Healthy Aging: Body, Mind & Spirit

Can eating berries help with natural memory decline?

Berries might provide a safe and easy way to boost brain power, a new study suggests.  This study from Harvard researchers shows how eating berries a few times a week can stave off the cognitive decline and memory loss which comes with natural aging.

For the study, researchers looked at data from the long-running Nurses’ Health Study of nearly 122,000 registered nurses between the ages of 30 and 55 who completed health questionnaires starting in 1976.

Every four years the nurses were surveyed on their eating habits and between 1995 and 2001, researchers began testing memory in 16,000 of the nurses who by this time were over 70 years old.

Testing the subjects’ memory in two-year intervals, the researchers found nurses who ate the most blueberries and strawberries delayed their memory decline up to 2.5 years compared with those who did not report eating berries.   These findings are published in the April 26 issue of the Annals of Neurology.

“What makes our study unique is the amount of data we analyzed over such a long period of time.  No other berry study has been conducted on such a large scale,” study author Dr. Elizabeth Devore, a researcher in the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Among women who consumed 2 or more servings of strawberries and blueberries each week we saw a modest reduction in memory decline. This effect appears to be attainable with relatively simple dietary modifications.”

So if you’re looking around for something good to get addicted to, make it fresh berries!  Especially this time of year!

Increase alcohol consumption to increase your good cholesterol!

I’ve been working on increasing my good cholesterol or HDL levels by losing weight (50 pounds!) and increasing my daily exercise.  Now I find out that I should also be drinking wine!

Heart disease risk is directly associated with elevated total cholesterol, but more specifically with low levels of “good” cholesterol, or HDL, coupled with high levels of “bad” cholesterol, or LDL.

High levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL) reduces your overall risk of heart disease, and according to some studies, alcohol consumption helps to raise these levels in your blood.

The exact mechanism by which this happens is a point of debate, and the benefit of raising HDL via alcohol consumption comes with some negative impact.  With apologies to the American Heart Association, which discourages doctors from telling their patients about the advantages of alcohol: one or two drinks per day can significantly increase HDL levels.   However, more than one or two drinks per day can lead to substantial health problems including heart failure.

Also remember, alcohol contributes a lot of sugar and “empty calories” to your daily diet!

Lifestyle choices and Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s disease already affects 4.5 million Americans, more than twice the number that were affected in 1980–but that number is expected to grow significantly. By the year 2050, it’s estimated that 11.3 million to 16 million Americans may develop the disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Alzheimer’s disease affects the brain, progressively destroying a person’s ability to learn and reason, make judgments and carry out daily activities. The majority of people with Alzheimer’s are over the age of 65 — an age after which the chances of developing the disease double every five years.  But, of course, just because you age does not mean that you will develop Alzheimer’s, and there are, in fact, known methods to prevent this epidemic disease.

Eat healthy. Your best defense against this disease appears to be in the food you eat.  A recent study published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association found that people who eat the recommended amount of folate have a much lower risk of developing the disease.  Folates are B-vitamins found in leafy green vegetables, oranges, legumes and bananas.

But, “Although folates appear to be more beneficial than other nutrients, the primary message is that an overall healthy diets seems to have an impact on limiting Alzheimer’s disease risk.  Antioxidant-rich foods are also extremely important.

Lead a healthy lifestyle. Things like avoiding tobacco and excess alcohol, exercising and staying socially active all are linked to a healthy brain, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.  “The major way we’ve reduced the death rate from heart disease is through lifestyle changes: eating better, exercising more, smoking less,” said David A. Bennett of Rush University in Chicago. “It would require a lot of people to change the way they live, but there’s no reason to think we can’t have the same impact on Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.”

Exercise your body. As mentioned above, regular exercise is important for your brain health.   “Walking 45 minutes three times a week for six months significantly improved mental ability of older adults with no dementia; a randomly selected control group that did stretching and toning had no change,” says Arthur Kramer, a psychologist at the University of Illinois.

