Disrupted Sleep, Memory and Cognition

A January 2024 study the University of California, San Francisco said,

• “Given that signs of Alzheimer’s disease start to accumulate in the brain several decades before symptoms begin, understanding the connection between sleep and cognition earlier in life is critical for understanding the role of sleep problems as a risk factor for the disease,”

• “Our findings indicate that the quality rather than the quantity of sleep matters most for cognitive health in middle age.”

• “More research is needed to assess the link between sleep disturbances and cognition at different stages of life and to identify if critical life periods exist when sleep is more strongly associated with cognition,”

• “Future studies could open up new opportunities for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease later in life.”

Sleep, immunity, inflammation

A September 2022 study by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said,

• “This study begins to identify the biological mechanisms that link sleep and immunological health over the long-term. It shows that in humans and mice, disrupted sleep has a profound influence on the programming of immune cells and rate of their production, causing them to lose their protective effects and actually make infections worse—and these changes are long-lasting.  This is important because it is yet another key observation that sleep reduces inflammation and, conversely, that sleep interruption increases inflammation,” 

• “This work emphasizes the importance of adults consistently sleeping seven to eight hours a day to help prevent inflammation and disease, especially for those with underlying medical conditions."

• “Our findings suggest that sleep recovery is not able to fully reverse the effects of poor-quality sleep. We can detect a molecular imprint of insufficient sleep in immune stem cells, even after weeks of recovery sleep. This molecular imprint can cause the cells to respond in inappropriate ways leading to inflammation and disease,” 

• “It was surprising to find that not all clusters of stem cells responded to insufficient sleep in the same way. There were some stem cell clusters that proliferated and grew in number, while other clusters became smaller. This reduction in overall diversity and aging of the immune stem cell population is an important contributor to inflammatory diseases and cardiovascular disease.”

Dementia and Fasting

A September 2022 study of mice by USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and others, found mice on a fasting-mimicking diet [high in unsaturated fats and low in overall calories, protein, and carbohydrates] showed less Alzheimer’s pathology.

Gossypetin in hibiscus, Alzheimer's

A November 2022 study by the Department of Life Sciences, POSTECH said

“We have confirmed that removing Aβ aggregates deposited in the brain is effective in preventing and treating dementia. Gossypetin from hibiscus will contribute to the development of a safe and affordable drug for patients suffering from AD.” 

BMI and Alzheimer's

A May 2021 study at The Ohio State University said,

• "We don't want people to think they can eat everything they want because of this lower BMI association,”

• "We know that maintaining a healthy weight and having a healthy diet are extremely important to keeping inflammation and oxidative stress down - that's a risk factor that is modifiable, and it's something you can do to help improve your life and prevent neurodegenerative processes as much as possible,” 

• "If you start to notice rapid weight loss in an older individual, that could actually be a reflection of a potential neurodegenerative disease process."

• "We're trying to add more and more factors. That is my goal, to one day build a more precise and better model of the different combinations of risk factors," 

• "Genetic risk is important, but it really explains only a small part of Alzheimer's disease, so we're really interested in looking at other factors that we can control."

• "We think there's interaction between the genetics and lower BMI, and having both of these risk factors causes more degeneration in certain brain regions to increase the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease," 

• "If you can identify people at higher risk before symptoms manifest, you could implement interventions and prevention techniques to either slow or prevent that progression from happening altogether," she said.

• "We're finding again and again how important inflammation is in the process,”

• "Especially in midlife, trying to keep that inflammation down is such an important aspect of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and preventing accelerated aging."

Type 2 diabetes and Brown Fat

A June 2021 study by UT Southwestern said,

"We may be able to help make fat depots more metabolically healthy and potentially prevent or treat obesity-associated diabetes,"

diagnostic tool for Alzheimer's

A May 2022 study by Lund University in Sweden said, 

• "Our algorithm is based on a blood analysis of phosphylated tau and a risk gene for Alzheimer's, combined with testing of memory and executive function. We have now developed a prototype online tool to estimate the individual risk of a person with mild memory complaints developing Alzheimer's dementia within four years"

• "The algorithm has currently only been tested on patients who have been examined in memory clinics. Our hope is that it will also be validated for use in primary healthcare as well as in developing countries with limited resources”

• "The algorithm will enable us to recruit people with Alzheimer's at an early stage, which is when new drugs have a better chance of slowing the course of the disease"

Calculating the risk of dementia

A June 2022 study by The Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa, the Bruyère Research Institute and ICES said

• "What sets this dementia risk calculator apart is that you don't need to visit a doctor for any tests," 

• "People already have all the information they need to complete the calculator in the comfort of their home." 

• "This tool will give people who fill it out clues to what they can do to reduce their personal risk of dementia," 

• "The COVID-19 pandemic has also made it clear that sociodemographic variables like ethnicity and neighbourhood play a major role in our health. It was important to include those variables in the tool so policy makers can understand how different populations are impacted by dementia, and help ensure that any prevention strategies are equitable."

Exercise, depression, heart health

A June 2021 study by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences said,

• "Depression is common in patients with coronary artery disease. Having both conditions can have a significant impact on the quality of life for patients so it is vital that they access to the most effective treatments,”

• "Our study indicates that exercise is likely to be the best treatment for depression following coronary artery disease. Our findings further highlight the clinical importance of exercise as a treatment as we see that it improves not only depression, but also other important aspects of heart disease, such as lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, in these patients."

• "We continue to see emerging evidence of the importance of lifestyle to treat disease - in comparison to other treatments - but further high-quality research is needed. People with coronary heart disease who have symptoms of depression should talk to their doctor about treatments that are most suitable for their personal needs, and clinicians can be confident of recommending exercise to their patients."

