How Lifestyle Changes Alter Your Risk of Dementia

AHA Publisher — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:00:03 +0000

Damon Hines via NaturalHeatlh365 – The first signs of dementia are subtle: irritability, short-temperedness, and small changes in personality that grow increasingly acute. The full-blown symptoms are anything but subtle: a loss of short and long-term memory, inability to reason, a lack of emotional control, confusion, disorientation. Roughly 50 million people live with dementia. Experts have predicted the disease to be “the biggest health crisis of our time” and the 21st century’s leading killer. So, the big question remains, is dementia preventable? Many integrative healthcare providers say “yes!” Even in conventional medical terms, according to a report from the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention and care, 40 percent of dementia cases worldwide can be delayed or prevented with simple lifestyle changes. How to Combat the Biggest Health Crisis of Our Time: Better Education and Personal Decisions Will Lead to More Successful Outcomes Annual statistics indicate that dementia was the leading cause of death in Britain in 2018, with one in eight people dying from the disease. In addition, the number of people with dementia living alone is expected to double by 2040. The United States isn’t looking much better, in terms of dementia statistics. Unfortunately, due in part to the lack of effective (conventional) treatments, the risk of a person developing dementia has been going up – for many years! Many seniors tend to be overmedicated and malnourished. No doubt, Western medicine is doing a poor job at alerting the public about the true dangers to brain health. Of course, when it comes to looking at lifestyle habits, it’s a real challenge to determine the risk to an individual. But, no doubt, more people need to learn about the environmental risk factors that cause dis-ease in the brain. A poor diet, chronic stress and loneliness can wreak havoc on brain function. It’s Time to Take Action: Make Those Lifestyle Changes (Now) Before It’s Too Late The Lancet Commission reports that dementia cases can be prevented or delayed by 40 percent by addressing 12 lifestyle factors, including midlife obesity, excessive alcohol intake, exposure to air pollution, depression, social isolation, high blood pressure, smoking, and a lack of physical activity. It’s important to remember that dementia is not an inescapable part of aging. The Lancet Commission’s findings are, for the most part, a risk assessment, and a list of healthy behaviors and choices people can engage in to reduce the risk of developing dementia. Keep in mind: these are long-term lifestyle changes. Eating a healthy diet for only a month or going to the gym for a few weeks isn’t going to have a significant effect on overall brain function. Dementia typically appears in one’s sixties or seventies, although it’s been known to arise as early as one’s thirties. While changing an unhealthy lifestyle at any age is helpful in reducing the risk of dementia, the earlier the change is made, the better! Don’t wait for a diagnosis of dementia. Strategies for reducing one’s risk and tackling lifestyle changes (now!) – both personally and as a society – are the best ways to defeat this dreadful health condition. Start taking those small steps toward a healthier lifestyle with better (organic) food choices and cleaner water for drinking and cooking. Remove toxic personal care and household cleaning products from your home and purify your indoor air space, as soon as possible. Each positive change in your life will feel so good. Ultimately, it’s up to us to make a change and demand more from our government “health” officials. A healthier society is one that uses an integrative approach to healthcare for each and every one of us. Let’s hope that day is coming soon. Sources for this article include: TheLancet.com This article has been modified. To read the original article click here. For more articles from NaturalHealth365 click here.

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Can Traumatic Memories Be Erased?

AHA Publisher — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 07:00:03 +0000

Tokyo Metropolitan University via EurekAlert – Environmental light shown to affect retention of traumatic long-term memory in flies. Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that Drosophila flies lose long-term memory (LTM) of a traumatic event when kept in the dark, the first confirmation of environmental light playing a role in LTM maintenance. The team also identified the specific molecular mechanism responsible for this effect. LTMs are notoriously difficult to erase; this work may lead to novel treatments for sufferers of trauma, perhaps even the erasure of life-altering traumatic memories. It is impossible to remember everything that happens to us in a day. But a particularly shocking event may be consolidated into our long-term memory (LTM), whereby new proteins are synthesized and the neuronal circuits in our brain are modified. Such memories may be devastating to a victim, potentially triggering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet physiologically speaking, keeping a memory is far from a trivial process; active maintenance is required to keep the changes, protecting against the constant cellular rearrangement and renewal of a living organism. Despite the importance of understanding how memory works in the brain, the mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood and is a key topic for neuroscience today. It is well known that light, particularly the cycle of night and day, plays an important role in regulating animal physiology. Examples include circadian rhythm, mood and cognition. But how about long-term memory? Thus, a team led by Prof. Takaomi Sakai from Tokyo Metropolitan University set out to study how light exposure affects the memory of diurnal Drosophila fruit flies. As an instance of long-term memory or trauma, they used the courtship conditioning paradigm, where male flies are exposed to female flies which have already mated. Mated females are known to be unreceptive and exert a stress on male flies which fail to mate. Once the experience is committed to long-term memory, they no longer attempt to court female flies, even when the females around them are unmated. The team found that conditioned male flies kept in the dark for 2 days or more no longer showed any reluctance to mate, while those on a normal day-night cycle did. This clearly shows that environmental light somehow modified the retention of LTM. This was not due to lack of sleep; flies on a diurnal cycle were slightly sleep deprived to match with flies in the dark, with no effect on the results. Thus, they focused on a protein in the brain called the Pigment-dispersing factor (Pdf), known to be expressed in response to light. For the first time, they found that Pdf regulated the transcription of a protein called the cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) in the mushroom bodies, a part of the brain of insects known to be implicated in memory and learning. Thus, they identified the specific molecular mechanism by which light affects the retention of long-term memory. Traumatic experiences are very difficult to forget and can severely impair a victim’s quality of life. But the team’s discoveries show that these memories can, in fact, be significantly affected by environmental factors in living organisms. This opens up the exciting possibilities of new treatments for victims of trauma, perhaps even the ability to erase traumatic memories which prevent them from leading normal lives. To read the original article click here.

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How Lifestyle Changes Alter Your Risk of Dementia

Can Traumatic Memories Be Erased?