Exercise your mind. “Just keeping busy seems to tune the brain,” says neuropsychologist Yaakov Stern of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.   In a seven-year study of 1,800 older adults, Stern found that the more “leisure pursuits” a person had, the lower their risk of developing Alzheimer’s.  Leisure pursuits included visiting friends, playing cards and going to the movies

The key is to keep your brain engaged as you age.   Try crossword puzzles, games like chess and checkers,reading, attending a lecture, volunteering or taking a class that interests you.

Avoid head injuries. Research has uncovered a strong link between serious head injury and Alzheimer’s.  You can reduce your risk of head injury by always wearing a seat belt while driving, wearing a helmet on a motorcycle or bicycle and making sure to remove tripping hazards around your home.

Try to relax and stay positive. According to the Center for Healthy Minds, elderly people who experience a lot of psychological distress (worrying, feeling insecure or nervous) are more likely to show signs of mental decline.   In fact, one study found that people prone to high levels of distress were twice as likely to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease after five years than those who were prone to low levels of distress.

What exactly is breast cancer?

What we currently call breast cancer should be thought of as ten completely separate diseases, according to an international study which has been described as a “landmark.”

Breaking this disease into separate categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient’s exact type of breast cancer, and help predict survival more accurately.

This study in Nature analyzed breast cancers from 2,000 women.  The latest findings give the breast cancer map far more detail, allowing us to find individual types.

At the present moment, breast cancers are classified by what they look like under the microscope with tests for “markers” on the tumors.  Those with “estrogen receptors” should respond to hormone therapies such as tamoxifen; those with a “Her2 receptor” can be treated with Herceptin.   The vast majority of breast cancers, more than 70%, should respond to hormone therapies.   However, their reaction to treatment varies wildly.

This new study looked at frozen breast cancer samples of tumor cells from 2,000 women at hospitals in the UK and Canada, with intensive detail, which genes had been mutated, which genes were working in overdrive, which were being shut down.   The study showed that all the different ways the cells changed when they became cancerous could be grouped into 10 different categories – named IntClust one to 10.

This will change the way we look at breast cancer, with enormous impact in the years to come in how we diagnose and treat it.  But the new breast cancer rulebook could take some time to directly benefit patients.  Researchers need to prove that these ten classifications actually provide benefit to women with breast cancer, before they can be used by doctors.  That process is expected to take three to five years.

Happiness and Heart Disease

I know in the past I wrote about dying of a broken heart…

New research now shows a sunny, optimistic outlook can protect your heart from attacks and strokes!

A new paper by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) suggests that positive psychological well-being may reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other adverse cardiovascular events.  Although many previous studies have shown that negative mental states, like depression, anger and hostility, can be harmful to heart health, this new report which analyzes studies from the past 15 years, is the first large, systematic review of data on positive mood and cardiovascular outcomes.

After reviewing more than 200 studies published in two scientific databases, PubMed and PsycINFO, the authors found that optimism, life satisfaction and happiness were associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and its progression.  The most optimistic individuals had an approximately 50% reduced risk of experiencing an initial cardiovascular event compared to their less optimistic.

This association remained true regardless of factors like age, socioeconomic status, smoking and body weight. “Even if a person is overweight, smokes a lot and has high cholesterol, they can still benefit from positive emotions. It is something unique about well-being itself,” says one of the researchers.

Why exactly positivity may benefit the heart isn’t clear, but the researchers suggest that optimistic people may be more motivated to treat their bodies well.   Having a purpose in life motivates people and gets them thinking about the future and how they can structure their lives.  They want to get out and do things.  They are not sitting at home watching TV.

They found that if you have a positive disposition you’re more likely to exercise, eat well and get enough sleep at night.  This can have positive biological effects in terms of inflammation, cholesterol, blood pressure and lipids.  Engaging in healthier behaviors can lead to healthier body functions.

