dementia •

"Mental Exercises Have Little Effect on Alzheimer’s disease"

A new study shows that brain workouts and physical exercises may not have any effect on the outcome of the disease.

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – A recent study from the Mayo Clinic points out that not even mental and physical exercises can help us against Alzheimer’s. According to this study, mental exercises have little effect on Alzheimer’s. The scientists observed the same number of amyloid plaque in both active and inactive patients.

From what we can gather from other studies, it would seem that the only sound strategy against Alzheimer’s is to keep your brain preoccupied and to do plenty of exercises. Witty riddles and complex puzzles may help our brain focused for a longer period of time, thus delaying the occurrence of mild cognitive impairment, the first symptom associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

But, a new study from the Mayo Clinic proves that there is no defense against Alzheimer’s and that physical and mental exercises are of little consequence. The study belongs to Prashanthi Vemuri and a team of medical researchers working at the Mayo clinic.

Vemuri’s study started from the assumption that APOE 4 gene carriers are the starting point of AD-related research. As we known, researchers have proved a long ago that those who carry the APOE 4 gene variant are 50 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

But the study could not be built on something that obvious. And so, the doctor and her team had to look at another lead. More specifically, the team wanted to see if physical and mental exercise could indeed help those predisposed to AD.

And so, the team asked for volunteers. Approximately 393 individuals participated in this new clinical study. Note that the average age of the volunteers was 70 years old and that 53 of them already exhibited sign of mental degradation. The team also took into account their ethnical background, sex and education.

All the participants were subjected to several tests in order to ascertain their mental and physical conditions. At the end of the test, all the participants had to fill in a couple of questionnaires which would help the team of getting their bearings right. We should also add that the members involved in this study were subjected to both MRI and PET brain scans, before and after the project was over.

What the team has discovered is indeed baffling. According to Vemuri, all of the test subjects displayed the same amount of amyloid plaques regardless of their level of education. So, a 70-year old patient who was physically and mentally active during midlife will have the same amount of amyloid plaques as an individual of the same age which did not engage in brain workouts.

The study concluded that mental exercises have little effect on Alzheimer’s disease. Nevertheless, Vemuri and her team told the patient not to give up on the regular brain and physical workouts as there is still strong evidence that these activities can delay the effects of AD.

Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org

"Environmental Neurotoxin Induced Alzheimer’s in Guam Villagers "

Experiments conducted on small primates have demonstrated that Alzheimer’s can depend on environmental factors.

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – An ongoing study was successful in establishing a direct link between an environmental toxin found in algae blooms and the high number of Alzheimer’s cases. The scientists managed to demonstrate that an environmental neurotoxin induced Alzheimer’s in Guam villagers, after making its way in the villager’s food.

In the last decade, many prestigious medical institutions have sought to conduct extensive research on Alzheimer’s disease. Some of them would focus on finding a cure to this dreadful neurodegenerative disease, while others diverted their attention towards studying the mechanism of this disease, in the hope that they will be able to discover a method to reverse it or to reduce its effects.

Recently, a team of scientists might have discovered an environmental factor that could very well lead to the development of the disease. Their study may be viewed even as a breakthrough when it comes to neurodegenerative diseases because this is the first time someone managed to establish a direct link between Alzheimer’s and an environmental factor.

The novel research project was and is conducted by a team of medical researchers from the University of Miami. Studying the strange illness that affected several villagers in Guam, an island in the Pacific, they have discovered that their condition, which ultimately led to their death, bore a striking similarity to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

During the autopsy session, the members involved in the study stumbled upon something very significant when analyzing the brain tissue. Each patient struck down by the disease presented brain tangles and amyloid plaques, both of them being intimately related to Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the results of their investigation, the villagers contracted this neurological condition after ingesting food contaminated with a neurotoxin called BMAA or beta-Methylamino-L-alanine, found mainly in algae blooms.

Further lab tests have indicated that diet saturated with this neurotoxin, can, in time, lead to dementia, ALS and even Parkinson.

But more research was needed to see if indeed the algae-borne toxin was the cause of the villager’s death. In order to see if an environmental toxin induced Alzheimer’s in Guam villagers, the researchers perform several experiments of small primates, more specifically on vervets.

In the first experiment, two groups of primates were involved. The first group received a diet rich in BMAA while the other received an L-serine rich diet. As anticipated, after some time, the first group developed brain tangles and amyloid plaques, while the second group exhibit a reduction in the density of the brain tangles.

The second experiment involved 4 groups of primates. The first one received a full dose of BMAA and the second on received a smaller dose containing the neurotoxin. Meanwhile, the third group received equal doses of BMAA and L-serine. The last group received only a diet based in fruits.

The team continued to monitor the vervets’ evolution for 140 days. After this period of times, the scientists found out that the first group developed brain tangles and amyloid plaques while the other two groups displayed reduced formation.

Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org

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