Health Habits

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Posts Tagged ‘aging’

Your Anti-Senility Prescription

December 31st, 2008

This post is for everyone out there with a loved one over the age of 50.

.New research shows that our lifestyle choices (nutrition and physical activity) have a powerful effect on age related cognitive health.

Translation: Senility is mostly preventable with diet and exercise.

And guess what?

The same lifestyle choices that have created an epidemic of obesity in the Western world are also responsible for much of the dementia in today’s senior citizens.

Here’s the science:

Study #1

Researchers from the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain found that maintaining steady blood sugar levels, even in the absence of disease (diabetes, metabolic syndrome) is an important strategy for preserving cognitive health.

For many of us, senior moments are a normal part of aging. Such lapses in memory, according to this new research, can be blamed, on rising blood glucose levels as we age.

Whether through physical exercise, diet or drugs, our research suggests that improving glucose metabolism could help some of us avert the cognitive slide that occurs in many of us as we age,” reported lead investigator Scott A. Small, M.D.

Although it is widely known that the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease cause damage to the hippocampus, the area of the brain essential for memory and learning, studies have suggested that it is also vulnerable to normal aging.

Until now, the underlying causes of age-related hippocampal dysfunction have remained largely unknown.

In previous studies, Dr. Small et al had discovered that decreasing brain function in the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus is the main contributor of normal age related cognitive decline.

In this new study, researchers used medical imaging devices to “help us better understand the basic mechanisms behind hippocampal dysfunction in the aged.”

Their research looked at measures that typically change during aging, like:

rising blood sugar,
body mass index,
cholesterol and
insulin levels.

The research found that decreasing activity in the dentate gyrus only correlated with levels of blood glucose.

“Showing for the first time that blood glucose selectively targets the dentate gyrus is not only our most conclusive finding, but it is the most important for ‘normal’ aging- that is hippocampal dysfunction that occurs in the absence of any disease states. There have been many proposed reasons for age-related hippocampal decline; this new study suggests that we may now know one of them,” said Dr. Small.

Conclusion

Control your blood sugar and prevent senility

How?

Read this and this and this and this.

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Study #2

In this study, researchers found that as we age, a slow, chronic starvation of the brain appears to be one of the major triggers of Alzheimer’s disease.

When the brain doesn’t get enough glucose, “a process is launched that ultimately produces the sticky clumps of protein that appear to be a cause of Alzheimer’s”. During this process, a key brain protein (eIF2alpha) increases the production of an enzyme which, in turn, flips a switch that produces the sticky clumps of protein.

And what causes this reduction in blood glucose to the brain?

Cardiovascular Disease

And how do we prevent cardiovascular disease?

But don’t take my word for it.

“This finding is significant because it suggests that improving blood flow to the brain might be an effective therapeutic approach to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s,” said Vassar, a professor of cell and molecular biology at the Feinberg School.

A simple preventive strategy people can follow to improve blood flow to the brain is getting exercise, reducing cholesterol and managing hypertension.

“If people start early enough, maybe they can dodge the bullet,” Vassar said.

For people who already have symptoms, vasodilators, which increase blood flow, may help the delivery of oxygen and glucose to the brain. It also is possible that drugs could be designed to block the eIF2alpha protein that begins the formation of the protein clumps, known as amyloid plaques.

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Why Do We Get OLD?

December 1st, 2008

Harvard researchers may have just found the “root cause of aging”: A group of proteins called sirtuins.

For a decade or so, scientists have known that these sirtuins are somehow involved in the aging process.

Their interest in these sirtuins really went wild when they discovered that:

a low calorie diet, or
the red wine super chemical resveratrol

would stimulate the sirtuins into having a positive effect on aging.

So What Exactly Do Sirtuins Do?

Sirtuins are like a genetic watch dog.

They keep an eye on select genes to see which are turned on and which are turned off. Kind of like a security guard monitoring motion alarms and video monitors.

Here’s why:

While all genes are present in all cells, only a select few need to be active at any given time.

If the wrong genes are switched on, this can harm the cell.

For example, in a kidney cell, there are liver genes present, but they are switched off. If these liver genes were to become active, that could damage the kidney.

The sirtuins guard the genes that are supposed to be off and ensure that they stay that way.

To do this, they help preserve the molecular packaging—called chromatin—that shrink-wraps these genes tight and keeps them idle.

However, sirtuins have another important job.

When your DNA gets damaged by UV light or free radicals, sirtuins stop their security guard duties and rush to the site of the damaged DNA and join in on the repair.

This leads us to…

The Latest Research

In this study, the researchers found that when the sirtuins left their guard posts and rushed towards the damaged DNA, the chromatin wrapping (or shrink-wrap) covering the sleeping genes could start to unravel, and the genes that were meant to be inactive (or regulated) could in fact become active (or un-regulated).

This isn’t good.

A Sirtuin re-wraps a Gene and puts it back to sleep

Luckily for us, the sirtuins are usually able to return to their post in time to get the awakened genes back under wraps before they cause any permanent damage.

However, the scientists found that as mice age, the rates of DNA damage increases.

This means that the sirtuins are being pulled away from their guard duties more and more often.

As a result, more and more sleeping genes wake up, break out of their shrink-wrap and break free before the sirtuins can return and put them back to sleep.

Once again, not good.

In fact, it’s really starting to sound a lot like the Pod People from that movie, The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

And it gets even worse,

Scientists found that many of these haplessly activated genes are directly linked with aging, and that
They also found that older mice had higher numbers of these unregulated genes.

But don’t despair, it gets better:

The Good News

Discovery of the mechanism behind all of this bad news has led to a hypothesis on how to reverse this action and potentially reverse signs of aging.

Scientists began wondering what would happen if they put more of the sirtuin back into their aging test mice.

They believed that with more sirtuins on the job, DNA repair would be more efficient, and the aging mouse would maintain a youthful pattern of gene expression into old age.

And that’s precisely what happened.

Using a mouse genetically altered to model lymphoma, researcher Philipp Oberdoerffer administered extra copies of the sirtuin gene, or fed them the sirtuin activator resveratrol, which in turn extended their lifespan by 24 to 46 percent.

Conclusions

Because of this research, we now know that while DNA damage increases the rate of aging, it isn’t the actual cause of aging.

Un-regulated genes are the cause of aging.

And, because of this research, we also know that if we can help the sirtuins keep regulated genes from becoming un-regulated, the elements of aging can be reversed.

Big news people, big news.

.At least for the mice.

Tests on humans are yet to be scheduled.

Paul Giamatti (Sideways) loads up on his Resveratrol

So, for now, loading up on some resveratrol may be a good idea.

And if you have any questions….hang on for another 24 hours; tomorrow’s post will be dedicated to everything resveratrol.

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