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By Erin Allday
New York Times Syndicate
10-18-10
San Francisco -- If doctors are ever going to find a way to attack and even cure Alzheimer's disease, they first need to know how to diagnose it -- ideally years, maybe even decades, before patients are symptomatic and their brain has been irreparably damaged.
That's why researchers around the country are intrigued by several promising new studies that highlight techniques for identifying Alzheimer's in the body long before people show the classic signs of memory loss and confusion.
A study that was released in August to much excitement among researchers suggested that a spinal fluid test could be very effective in identifying abnormal levels of amyloid, a protein that forms plaque buildups in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
In the Bay Area, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and Stanford are studying drugs that would serve as biomarkers in the body, attaching themselves to proteins like amyloid and letting doctors find those proteins more easily using imaging tests.
"It's exciting that we will likely soon have new tools that will allow us to detect Alzheimer's changes very early, even in people who are cognitively normal," said Dr. Adam Boxer , director of the Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia clinical trials program at UCSF's Memory and Aging Center. "If there were a treatment that could remove amyloid from the brain, then it would really be an exciting and powerful combination."
People are currently tested for Alzheimer's using a fairly lengthy, somewhat subjective process that starts with simple memory tests and interviews with patients and their family about problems they may be having from day to day. Those tests are accompanied by a physical examination, more thorough cognitive testing, and blood analysis and a brain-imaging scan.
The process is more about ruling out other diseases with similar symptoms -- such as a stroke or a benign brain tumor -- that may be easily treated. After the testing is over, doctors can reliably diagnose Alzheimer's with about 90 percent accuracy, but it can only be confirmed after death, when brain tissue can be studied under a microscope.
For patients and the doctors treating them, it's not necessarily important to definitively diagnose Alzheimer's because for now there's no cure for the disease. But for researchers, it's essential to be able to identify test subjects who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's so that they can focus on potential treatments.
Researchers hope that if doctors can find abnormal buildup of proteins before people become symptomatic, it may be easier to find effective treatments. Most studies of potential drug treatments for Alzheimer's have had disappointing results.
"Many (researchers) believe these studies may have failed because we started treating people too late," Boxer said. "The majority of people in studies have full-blown Alzheimer's disease, and it's a tall order to get treatments to work in these people.
It's hoped that by developing biomarkers, we could find it much earlier."
Most research into early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is centered around two proteins: amyloid beta, which is distinctive for the way it clumps up in the brain like plaque, and tau, which forms tangled strands in the brain when neurons die. Buildup of these proteins is common in the brains of deceased people who had Alzheimer's.
At Stanford, a team of researchers is participating in a national study of the drug florbetaben, which would act as a marker for amyloid and allow doctors to find the protein using certain imaging techniques. UCSF researchers, meanwhile, are looking for similar drugs that might be used a biomarkers for the tau protein.
The spinal fluid test, which was studied primarily at the University of Pennsylvania, involves performing a spinal tap on patients to look for signs of both proteins.
Dr. Marci Teresi , clinical lead of the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Memory Clinic, said doctors are enthusiastic about the current research, but she doesn't expect such testing to be made widely available outside of research studies any time soon.
"It's mostly useful for investigational purposes, for finding people who want to participate in research studies," Teresi said.
"I don't think it's as practical for the large number of patients that are out there seeing their regular doctors."
In other words, patients with no Alzheimer's symptoms shouldn't start asking their doctors for advanced imaging tests any time soon. In fact, early testing could do more harm than good, some doctors say, if it causes patients anxiety and depression before they're showing signs of Alzheimer's. Some people with protein buildup in their brains never get Alzheimer's at all.
Still, there are advantages to screening older people who may be showing the first small signs of illness, said Dr. Catherine Madison , medical director of California Pacific Medical Center's Memory Clinic.
Several drugs can make life for patients more comfortable and slow down some of the worst effects of the disease, especially if the treatment is started early. Patients can also benefit from therapy and anti-depressants.
"There's no magic cure out there. Even if I could tell you that you were going to get dementia, would you want me to?" Madison said. "But we have medications that can help. We can slow the course of this and make it a whole lot better for patients and families."
