senile dementia due to calcium deposition in the central nervous system: An interesting hypothesis.

Nige's Diet & Nutrition Blog: Calcium shift: An interesting hypothesis.:



More serendipity! Billy the k left a comment that piqued my curiosity.

From http://www.health-heart.org/acceuil.htm The atheroma 'junk' in the media is cholesterol + calcium in older people.

From Aging and calcium as an environmental factor. (emphasis mine)
"The consequences of calcium deficiency might thus include not only osteoporosis, but alsoarteriosclerosis and hypertension due to the increase of calcium in the vascular wall,amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and senile dementia due to calcium deposition in the central nervous system, and a decrease in cellular function, because of blunting of the difference in extracellular-intracellular calcium, leading to diabetes mellitus, immune deficiency and others.

I highlighted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in red, as many Facebook friends have been having buckets of water & ice cubes tipped over themselves to raise money for research into this fatal condition.

So, what prevents & reverses migration of calcium from hard tissues to soft tissues?
Clue: It carboxylates osteocalcin in bone matrix Gla proteins. Yes, it's Vitamin K2.

See also Calcium, parathyroids and aging.

A Bold New Experimental Treatment for Alzheimer's Dementia | Psychology Today

A Bold New Experimental Treatment for Alzheimer's Dementia | Psychology Today:

 "Ketone esters prove astonishingly effective in a single case study."

Alzheimer’s Dementia is a neurodegenerative condition that affects five million Americans in 2014. In fact, a third of seniors will die with the disease or another type of dementia (1). The cause is unknown, but over time the brain cells begin to fill up with waste products and die, leading to an inflammatory reaction in the brain that seems to add to the problem and accelerate the disease. The only FDA-approved treatments are certain medicines of the class of cholinesterase inhibitors. These medicines slow down the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, helping damaged brain cells work better for a time. These medicines do not stop the progression of the disease, but in some cases can slow it.

Given the awful burden on families, the poor prognosis of individuals who have the disease, and the absolute cost of the illness (in terms of unpaid care by family members, estimated at 220 billion dollars for 2013 by the Alzheimer’s Association), a lot of time and research attention has been spent on finding causes, reducing risks, and looking for cures.

Some time ago I wrote an article about one of these lines of inquiry,ketogenic diets and Alzheimer’s disease.  It explored how a certain product of metabolism that comes from fasting or from eating very high fat diets, calledketones, might improvecognition in the case of mild cognitive impairment or dementia. Ketones can be used by most cells of the brain to make energy. Why would they have an advantage over our typical brain fuel, glucose, in cases of dementia? Well, it’s complicated, but the evidence suggests ketones can be burned more efficiently with fewer waste products, keeping the stress off the damaged brain cells.

The theory seemed reasonable to Mary Newport, a physician whose husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s years ago. She decided to put him on  ketogenic diet (their story is available at their website, coconut ketones), and he had significant improvement within a couple of months. If you follow the link to the website, you can see a dramatic improvement in Mr. Newport’s ability to draw a clock within 14 days. I’m aware of a few other cases where patients went from serious cognitive problems, on the verge of not being able to be cared for at home, to being able to wash, dress, and feed themselves and having conversations again with ketogenic diets. 

In the past, ketogenic diets were extremely strict (they have to be very low carbohydrate, less than in a banana) and also low protein, but with the inclusion of certain foods and products like coconut oil and medium chain triglyceride oil, you can double or even triple the amount of allowed carbohydrate, making for a more flexible and ultimately safer diet. Ketogenic diets have been followed for years, particularly by children with intractable seizures as treatment, but there are few scientific studies of adults trying them for extended periods. Such diets may lead to increased risk of kidney stones, nutrient deficiencies (particularly the very strict diets), reduced thyroid function, and weight loss. While most adults in America might welcome weight loss, poor eating habits and weight loss can be devastating for someone with dementia who might not be able to feed his or herself. 

Mary Newport, considering the options of having her husband living in a care facility and having very poor quality of life versus attempting a ketogenic diet using supplemental coconut/MCT oil and having him be much more functional and live at home, decided to take the risk. He improved in cognitive function, gait, and many activities of daily living, and serial MRIs over this time showed no progression of the disease. However, it turns out the benefits of the ketogenic diet didn’t last forever.