Eating soft foods and the Brain

A June 2021 study by Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) said

• "In the developing brain, changes in sensory information can greatly affect the brain's structure," 

• "We fed 2-week-old rats either a soft diet or a regular diet, and then investigated a range of different neuromuscular outcomes in response to stimulation of the anterior CMA."

• "Our findings suggest that the anterior CMA strongly influences the regulation of chewing, and is affected by sensory inputs during development. As such, reduced chewing function during growth should be corrected as soon as possible to avoid any potential adverse effects on jaw muscle development and chewing ability," 

Obsesity, Metabolism and Brd4

A May 2021 study by Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said, 

"One of the biggest challenges we face is trying to understand how people develop obesity. If we can understand that, we can develop solutions for treating or preventing these diseases,"

"Our previous studies showed that Brd4 [a regulator of the innate immune response] plays an important role in the innate immune response, so we were trying to understand how it influences the development of diseases such as obesity," 

"We observed that after several weeks of the high-fat diet, the normal mice became obese while the mice lacking Brd4 did not. They also had reduced inflammation and higher metabolic rates," 

"We know that bacteria in the gut can sometimes trigger diet-induced obesity. We're currently working with our MME theme members in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology to figure out how Brd4 modulates microbes to do that,"

Yielding

“…who yields, wins. The French express the same tactical paradox in a saying, ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ - draw back, the better to leap forwards. In a strong wind, the unbending oak is uprooted, while the flexible reed springs back.”

Roger Neighbour

Probiotic Lactobacillus acidophilus and inflammatory bowel disease

An April 2021 study by Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey Medical Center said,

"Our data indicate that [Lactobacillus acidophilus] is able to prevent colonic inflammation formation and promote colitis healing,”

"The implications of the present findings are that this bacterial strain can be used in a wide variety of intestinal permeability disorders, including IBD [inflammatory bowel disease], coeliac disease, alcoholic liver disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and necrotizing enterocolitis, to treat inflammation associated with the leaky gut.”

Pro-inflammatory diet and Schizophrenia

Another study regarding the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII).

A 2019 study by concluded

“The data suggest that a pro-inflammatory diet, as indicated by increasing E-DII score, is associated with schizophrenia. This is the first study to examine the association between the DII and schizophrenia in a Middle Eastern population. Although these results are consistent with findings from research conducted in depression, additional studies are required before generalizing the findings to other populations.”

Source 

Jahrami H, Faris MA, Ghazzawi HA, Saif Z, Habib L, Shivappa N, Hébert JR. Increased Dietary Inflammatory Index Is Associated with Schizophrenia: Results of a Case-Control Study from Bahrain. Nutrients. 2019 Aug 11;11(8):1867. doi: 10.3390/nu11081867. PMID: 31405205; PMCID: PMC6722742.

Eat and Train for Better Senior Year Health

A March 2021 study using data from the Framingham Heart Study said,

"Health care professionals could use these findings to further promote and emphasize to their patients the benefits of a healthy diet and a regular exercise schedule to avoid the development of numerous chronic health conditions in the present and in later life," 

"The earlier people make these lifestyle changes, the more likely they will be to lower their risk of cardiovascular-associated diseases later in life."

"It is noteworthy that we observed a dose-response association of adherence to diet and physical activity guidelines with risk of cardiometabolic disease later in life,”

"Participants who met the physical activity guidelines had progressively lower risk of cardiometabolic disease as they increased adherence to the dietary guidelines."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uob-aig032921.php

Variety in Activities Better

A March 2021 study by the University of Basel suggest that, 

"activity alone is not enough to reduce symptoms of mental disorders, but can at least improve subjective well-being,” and that a variety of activities is better.

"Although the data were collected before the pandemic, the results are also relevant in light of the limitations during the coronavirus crisis," 

Sauna and Dementia

A February 2016 study of men by the University of Eastern Finland said those having a sauna 4-7 times each week were 66% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those taking a sauna once each week.

Midlife loneliness, Dementia and Alzheimer's

A March 2021 study by the Boston University School of Medicine said, 

"Whereas persistent loneliness is a threat to brain health, psychological resilience following adverse life experiences may explain why transient loneliness is protective in the context of dementia onset," 

The Mediterranean diet and Alzheimer’s

A May 2021 study by the German Centre for Neurogenerative Diseases said, 

"People in the second half of life have constant eating habits. We analyzed whether the study participants regularly eat a Mediterranean diet - and whether this might have an impact on brain health ", 

"There was also a significant positive correlation between a closer adherence to a Mediterranean-like diet and a higher volume of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is an area of the brain that is considered the control center of memory. It shrinks early and severely in Alzheimer's disease," 

"It is possible that the Mediterranean diet protects the brain from protein deposits and brain atrophy that can cause memory loss and dementia. Our study hints at this," 

“But the biological mechanism underlying this will have to be clarified in future studies."

Goldenseal and the Immune System

Goldenseal. It’s other names include hydrastis canadensis, orangeroot, yellow puccoon, and bai mao liang,

A March 2021 study by Penn State University looked at the drying process for goldenseal reporting that,

"Three alkaloids -- berberine, hydrastine and canadine -- are recognized as the major bioactive constituents in goldenseal," 

"One important postharvest processing step for goldenseal is drying. However, before this study it was not known how drying temperature influences the concentrations of these alkaloids."

"This work is important because canadine has been found to have significant activity against numerous strains of bacteria, and in previous research it was the only one of the three major alkaloids found to be active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus,”

"Also, canadine possesses significant antioxidant properties and has been identified as effective at strengthening the immune system."