry Plan, is eating two big salads made of leafy green vegetables before both of your two daily complementary meals.

There’s also the Plan D, for the most stubborn body weight, where you add one more salad, before your Reward Meal. This planning goes on every new week.

From the book:

The Banta Diet: A diet mobilizing the fat burning biochemical pathway. 92 % success rate since 2002

Reprinted with permission

• Resveratrol and curcumin, plant’s own weapons that protect the brain
• Flavonoids: what they are, food sources, and brain aging
• Nature’s antioxidants
• Blueberries, aging, learning, and memory
• Nutrients for Better Learning
• Coffee, tea, and chocolate can help to avoid Parkinson’s disease
• Caffeine protect against neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease
• The brain believes the sweet taste rather than metabolic facts
• Brain Rewards: Endorphins
• Why is fat so tasty?
• Mood Effects of Low-carb Diets
• Nutrition and Mood Support
• Wrong foods for ADHD

Most of the studies into the protective effects of exercise against cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease, followed the elderly people starting their 65s and watched the results, which were relevant to the beneficial effects in late life. However, there are some results where a large cohort of 65-79-year olds has been followed-up for around 21 years so information about physical activity during midlife was available. Those who who participated in at least “leisure-time physical activity” during midlife had significantly lower risks of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease comparing with those who did not exercise at all [1].

Another study has suggested that physical activity at even earlier ages (physical activity between ages 15 and 25 years was asked retrospectively) can improve or preserve cognitive ability in late life [2]. This cognitive decline risk reduction is at least comparable to the eisks reduction reported in studies of physical activity in older persons. Thus, midlife physical activity might be as important for preventing later cognitive decline as is physical activity at older ages.

Sources

1. Rovio S, et al. Leisure-time physical activity at midlife and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Lancet Neurol 2005;4:705–11
2. Dik M, Deeg DJ, Visser M, Jonker C. Early life physical activity and cognition at old age. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 2003;25:643–53

HERBS AND SPICES: UNEXPECTED SOURCES OF ANTIEPILEPTOGENIC DRUG TREATMENTS?

According to Michael Wong, MD, PhD (1), although there’s a noticeable progress in anti-epileptic drug development, two obstacles remain unchanged for many decades.

• The number of cases resistant to the best and newest drugs does not decrease
• The best drugs address symptoms and not the cause of the disease, namely, they might suppress the seizures but they cannot make them disappear. As a result of such a failure, we still have no anti-epileptic therapies.

Recent studies, however, address potential neuroprotective and anti-epileptogenic actions of substances naturally occurring in plants. For example, Resveratrol (a phytoalexin) is found in plants such as peanuts and grapes, but it’s especially abundant in red wine. In plants, Resveratrol defends the cells against the consequences of injury, parasitics, and infectious diseases — hence its antiinflammatory, antioxidant, anti-tumor, and, if given to animals, its neuroprotective effects.

In the article “Protective Effect of Resveratrol Against Kainate-Induced Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Rats” Resveratrol is described as a potent anti-epilepsy agent, which protects against epileptogenesis (not just against seizures) in animal model of temporal lobe epilepsy (2).

Another success story was told about curcumin, which is the major ingredient in the popular Indian spice, tumeric. Tumeric has been used for centuries in parts of India as an herbal therapy; including treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. As resveratrol, curcumin has been shown to inhibit acute seizures. The recent study (3) studied the effect of curcumin on epileptogenesis in a rat model of post-traumatic epilepsy.  Curcumin decreased the development of and seizures and improved memory and learning.

Sources

1. M Wong. CURRENT LITERATURE IN BASIC SCIENCE. Epilepsy Currents, Vol. 10, No. 1  2010 pp. 21–23
2. Protective Effect of Resveratrol Against Kainate-Induced Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Rats. Wu Z, Xu Q, Zhang
3. L, Kong D, Ma R, Wang L. Neurochem Res 2009;34(8):1393–1400.
4. Curcumin Protects Against Electrobehavioral Progression of Seizures in the Iron-Induced Experimental Model of Epileptogenesis. Jyoti A, Sethi P, Sharma D. Epilepsy Behav 2009;14(2):300–308.

• Alzheimer’s affects approximately 4.5 million Americans and is
expected to affect up to 16 million by 2050.
• Alzheimer’s affects approximately 5 percent of men and women
ages 65–74.
• Nearly half of people 85 and older have Alzheimer’s.
• Alzheimer’s must be distinguished from mild cognitive impairment
and normal age-related memory changes.
(National Institute of Aging. Alzheimer’s Disease Information, May 9, 2006)

Physical and mental health: same strategies

Research evidence is accumulating, showing that many of the same strategies for maintaining physical health are also applicable for maintaining brain plasticity and good cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan. These studies reinforce the message that exercise—physical and mental—is an essential part of any comprehensive health program (ALTERNATIVE & COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES—OCTOBER 2006 pp 222-227)

Exercise and balance for intelligence

Exercise can help maintain balance, and balance in the elderly has been highly correlated with performance measures of mental abilities such as general intelligence, memory, and reaction time. Balance thus serves as a biomarker of cerebroarterial blood flow
and age-related global neurophysiologic status (Neuropsychologia 2006;44:1978–1983).