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Showing posts with label brain health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain health. Show all posts
9/22/10
2050: 1.1 Million Over 100 Years Old; Their Aging Brains
Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
07-21-10
There was a recent article in my local paper about brain fitness and how to retain optimal brain function well into our senior years. As boomers, we are all concerned about moments of memory loss and wonder if we are experiencing dementia or other signs of cognitive impairment.
Chances are our memory loss is more about our ability to retrieve information and filter out unnecessary irrelevant material than it is about cognitive decline and illness. Because there's so much information bogging us down and distracting us, it becomes difficult to shut off the "noise" long enough to remember what we want to remember. That makes us feel forgetful and susceptible to those numerous senior moments.
However, we can't ignore that cognitive decline may happen, but we don't have to feel helpless to the aging process. Most researchers will agree that a challenged, stimulated brain will retain and regenerate brain cells and that translates into maintaining, restoring and revitalizing cognitive acuity well into the golden years of our lives.
Therefore, if you want to slow up the aging process, you may want to learn a new language, do crossword puzzles, play Sudoku or take piano lessons to reduce your risk of getting Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia.
Research is now taking aging a step further. Apparently, not only is it important to learn challenging new experiences, but it is important to do so in a social setting, connecting and interacting with others. The University of Southern California has been studying this concept with a group of seniors who are well into their 90s. The key to their brain health is their afternoon bridge game where they are required to maintain a strong focus by remembering the bidding, the dealt hands and the strategies of their partner.
These residents in Southern California are considered the most successful seniors in the world. In fact, this research is altering the way scientists are looking at the aging brain. While mental exercises and good diet can't hurt to keep you healthy and alert, it seems you need to be involved socially with others to maintain your cognitive alertness and acuity.
Successful aging is really based on lifelong choices, a good attitude and a keen sense of your life's purpose. The Census Bureau estimates that by 2050 there will be 1.1 million people 100 years old. Baby boomers who continue to train their brain on a regular basis are twice as likely to retain high cognitive function than someone who doesn't. This means that if you start now, you'll reap the rewards of a healthy, sharp, active brain for many fruitful years to come.
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- BrainActivate Brain Performance Drink for Focus, Concentration, & Memory
- BrainRestore Nutraceutical Brain Support Protect, Detox, Replenish
- BrainSmart Nutraceutical Brain Support for Focus, Concentration, & Memory
*Amy Sherman is a licensed mental health counselor and trainer.
5/10/10
You May Be Too Fit To Be Healthy
Fitness and health are not the same
Fitness is the ability to perform work, create physical energy, with well trained muscles and health is the absence of illness. These two are not mutually inclusive. If you concentrate on health improvement you will improve the health of muscles as well and it will improve their ability to produce energy, in other words it will improve overall fitness as well. On the other hand, if you concentrate on fitness improvement and a washboard stomach and other pleasant looking muscle groups, then your health will actually decline. That sounds crazy and totally at odds with what we have learned and what we believe about fitness and health. But that are new insight that can be better understood after reading www.PlasmaCirculation.com.
Blood circulation
Health requires better blood circulation through all the tissues in the body (vital organs, brain, joint tissue etc.) and fitness requires more blood circulation through muscles. It so happens that an increase of blood-flow through muscles will necessarily result in a decrease of blood-flow through all non-muscle cell tissues, resulting in less blood delivery to all these cell tissues. It means a decrease in delivery of nutrients, oxygen and disease fighting white blood cells (a most important part of our immune system) and that means a decrease in health and greater risk of cancer in all the cell tissues that get fewer white blood cells, oxygen and nutrients delivered to them.
Exercise creates blood flow through muscles at the expense of blood flow through all non-muscle tissue in the body (vital organs, brain etc.)
Exercise creates greater blood flow through the muscles that are producing energy during the exercise. Capillaries in the working muscles open up to a larger flow diameter. They dilate to a larger diameter as a result of lactic acid that is produced by the muscle cells that create the energy. with most exercise the flow diameter of the capillaries goes back to normal. With some exercises that greater blood flow through the fit muscles remains after the exercise when the person is no longer exercising. The blood flow through the fit muscles will still remain at a higher flow volume when the person is at rest and that means lower volume of blood through all other non-muscle cell tissues when the person is at rest and not only when that person is exercising. It means more fitness and less health.
