Sea Crest Health Care Center

With the number of U.S. seniors with Alzheimer’s skyrocketing, much research is underway to determine how to stave off this mental deterioration, keeping people physically and mentally sound as they age.

A recent report in the December Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences found that older women who volunteered for Experience Corps – tutoring elementary school children, had increased brain activity  in regions important to cognitive function after a period of six months.

What was exciting about these results, is that it shows a direct correlation between community-based programs and improved cognitive functions. Until now, much study has been done on the brain-boosting power of cognitive, physical and social leisure activities, but little was known about the effectiveness of community-based service.

“This finding is best captured by a personal observation from one of the volunteers, who stated that ‘it [Experience Corps] removed the cobwebs from my brain.” wrote Michelle C. Carlson, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The seventeen women enrolled in this study were low-income African-Americans with little education, aged 65 and older, and deemed high-risk for cognitive declines, based on a mental state evaluation. Eight of the women actually participated in the tutoring program in Baltimore elementary schools, while the other nine served as the control.

Via functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers assessed neural activity in the brain prior to the volunteering experience, and again after six months. Based on the fMRI assessment, the women who actively participated in Experience Corps saw improvements in mental function compared with those in the control group.

There you have it, doing your civic duty and assisting others is highly rewarding to all participants. These meaningful activities seem to be more enriching than highly stimulating activities performed alone

At the recent Alzheimer’s Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, an eye opening study demonstrated that spouses who care for a mate suffering from dementia were more likely to develop the same condition, with husband caregivers at a much greater risk than wife caregivers.

Wives who cared for husbands with dementia were nearly four times more likely to develop dementia than wives of men who didn’t have dementia, while husband caregivers in the same circumstances were almost 12 times more likely to develop the disease.

So what exactly is it that causes the risk of developing Alzheimer’s to skyrocket? You can’t catch it, can you? Researchers think the root cause is the stress that comes along with these caregiving situations.

Ralph Nixon, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist and Alzheimer’s disease expert at NYU and vice chairman of the Medical & Scientific Advisory Council at the Alzheimer’s Association feels that “the amount of stress involved in caring for a spouse with dementia is tremendous,and stress is a known risk factor for dementia.”

Healthy diet and exercise are key factors of good brain health, and both of these areas tend to falter when one is stressed out. It is critical that caregivers look after themselves properly, making sure to rest, to visit a doctor regularly and to maintain social ties.

Since men tend to rely on their wives to serve as the impetus for seeing the doctor and keeping up with friends and family, they are more apt than women caregivers to let these things slide when their spouse is cognitively impaired – thereby increasing their risk of high cholesterol, blood pressure and other conditions that can lead to dementia.

The irony is quite delicious:  Scientists believe they have indeed found the Fountain of Youth and it is found right at the entry of our mouths- as long as we seriously restrict our calorie intake while maintaining all essential nutrients?

For the first time, researchers have shown that restricting calories in primates maintains their youth and prevents age-related disease.

According to a  long-running study by  Richard Weindruch, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin Madison, and colleagues running study of rhesus macaques, suggest that a similar effect might occur in humans and open the door to drugs that would mimic so-called caloric restriction, “We now have proof of efficacy of caloric restriction in primates,” Dr. Weindruch said, and  once the mechanisms are understood, it may be possible to develop “mimetics”– drugs that would have the same effect, but without the need for altering human diets.

Our diet controlled monkeys did extraordinarily well on calorie-restricted diets:

None of the animals on caloric restriction — even those with compromised metabolic function at baseline — had impaired glucose homeostasis.

The incidence of neoplasia was reduced by 50% in the animals on caloric restriction, compared with controls.

The incidence of cardiovascular disease was reduced by half in the diet-controlled monkeys, compared with controls.

They had  significantly slower rates of age-associated brain atrophy in some regions than controls.

The researchers also monitored when age-associated diseases appeared and found that caloric restriction reduced disease onset significantly.

Monkeys on the restricted diet appeared and acted biologically younger than their counterparts in the control arm and physically looked considerably better.

“Not only do the animals stay biologically younger longer, they look younger longer,” Dr. Weindruch said.

Dr. Sierra’s institute is sponsoring a study on calorie restriction in humans — the so-called CALORIE study — but he noted that “you have to be a special type of person to subject yourself to this . . . it’s a self-selected group.” Conducting a calorie restriction study in people in general “would be difficult, let’s put it that way,” he said.

You think?

by Nechama Drillick

You’ve been given fair warning – the more socially active you are, the slower you’ll age. Research data in the June 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine reveal a direct connection between social activity and physical function.