According to a new paper from Alzheimer’s and Dementia, A new way to produce hyperketonemia: Use of ketone ester in a case of Alzheimer’s disease, Mr. Newport took a turn for the worse in 2010 while participating in a clinical trial for a drug for Alzheimer’s Dementia. He went back to square one, losing interest in yard work and requiring step by step instructions to dress himself. His wife, Dr. Newport, sought a different way to induce a higher level of ketosis in her husband. Using coconut/MCT oil supplements in normal, healthy adults will raise ketone levels in the blood from 0.09 mM to 0.3-0.4 mM immediately, and over time one can get 10 times those levels sticking to the supplement and a low carbohydrate diet. Ingestion of 50 grams of a supplement called a ketone ester can double those levels within an hour, leading to 6-7mM concentrations one can only find in humans with prolonged fasting. Ingesting the supplement every 3-4 hours can maintain these high levels. 

Ketone esters are in a class of supplements called “generally recognized as safe” or GRAS by the FDA. They are expensive, difficult to find, and taste nasty (I’ve smelled some, and it was a bit like salty urine). There are no long term studies of the safety of these supplements in humans, though high ketone levels were maintained in severely obese, fasting patients for 6-8 weeks and there seemed to be no side effects. The main risk might be an exacerbation of gout, but truly, the long term consequences are unknown. For someone with dementia facing an inevitable downward spiral and life in a long term care facility, the question of benefits versus risk is a different calculation than in someone without that condition.

After a few days of escalating doses, Mr. Newport was brushing his own teeth, spontaneously dressing and bathing himself again, had improvements in mood, and was able to recite the alphabet. After 6-8 weeks, his memory improved and he started to do yard work again. After 20 months, he maintained definite improvement, with his cognitive function seeming to wax and wane with rising and falling ketone levels in his blood.

While this report is just a single case study, it does merit more clinical investigation. Given the severity and cost of the disease, the possibility of a far more effective treatment than what we currently have must be explored further.  In addition, dementia is not the only intractable and devastating brain illness that could be helped by the administration of ketone esters. People with epilepsy, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, andtraumatic brain injury might also benefit. The only way to know for sure is to do the research.

Brain cleaning - One more reason to get a good night’s sleep - YouTube

Published on 13 Oct 2014 

The brain uses a quarter of the
body's entire energy supply, yet only accounts for about two percent of
the body's mass. So how does this unique organ receive and, perhaps more
importantly, rid itself of vital nutrients? New research suggests it
has to do with sleep.

Change Your Movement, Change Your Brain | Psychology Today

Change Your Movement, Change Your Brain | Psychology Today:

We can use our bodies to help us think better.

Published on October 22, 2014 by Steve Sisgold in Life in a Body

Being aware of how you move your body can help you think more clearly and turn up the dial on your brainpower. Research shows that the brain can take cues from body movements to understand and solve complex problems.

In 2009, University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras, along with Laura Thomas of Vanderbilt University, conducted a study on problem solving and body movement. They set out to test if a person's ability to solve a complex problem could be influenced by how he or she moves. They tested fifty-two University of Illinois students. The results showed that body motion could, indeed, affect higher order thought and that complex thinking can be enhanced by body awareness.

Lleras and Thomas reported, “People tend to think that their mind lives in their brain, dealing in conceptual abstractions, very much disconnected from the body. This emerging research is fascinating because it is demonstrating how your body is a part of your mind in a powerful way. The way you think is affected by your body and, in fact, we can use our bodies to help us think.”

This study confirms what I often see in my sessions. A client will be stuck in some unproductive thought loop or knee-jerk reaction. They become fuzzy and confused as to what is actually occurring right in front of them. I redirect their attention to the movements happening in their body, which consistently opens a window to solutions that aren’t being arrived at by the mind alone. Clients find the attention-shift consistently generates new insight, enhances creative thinking, and resiliency. They just seem smarter once they are conscious of how their body moves.

We have the ability and hardwiring to usemovement awareness to discover and break the neural nets that work against us. Psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a researcher in the field of neuroplasticity, agrees. In his book The Mind and the Brain, he says, “Humans are neural electricians. We can take charge of our brain function. We are not restricted to working with existing wiring. We can run whole new cables through our brain.”