New prostate cancer treatment reduces side-effects

A new technique to treat early prostate cancer may have far fewer side-effects than existing therapies.   A 41-patient study in the journal Lancet Oncology suggests targeted ultrasound treatment could reduce the risk of impotence and incontinence.   Researchers say it could transform future treatment if the findings are repeated in larger studies.   The Medical Research Council (MRC), which funded the study, welcomed the results, which it said were promising.

Each year 37,000 men in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer.   Many face a difficult dilemma: the disease kills about 10,000 men every year, but for some it may not get worse if left untreated.   Standard treatment with surgery or radiotherapy involves treating the whole prostate gland, and can harm surrounding tissue, with a serious risk of side-effects, including urinary incontinence and impotence.

Targeted treatment

Doctors at University College Hospital in London have carried out the first trial using high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) aimed at small patches of cancer cells on the prostate. This was a “proof of concept” study involving 41 patients.

They used a probe, placed close to the prostate, which emits sound waves that heat the targeted cells to 80C, while causing minimal damage to surrounding nerves and muscles.   Hashim Ahmed, a urological surgeon at the trust who led the study, says the results, 12 months after treatment, are very encouraging.

“We’ve shown in this study that focal therapy – by targeting the individual areas of cancer – can avoid the collateral damage.   In nine out of ten men no impotence or incontinence resulted.

Mr Ahmed says the early evidence on cancer control is also very good, but this needs to be evaluated in much larger studies.

How bad are plastic water bottles for you?

In just one year, Americans drank nearly 9 billion gallons of bottled water, which is second only to soft drinks as the largest beverage type in the U.S. market, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.

What are You Really Drinking When You Drink Bottled Water?

Plastic water bottles have come under scrutiny in recent years for both their environmental and health effects, including those surrounding the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA).   BPA can leach out of plastic during everyday use, causing health problems.  It’s now widely known that BPA mimics the female hormone estrogen and may affect fertility and promote cancer.  And just last year it came out that BPA may also lead to heart disease, diabetes and liver problems.

Studies have shown that detectable levels of BPA exist in more than 90 percent of the U.S. population, but exposure has been blamed on not only drinking water and food, but also on dental sealants, dermal exposure and inhalation of household dusts.

How much BPA are we exposed to when drinking from a plastic bottle?

A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found out.   Researchers recruited Harvard College students for a study in April 2008, and all 77 participants then began a seven-day “washout” during which they drank all cold beverages from stainless steel bottles in order to minimize BPA exposure.  For the next week, participants were given two polycarbonate bottles and asked to drink all cold beverages from them.

Urine samples were taken at the end of each week-long period, and the results that came back were shocking!  Levels of BPA rose 69 percent after just one week of drinking out of plastic bottles.

“We found that drinking cold liquids from polycarbonate bottles for just one week increased urinary BPA levels by more than two-thirds. If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher. This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA’s endocrine-disrupting potential,” said Karin B. Michels, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH and Harvard Medical School and senior author of the study.

While previous studies have found that BPA could leach from polycarbonate bottles into their contents, this study is the first to show the corresponding increase in BPA levels in humans.

The end result is this, if you drink out of plastic water bottles, you can pretty much guarantee that you’re increasing your levels of BPA, which is very risky for your health.

Chronic exposure to very low levels of BPA, such as might occur when drinking bottled water, is potentially very harmful.

“An expert panel of scientists has concluded that exposure to extremely low doses of bisphenol A is strongly linked to diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, and diabetes, and to reproductive and neurological development,” the Sierra Club reported.  And single-serve bottles are not the only ones to be concerned about.   Consumer Reports found in 2000 that eight of 10 5-gallon water jugs they tested contained residues of BPA.

While the use of BPA in polycarbonate baby bottles was banned in Canada in 2008, and some manufacturers have voluntarily eliminated the chemical from their bottles, this is not yet widespread in the United States nor have recent U.S. regulatory laws been passed.   In fact, BPA is so widely used that it may be nearly impossible to avoid exposure entirely, however you can greatly reduce your exposure by avoiding BPA-containing products as much as possible, including one of the biggest BPA predators: plastic water bottles.

