Dementia. Parkinson's disease. Alzh...

Dementia. Parkinson's disease. Alzheimer's disease.

While a ripe olden age is a dream chiefly of us share, a feeling of dread is what get tos to mind when we think that this dream may be accompanied by dint of one of these debilitating diseases. on a level if we are fortunate enough to escape these conditions, another fear is the los of independence. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, somewhat advanced in life people may not be able to take care of themselves and are forced to rely forward others for their basic penurys Being homebound or forced to reside in a nursing domicile against one's will are situations in which none of us to the end of time hopes to be.

There is no fool-proof way to impede ourselves from such diseases or situations; as is the case with other conditions, our best defense is prevention. While long still needs to be learned about the preventive measures common can take, there have been any promising studies carried out forward the correlation between nutritional status, brain function, and functional capabilities, research which is well worth taking a consider at.

Nutrition and cognition

A late study which appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, performed by means of Asenath La Rue, et al., contemplateed at the association between the nutritional status and cognitive performance of 137 populace between the ages of 66 and 90 The authors described the participants as well-educated, financially well-off, health conscious, highly motivated, adequately nourished, and emancipated of significant cognitive impairment. All were exempt of such diseases as diabetes, coronary artery disease, and uncontroll hypertension.

The cogitation was a six-year reassessment which compared the nutritional status and cognitive proof performances of the participants in 1980 and again in 1986 At the beginning of the research each participant received a physical examination, dietary and biochemical exhibitions to characterize status, and a series of cognitive tests

La regret et al., said that they had three aims in conducting the study:

* to assess the stability of associations between cognition and nutrition athwart time;

* to assess the generality of nutrition-cognition relations by means of looking at an expanded settle of nutritional and cognitive measures;

* and, to examine associations between the use of vitamins and other dietary counterparts and cognitive performance.

What the follows of the study showed

The ensues showed several significant associations between cognition and vitamin status. They included: better abstraction performance (measured from a test which asks the participant to fill in a missing item in a series) with higher status and intake of thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folate; better visual perception with higher plasma ascorbate levels; and higher memory scores with increased plains of dietary protein.

A tend toward higher cognitive performance among participants taking vitamin appendixs compared with those who did not take postscripts was also seen in the consequence s The authors note that this finding was not attributable to higher education or a younger age among appendix users.

The authors also reported the findings of what they describe as "the greatest in quantity widely cited study on this topic [nutritional status and cognitive functioning]" performed by the agency of J.S. Goodwin, et al., which appeared in a 1983 Journal of the American Medical Association. This consideration showed that community-residing, healthy, older adults with comparatively subdued dietary intakes of protein, vitamin C thiamin, riboflavin, folate, niacin, and vitamin B-6 scored lower (on average) than their better-nourished contemporarys on verbal memory and nonverbal abstract-reasoning proofs In addition, there was a significant association between line concentrations of vitamin C, riboflavin, and vitamin B-12 and cognitive performance.

Of their have findings, La Rue, et al., conclud "Because our accrues are correlational, they cannot be used to support any causal associations among nutritional and cognitive variables, nor can we hinder the possibility that the associations observ were owed to unidentified factors (e.g., exercise patterns) affecting the two nutrition and cognition. However, considered together with the earlier findings from this thought and other recent reports, the quick in emergencies outcomes support the potential value of further research in succession cognitive effects of nutritional status in normally aging adults.

It will be important to thought larger samples at multiple points in time to assess the time course of associations between specific nutrients and age-sensitive aspects of cognitive performance."

Antioxidants and aging

Surprise, surprise -- antioxidants, those free-radical fighting scavengers, are believed to play a part in aging and disease!

single in kind recent study performed David A. Snowdon, et al., published in the Journal of Gerontology investigated the relationship of plasma antioxidants to reduc functional capacity in the somewhat old Reduced functional capacity is defined as the los of one's ability to perform self-care, i.e. requiring assistance with like tasks as bathing, walking, dressing, standing, going to the bathroom, and eating.