But since most people equate fitness with health they will be wanting to do the kind of exercises that improve fitness and they will wind up decreasing their health. This explains then also why many highly fit people from the World of sports will often wind up with a lot of severe health problems in their mid-fifties and sixties and many will die in their mid fifties and sixties, many as a result of cancer. We then wonder how it is possible that these very fit people wind up with these big health problems and die, because we are stuck in the belief that fitness equals health.
Here is the explanation:
When you concentrate on creating maximum fitness, you will have to do very intense exercises that will increase blood-flow through muscles so that the increased blood-flow will deliver more “fuel” and oxygen to the muscles with which they can create more energy and perform more work (fitness). The problem is that an increase of blood-flow through these fit muscles means a decrease of blood-flow in all other cell-tissues in the body.
It now becomes clear
It now becomes clear why some very fit individuals such as athletes in certain sports are having serious health problems in their mid-fifties and sixties and why a number of them die in their mid-fifties and sixties. They have created too much permanent blood flow at rest through all their highly trained very fit muscles. Professional football players have an average lifespan of 52, much lower than the average population.
Many of the health problems are cancer related. That is also explained in http://www.plasmacirculation.com/
Low resting pulse rates
The people that have created a high degree of fitness and a lot of blood flow through highly trained muscles at rest, will have a low resting pulse rate. They now incorrectly believe that a low resting pulse rate is a good thing because it is as a result of being very fit. And since they believe that fitness means health, they will try to train for even more fitness that results in an even lower pulse rate at rest. They now are well on their way to less health and more illness. Very confusing right?
Why is their resting pulse low?
The main influence of resting pulse rate is the level of CO2 circulating in the blood. People that have developed a lot of bloodflow through muscles at rest will have less blood circulation through all non-muscle celltissues at rest. Not good for health and it makes for low levels of CO2 in the blood at rest, resulting in a low pulserate.
Just like any other animal, the best way to keep your body in shape and your blood circulating properly is through explosive movement. But how do you exercise like that without hurting yourself? The answer is QuickGym.
The QuickGym / ROM machine puts you through cardio performed at such an intense level that your body will spend the rest of the day expending energy to recover from the workout. This is commonly referred to as EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) and it means that you consume a great deal more oxygen recovering from the exercise than you would have if you'd just done a steady-state workout like jogging or walking. This means that you will be burning up to nine times more fat while sitting on the couch later that night than you would have if you'd spent an hour on the treadmill at a moderate pace.
High intensity training, also known as HIT training, has a number of benefits in addition to the reduction in training time. First of all, this type of training is far superior to steady-state exercises when it comes to increasing your VO2 max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen you can uptake during exercise.
High intensity training, also known as HIT training, has a number of benefits in addition to the reduction in training time. First of all, this type of training is far superior to steady-state exercises when it comes to increasing your VO2 max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen you can uptake during exercise.
Besides, The best exercise is the one you will do!
11/11/09
FOCUS ON BRAIN HEALTH: Vitamin B12 Deficiency can Look Identical to Alzheimer's Disease
The article below talks about the dangers of a Vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12 can be found in the HealthPro Nutrient brain formulas:HPN uses the optimal and more expensive form of vitamin B12 called methylcobalamin.
For optimal brain health also look to Omega 3-6-9, C+CoQ10, and LifeLine.
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When is Alzheimer`s Disease NOT Alzheimer`s Disease? When it`s actually caused by undiagnosed Vitamin B12 deficiency. This frequent occurrence is a tragedy in our society where growing numbers of those with Alzheimer`s Disease are diagnosed every year. Despite having IDENTICAL symptoms in many cases, vitamin B12 deficiency is almost NEVER considered as a possible cause.
Alzheimer`s Disease is a growing personal and family problem as well as a HUGE financial burden for society. And with over 4 million people in the US alone who have been diagnosed with this 'incurable' disease, Alzheimer`s Disease is becoming an ever growing crisis. Governments around the world are attempting to combat this problem by spending millions of dollars every year on research for drugs, stem cell treatment, genetic manipulation and pharmaceuticals- yet nothing has been found to effectively stop or slow its insidious spread. However, doctors in clinical practice are completely overlooking a SIMPLE cause of this problem that could stop the disease in its tracks. The scientific evidence is VERY CLEAR that the symptoms of Alzheimer`s Disease could be RADICALLY improved in many cases if a trial of high dose vitamin B12 were instituted soon after diagnosis.