Plastic containing BPA may be called: Polycarbonate, Lexan, and Polysulfone.

Changing memories can prevent drug relapse

Manipulating memories of drug use may help reformed addicts avoid a return to a life of drug abuse, according to scientists in China.  They say memories linking “cues” – such as needles or cigarettes – and the pleasurable effects of drugs caused cravings and relapsing.  Authors of the study, published in the journal Science, “rewrote” those memories to reduce cravings.

Experts said targeting memories could become a new avenue for treatment.  Repeatedly showing people drug cues without actually giving patients the drug is a part of this therapy for addicts.   It can break the link between cue and craving in the clinic. but this does not always translate to real life.

The researchers at Peking University tried to rewrite the original memory so that it would be as if the link between cue and the craving never existed.   This work relies on the idea that a memory can become malleable after it is accessed, creating a brief window during which the memory can be “rewritten.”

Faster treatment for stroke victims

Treating stroke in specialized ambulances en route to the hospital could boost the number of patients who can receive life-saving therapy.   Mobile stroke units can halve the time it takes a patient to get clot-busting drugs, a small German trial found.  These drugs only work if given within four and a half hours of stroke onset.

Since not all patients are suitable candidates, a rapid assessment is critical, The Lancet Neurology reports.  Clot-busting drugs (thrombolytics) can be effective if the stroke is caused by a blood clot (the cause in about 80% of cases), but not if it is due to a bleed.   The faster an eligible patient receives clot-busting treatment, the better their chances are of surviving thus reducing long-term disabilities.

The latest trial, which involved 100 patients in Germany, found treatment decision times were reduced by equipping ambulance staff with the necessary tools, including CT scanners, to diagnose and manage stroke immediately.  In the study, thrombolysis was given within 35 minutes, on average, for those patients treated by mobile stroke units.   In comparison, those sent to hospital for treatment in the usual way waited 76 minutes.

Patient outcomes did not differ significantly between the two groups but the researchers point out that the study was not designed to evaluate this and that the number of patients involved in their trial was small. The follow up was also short – a week.   Experts say larger studies are needed to explore what impact earlier treatment will have on prognosis, and to confirm whether mobile stroke units would also work in other geographical regions, not just in urban areas with short journey distances.

What’s up with dental x-rays and cancer?

Previously, Dr. Oz already cautioned us that too many dental x-rays can lead to thyroid cancer.

Now a new study out of Yale University suggests that those who developed meningioma, the most commonly diagnosed brain tumor in the U.S., recall having three times as many bitewing x-rays and panorex films taken as those without cancer.  Remember this data is based on past exposure levels, and past levels were much higher than today, according to Dr. Elizabeth Claus, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

Regardless of the age when the x-rays were taken, those who had them yearly or more frequently were at between 40 percent and 90 percent higher risk at all ages to be diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I have done EXTENSIVE research on the history of x-ray and radiation exposure levels for previous writing projects. Check out my story called GLOW IN THE DARK TRAGEDY which appeared in American History Magazine in 2007.  The “Radium girls” were young women who applied radium paint to watch faces and instrument panels to make them “glow in the dark” during WWI, until they all started developing horrible tumors and dying a few years later.

We in America have a long history of underestimating how deadly radiation overexposure can be.  Remember the “Pedoscope”?   Ask Madame Curie, who died from overexposure to her famous discovery.

All you really need to know about radiation is that there is no level of human exposure which is safe.  Even the slightest exposure has some effect on the behavior and mutations within the human cell.

I personally see NO reason to have dental x-rays on any pre-set schedule or more than every few years.   I believe dental insurance and greedy dentists who love to bill you for extra tests, have led to this growing problem.   Not to mention radiation exposures at an ever younger age!

Put “overuse of x-rays” into Google and read more!

You are in charge of your health, not your doctor OR your dentist.  YOU decide which tests you want performed on you!  And you choose everyday how much radiation exposure you will receive… cellphones anyone?