Meditation and cortex thickness

Magnetic resonance imaging to assess cortical thickness revealed that brain areas—such as the prefrontal cortex involved with memory, attention, and sensory processing—were approximately 5 percent thicker in the subjects who meditated compared with those who did not. This difference was most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset agerelated cortical thinning (Neuroreport 2005;16:1893–1897)

Combined deficiency in vitamins C and E is a risk factor for neuronal death and brain necrosis.

Vitamin C easily crosses the blood brain barrier and its transport into the brain is mediated by glucose transporters. Vitamin C concentrations in the brain exceed those in blood by 10-fold. In humans, hypovitaminosis C correlated with brain damage in patients with head trauma (Stroke. 2001;32:898-902). The vitamin C has important functions in the brain, for example, protecting neuronal membranes from oxidative damage acting as a scavenger of free radicals.

Another free radical scavenger Vitamin E (-tocopherol) inhibits the amyloid peptide characteristic for Alzheimer’s disease known to induced cell death (Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications Volume 186, Issue 2, 31 July 1992, Pages 944-950).

The results of a study of Guinea Pigs’s fed either on normal or vitamin-deficient diets showed that while moderate deficiencies of vitamins E or C didn’t result in serious brain changes, their combined moderate deficienciescaused degenerative changes in the guinea pig brains in only 5 days after vitamins were removed from the feed.

Interestingly, the deficiencies in either E or C vitamins had only moderate consequences, but their combination caused severe brain lesions – inflammation, cell death with necrosis and apoptosis and animals’ death (Nutr. 136:1576-1581, June 2006).

Read also Brain rewards, endorphins

The best of the few known conventional theories on acupuncture belongs to a team of theoretical biologists working under Dr. Dmitri Chernavski, an academician of Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Physics, in Moscow.  The group approached the problem from the point of view of concept of neurocomputing.

Since mid-century, using a model based on human neural structures, a whole new class of computers, possessing so called ” artificial intelligence”, has been developed  – the ones that can learn, recognize objects, and correct their own mistakes.  In somewhat of a paradox, the reverse logic has been used now, in order to explain the mechanisms of a live brain using the known electronic models.  Thus the theory of self-diagnostic function of an organism was developed.  Most of these self-diagnostic (recognizing the “image of a disease”) processes take place in the spinal cord.  In the gray matter of the spinal cord, the neurons are organized into what are called “Rexed laminae” and their functions are well-known.

The signals from the inner organs, as well as from the skin and muscles first go through the first lamina, separate from each other.  Then the signals move through the second lamina, third one, and so on, while increasingly interacting with each other and, after ten laminae, finally reach the brain in the form of one integrated set of information about the body’s state of being.  The computers that recognize objects have basically the same laminar structure and function of signal integration.  In both cases, an omitted signal from an internal organ, or one that is not strong enough, will be compensated for by the other one (e.g. from the skin), thus correcting the mistake.

According to Dr. Chernavski, skin stimulation at the point of acupuncture accomplishes the same goal.  The process of integration in the Rexed laminae increases the flow of “signals of illness” from an organ, or points out a body’s mistake in recognizing the disorder.  It is as if you wanted to send a letter to someone down the stream with little or no water using a miniature ship to carry it.  Add some water, and the ship will get there. Neither the way of adding the water nor the water itself has any effect on the content of letter sent.

Once the body has the stronger, clearer information about the injury or disease, the natural healing powers of the body take over.  What happens when the disease is recognized, the above theory does not explain, stating that the body has enough resources to battle the disease on its own.  Conventional medicine neglects that statement, while holistic medicine is based on it.

Nevertheless, conventional medicine may be missing an opportunity in dismissing this explanation too quickly.  Within the limits of the West’s strict paradigm, there has been collected a large number of facts on natural ways of fighting diseases.  We offer to discuss one of the most universal mechanisms to restore body’s balance.

It is known that a number of physical actions in excess of average intensity, including pain, stress, bleeding, acupuncture, sex, laughing, drugs and even highly palatable foods can trigger the release of endorphins (Fig. 5).  Pain reduction , in it’s turn, is the most common result associated with the release of endorphins.  It has been concluded recently, that any intense skin stimulation will cause a significant release of endorphins.

Another effect is the curious state the body falls into after the endorphin concentration has gone up: a number of other physiological regulators are released into the bloodstream such as growth hormone and insulin.  Each one of those regulators changes a number of different  body functions.  As a result, it is not surprising that many serious diseases are linked to the abnormalities in the endorphin system including may kinds of addiction, schizophrenia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease as well as PMS and weight problems. We believe that there may be some linkage between abnormalities in the endorphin system and various conditions such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and may kinds of addiction.

Thus, skin stimulation, even not necessarily as accurate as in acupuncture, but intensive enough, does two things:

1. Provides additional information on the nature of the disorder to the body’s self-diagnostic system

2. Helps to create a new physiological state which is more adequate and favorable to the healing process

From the book Reflexo-therapy From Kuznetsov’s Applicator to Shakti Mat