Vitamin B12 deficiency, also called cobalamin deficiency, becomes more and more common as people get older and some researchers estimate that over 800,000 elderly in the US have undiagnosed deficiency. Yet because few clinicians are trained to look for its symptoms, many elderly who SHOULD be screened for this simple vitamin deficiency are, instead, diagnosed with `incurable` neurologic diseases. These mental changes from vitamin B12 deficiency were first described as far back as 1902, with much research having been done since that time. Many times, these changes are accompanied by lesions and degeneration of the brain and spinal cord on medical imaging that doctors use as evidence of the irreversible nature of this disease. Astoundingly, when these degenerative changes are caused by Vitamin B12 Deficiency, they are actually REVERSIBLE if high dose therapy is started soon after diagnosis!
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When is Alzheimer`s Disease NOT Alzheimer`s Disease? When it`s actually caused by undiagnosed Vitamin B12 deficiency. This frequent occurrence is a tragedy in our society where growing numbers of those with Alzheimer`s Disease are diagnosed every year. Despite having IDENTICAL symptoms in many cases, vitamin B12 deficiency is almost NEVER considered as a possible cause.
Alzheimer`s Disease is a growing personal and family problem as well as a HUGE financial burden for society. And with over 4 million people in the US alone who have been diagnosed with this 'incurable' disease, Alzheimer`s Disease is becoming an ever growing crisis. Governments around the world are attempting to combat this problem by spending millions of dollars every year on research for drugs, stem cell treatment, genetic manipulation and pharmaceuticals- yet nothing has been found to effectively stop or slow its insidious spread. However, doctors in clinical practice are completely overlooking a SIMPLE cause of this problem that could stop the disease in its tracks. The scientific evidence is VERY CLEAR that the symptoms of Alzheimer`s Disease could be RADICALLY improved in many cases if a trial of high dose vitamin B12 were instituted soon after diagnosis.
Vitamin B12 deficiency, also called cobalamin deficiency, becomes more and more common as people get older and some researchers estimate that over 800,000 elderly in the US have undiagnosed deficiency. Yet because few clinicians are trained to look for its symptoms, many elderly who SHOULD be screened for this simple vitamin deficiency are, instead, diagnosed with `incurable` neurologic diseases. These mental changes from vitamin B12 deficiency were first described as far back as 1902, with much research having been done since that time. Many times, these changes are accompanied by lesions and degeneration of the brain and spinal cord on medical imaging that doctors use as evidence of the irreversible nature of this disease. Astoundingly, when these degenerative changes are caused by Vitamin B12 Deficiency, they are actually REVERSIBLE if high dose therapy is started soon after diagnosis!
Not only is medical imaging worthless in determining which cases will benefit from Vitamin B12 therapy, but blood testing has little value either. Since the 1950's, several studies have shown that cases of dementia that respond well to vitamin B12 therapy often have completely normal Vitamin B12 blood tests. Yet 50 years later, doctors still rely EXCLUSIVELY on blood testing and medical imaging to determine the need for Vitamin B12 therapy. These studies are clearly showing that a trial regimen of high dose vitamin B12 is absolutely warranted with cases of new onset dementia regardless of the results of medical testing. Yet modern medicine is simply NOT paying attention, and this extraordinarily safe therapy that costs less than $100 is virtually NEVER instituted. As a result, Alzheimer`s patients who COULD have benefited if B12 therapy were instituted soon after diagnosis are left with no memory and no hope.
Additional Articles/Research:
1) http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=2306220&pageindex=1
2) http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2035923&blobtype=pdf
3) http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/12/3/389
source: by Kerri Knox, RN, citizen journalist
November is Alzheimer's Awareness Month -- Come back for more informative articles throughout the month or sign up for our weekly newsletter.
November is Alzheimer's Awareness Month -- Come back for more informative articles throughout the month or sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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