Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Eating Well and Healthy Brains

Eating Well and Healthy Brains

Out of all of the clichés out there, one of the most important to remember is "you are what you eat". When it comes to things like the overall neurological power of your body, and how you stand against combatting the onset of illnesses like dementia, this could not be truer.
A recent study carried out by the American Academy of Neurology took in a study of 27,860 people all over the age of 55. In this study, they looked to find people who had varied diets that could be categorized. Each person was then monitored for a period of five years to see how they progresses and how they seemed to be coping with the world in general.
Out of everyone who took part over the 5 year period, around 4,700 participants suffered from a decline of more than 3 points out of 30 in their memory and their overall cognitive function. However, the proportion for that was actually losing the most from their minds came from those with the worst diets.
Those who had the healthiest diets suffered the least, with just 14% of their members showing a significant drop in their ability. Compare this with the 18% within those on what would be considered poor diets, and it's easy to see why eating problems are so prevalent when it comes to health issues.
The link between eating well and having a healthy mind have been around for many years, and various other studies over the years have points to much of the same evidence along the way. This makes it a lot easier to believe in for many people, too, and can be a good reason as to why many people are beginning to change their diets; the idea of living in a dementia clinic is not something that many people enjoy!
The increase in vitamins and nutrients that your body will be receiving plays a big role in ensuring that you can start to see a significant shift in the biological reasoning's behind this. For example, dietary intake makes a big difference because it modifies the risk of cognitive decline thanks to giving the body more key things like B vitamins and vitamin C, as well as help to improve any deficiencies that their body was suffering from previously.
This makes a massive difference, so making sure that your diet is on point will be vital in future!

Saturday, 13 June 2015

Aging & brain injuries are connected

It's always estimated that banging our heads can lead to the increased chances of things like dementia taking hold, and for most of us that can be quite a terrifying thought. Aging and brain injuries are very much connected in various ways, as a new study shows; it's believed that continuous brain injuries can accelerate the aging process in our bodies and make ourselves feel and look older than we actually are.
Whether it's through contact sports or your form of employment - the military, for example - a long-term period of hits and damage will eventually create a build-up of beta-amyloid within the brain.
This, in turn, leads to a variety of negative conditions and can also increase the chances of dementia starting. Aging should be something that we go through naturally, but it appears that a few knocks to the head will really change the situation and make things go even faster.
Out of all sports people and athletes, boxers are estimated to suffer from this the most as well as military veterans who have suffered extensive head injuries at one stage - or multiple stages - throughout their career.
It's important to understand, though, that aging won't get faster; your days won't suddenly count for two, for example. Instead, it speeds up the process as the age dependent factor within beta-amyloids comes into play. Whilst it's hard to give any exact characterizations it's now been noted quite freely that damage to the head can cause serious problems in the growth of amyloid B peptide levels.
Therefore, it's vital that anyone involved in fighting or any kind of physical involvement is extremely careful about how their brain is treated. Those with beta-amyloid deposits suffered from a greater level of mental drain as they got older, and therefore it's vital to be able to avoid a buildup of this problem as it can leave you with life-changing conditions in the future.
However, this breakthrough offers a new chance for a development of the correlation between both aging and the beta-amyloid deposits that can build up through head trauma. This will be vital to ensuring there is a way to combat these problems and hopefully offer some kind of long-term solution against things like Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
There is a lot more to be learned and gained from studies like this, but it's vital to actually have a starting place that makes a strong reference point.