Make a Move

Open your arms wide, or raise your hand in a high-five, or mimic Steve Martin doing his “wild and crazy guy” shoulder shimmy. Sync that movement with your breathing and notice how that changes your mood. How did that feel? Do you notice a change in your thinking or energy level? Make that choice to pause and make expansive moves as often as you can. It can make a big difference in how you feel, how you make decisions or react to a situation. To discover more about your body and movement awareness go to http://wholebodyintelligence.com/bq_assessment

Nobel discovery - window onto Alzheimer's disease | Reuters

Nobel discovery opens window onto Alzheimer's disease | Reuters:

LONDON Mon Oct 6, 2014 6:32pm EDT

1 COMMENTS

Professor John O'Keefe poses in his laboratory at University College London (UCL), in London October 6, 2014.

CREDIT: REUTERS/SUZANNE PLUNKETT

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(Reuters) - The discovery of cells in the brain that act as the body's internal global positioning system, which won three scientists the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday, opens an intriguing new window onto dementia.

Since these spatial cells are among the first to be hit in Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia -- explaining why sufferers often lose their way -- understanding how they are degraded should shed important light on the disease process.

That is the belief of British-American researcher John O'Keefe, winner of the 2014 prize alongside Norwegians May-Britt and Edvard Moser, who plans to take his research to the next level as director of a new brain institute in London.

"We're now setting up to do much more high-tech studies where we hope to follow the progression of disease over time," he told reporters after hearing he would share the 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million) prize.

"This will give us the first handle as to when and where the disease starts and how we can attack it at a the molecular and cellular level."

The battle against Alzheimer's has been long and frustrating. Global cases of dementia are expected to treble by 2050, yet scientists are still struggling to understand its basic biology and drug development is littered with failures.

The work by O'Keefe and the Mosers will not lead to immediate breakthroughs but by explaining how cells function -- and then fail to function -- in two very specific regions of the brain it is seen as vital for unpicking how Alzheimer's develops.

Dementia, of which Alzheimer's is the most common form, already affects 44 million people worldwide and that number is set to reach 135 million by 2050, according to Alzheimer's Disease International, a non-profit campaign group.

"Understanding how the healthy brain functions, especially areas of the brain crucial to learning and memory, is incredibly important in understanding what changes occur during conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease," said Doug Brown, director of research and development at Britain's Alzheimer's Society.

The Nobel Prize winners' work on the brain's navigation system stretches back more than 40 years, but more recently scientists have developed powerful new tools for studying brain circuits that O'Keefe plans to put to work at the new London research institute where his is director.

The first of more than 150 scientists will start work at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London next year, using state-of-the-art lasers, molecular biology and computational modeling to explore the brain's intricate wiring.

"It's a very exciting time," O'Keefe said.

The Group of Eight leading industrial countries set a goal last December of finding a cure or effective treatment for dementia by 2025.

It is a decade since the last drug was approved to treat Alzheimer's, and there is still no treatment that can slow the progression of the disease, with current drugs only easing some of the symptoms of the disorder.

"We all know there is a time bomb there," O'Keefe said. "We are starting to get a handle on it but that doesn't mean it is going to turn into a cure in the immediate future."

(This story has been refiled to fix typo in first paragraph; no other changes to text)

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, Ediitng by Angus MacSwan)

People with dementia remember emotion

People with dementia remember emotion



OCTOBER 07, 2014 6:23PM

People with dementia remember the feelings associated with an event for a longer time, a study says. Source: AAP

ALTHOUGH people with Alzheimer's disease forget things quickly, they can remember the feelings associated with an event for a longer time, a US study has found.

ALZHEIMER'S patients and healthy people were shown 20-minute film sequences which were either happy or sad for a study carried out by the University of Iowa. Five minutes later the study participants were questioned about what they could remember of the films.

As might be expected, the Alzheimer's sufferers remembered significantly less of the film content than did the healthy participants. Some didn't even remember that they had seen a film.

However, the feelings of sadness or happiness that had been aroused by the films remained for up to half an hour after the showing. It was particularly striking that the feeling of sadness stayed with the dementia sufferers longer, the less well they were able to remember the film.

The researchers concluded with an encouraging message for relatives and loved ones of dementia sufferers: even though a sufferer might not be able to remember a visit, the positive feelings from one can still persist long after.