The study focused on a group of 906 adults who averaged age 66.5 and were free of stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia at the onset.

Everyone’s activity level was scored on a range from 1 to 4.17, with a mean baseline of 2.6.

Participants who volunteered, played bingo, ate out with friends, attended church and partook of other activities with greater frequency had a slower decline in motor function than those who were more socially withdrawn.

“For each point below the mean social activity score at baseline, the average rate or decline in global motor function was 33% more rapid,” they wrote. “In terms of declining motor function, a 1-point decrease on the social activity scale was equivalent to being five years older at baseline.”

And that age difference of five years translated into a 40% increase in the risk of death and more than a 65% increase in the development of a disability.

There you have it. There are significant benefits to being a social butterfly as opposed to a wallflower. Staying socially fit is an essential part of staying young.

By: Nechama Drillick

Advanced dementia is something that the average healthy person has a hard time imagining unless they are the caregiver of a loved one in that condition. Researchers in Boston recently documented the ravages of this incurable state on video. After showing this heartwrenching movie to adults over age 65, many had the same reaction; if they were faced with such serious loss of cognitive function they would not want their lives aggressively prolonged. The conclusion of researchers (published in the current BMJ journal) – people should make decisions about their future care while they are fully informed and healthy, and have them legally documented.?Otherwise, once one reaches the point of incapacity, other will make those significant decisions for you, regardless of your wishes.

This footage underlines the importance of surrounding one’s self with devoted loved ones, especially in one’s old age. The knowledge that your family will sincerely and patiently see to your comfort, well-being and dignity provides one with the security to face the vulnerability of old age and its possible side effects head on.

VIDEO LINK
http://www.bmj.com/video/care_preferences_dementia.dtl

Some days start off better than others. An inveterate recipient of medical and pharmaceutical RSS feeds and real time alerts from a myriad of medical sources, I’m often hit with a phalanx of “cease and desists” regarding any number of personal idiosyncrasies. Many, of course, hit me in the proverbial stomach: stop consuming proteins and carbs , throw out those wonderfully expendable aluminum pans, stop reaching for that cold remedy you always secretly thought caused your heart palpitations…

Today is glorious. Not only should I continue my consistent consumption of coffee, but I will concurrently ward off the demons of dementia!

Dr. Miia Kivipelto, an associate professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and lead author of a newly released study tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.

Their observational study concluded that subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. (Those who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.)

Now if they could just keep the calories down on my flavored mocha-chinos…

by Adele Weber

You knew it, and were just waiting for science to catch up. Coffee is good for you. For your brain. For your health. Overall, it’s the elixir of good health.

Scandinavian researchers followed the health of coffee consumers from middle to old age. The subjects were divided into three groups: low coffee drinker (0-2 cups), moderate (3-5), and heavy (more than 5 cups per day). 21 years later, 1,500 participants were examined for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. They found that “Moderate coffee drinkers had a 65%-70% decreased risk of dementia and a 62%-64% decreased risk of Alzheimer’s compared with low coffee drinkers.” Low coffee drinkers also scored higher for depression. Coffee drinking has also been associated with lower risk of Type 2 diabetes.

What is it about coffee that has such a salubrious effect on the health? Caffeine? Not quite. Tea, also a highly caffeinated beverage, didn’t produce a similar pattern of mental health in its drinkers. Perhaps it’s something else in the coffee that does it. Whatever it is, you now have a better reason to hang out at the coffee machine at work.

Amyloid beta plaque on the brain has long been associated with Alzheimer’s disease, and often considered the cause of mental decline.

Apparently, this is not true.

A British study used an immune response to almost completely remove the plaque from subjects’ brains, but this did not have any affect on the progression of their dementia.

This stymies the idea of an anti-amyloid approach to fighting Alzheimer’s disease. Even if amyloid beta plaque has something to do with the onset of the disease, it clearly doesn’t have an ongoing affect. Researchers must look for another mechanism triggered concurrently that could be affecting cognition.

~ Zev Driller

An old antihistamine drug may come back on the market one day – to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Dimebond, once sold in Russia to treat allergies, may have the happy side affect of reversing cognitive decline. Test subjects taking Dimebond actually improved their scores on cognition tests, compared to both the control group and their own baseline scores. Alistair Burns, M.D., of the University of Manchester in England, and Robin Jacoby, D.M., of the University of Oxford in England, believe it attacks several mechanisms of dementia that could make it affective in treating mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

Dimebond was only on the market temporarily, and in Russia. It was pulled when better, targeted antihistamines were introduced, making it superfluous. For that reason, it was never approved for use in the United States, and has not received much notice elsewhere.