The Brain Alarm Signs That Warn Of Dementia
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When it comes to predicting age-related cognitive impairment:
First there are genetic factors to take into account (such as the APOE4 gene for Alzheimer’s), as well as things such as age and sex.
When it comes to sex, by the way, what matters here is hormones, which is why [it seems; this as technically as yet unproven with full rigor, but the hypothesis is sound and there is a body of evidence gradually being accumulated to support it] postmenopausal women with untreated menopause get Alzheimer’s at a higher rate and deteriorate more quickly:
Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear
Next, there are obviously modifiable lifestyle factors to take into account, things that will reduce your risk such as getting good sleep, good diet, good exercise, and abstaining from alcohol and smoking, as well as oft-forgotten things such as keeping cognitively active and, equally importantly, socially active:
How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
(the article outlines what matters the most in each of the above areas, by the way, so that you can get the most bang-for-buck in terms of lifestyle adjustments)
Lastly (in the category of risk factors), there are things to watch out for in the blood such as hypertension and high cholesterol.
Nipping it in the blood
In new research (so new it is still ongoing, but being at year 2 of a 4-year prospective study, they have published a paper with their results so far), researchers have:
- started with the premise “dementia is preceded by mild cognitive impairment”
- then, asked the question “what are the biometric signs of mild cognitive impairment?”
Using such tools as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while the participants performed cognitive tasks, they were able to record changes in plasma levels of extracellular vesicles, assessing them with small-particle flow cytometry.
Translating from sciencese: they gave the participants mental tasks, and while they completed them, the researchers scanned their brains and monitored blood flow and the brain’s ability to compensate for any lack of it.
What they found:
- in young adults, blood flow increased, facilitating neurovascular coupling (this is good)
- in older adults, blood flow did not increase as much, but they engaged other areas of the brain to compensate, by what’s called functional connectivity (this is next best)
- in those with mild cognitive impairment, blood flow was reduced, and they did not have the ability to compensate by functional connectivity (this is not good)
They also performed a liquid biopsy, which sounds alarming but it just means they took some blood, and tested this for density of cerebrovascular endothelial extracellular vesicles (CEEVs), which—in more prosaic words—are bits from the cells lining the blood vessels in the brain.
People with mild cognitive impairment had more of these brain bits in their blood than those without.
You can read the paper itself here:
What this means
The science here is obviously still young (being as it is still in progress), but this will likely contribute greatly to early warning signs of dementia, by catching mild cognitive impairment in its early stages, by means of a simple blood test, instead of years of wondering before getting a dementia diagnosis.
And of course, forewarned is forearmed, so if this is something that could be done as a matter of routine upon hitting the age of, say, 65 and then periodically thereafter, it would catch a lot of cases while there’s still more time to turn things around.
As for how to turn things around, well, we imagine you have now read our “How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk” article linked up top (if not, we recommend checking it out), and there is also…
Do Try This At Home: The 12-Week Brain Fitness Program To Measurably Boost Your Brain
Take care!
When it comes to predicting age-related cognitive impairment:
First there are genetic factors to take into account (such as the APOE4 gene for Alzheimer’s), as well as things such as age and sex.
When it comes to sex, by the way, what matters here is hormones, which is why [it seems; this as technically as yet unproven with full rigor, but the hypothesis is sound and there is a body of evidence gradually being accumulated to support it] postmenopausal women with untreated menopause get Alzheimer’s at a higher rate and deteriorate more quickly:
Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear
Next, there are obviously modifiable lifestyle factors to take into account, things that will reduce your risk such as getting good sleep, good diet, good exercise, and abstaining from alcohol and smoking, as well as oft-forgotten things such as keeping cognitively active and, equally importantly, socially active:
How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
(the article outlines what matters the most in each of the above areas, by the way, so that you can get the most bang-for-buck in terms of lifestyle adjustments)
Lastly (in the category of risk factors), there are things to watch out for in the blood such as hypertension and high cholesterol.
Nipping it in the blood
In new research (so new it is still ongoing, but being at year 2 of a 4-year prospective study, they have published a paper with their results so far), researchers have:
- started with the premise “dementia is preceded by mild cognitive impairment”
- then, asked the question “what are the biometric signs of mild cognitive impairment?”
Using such tools as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while the participants performed cognitive tasks, they were able to record changes in plasma levels of extracellular vesicles, assessing them with small-particle flow cytometry.
Translating from sciencese: they gave the participants mental tasks, and while they completed them, the researchers scanned their brains and monitored blood flow and the brain’s ability to compensate for any lack of it.
What they found:
- in young adults, blood flow increased, facilitating neurovascular coupling (this is good)
- in older adults, blood flow did not increase as much, but they engaged other areas of the brain to compensate, by what’s called functional connectivity (this is next best)
- in those with mild cognitive impairment, blood flow was reduced, and they did not have the ability to compensate by functional connectivity (this is not good)
They also performed a liquid biopsy, which sounds alarming but it just means they took some blood, and tested this for density of cerebrovascular endothelial extracellular vesicles (CEEVs), which—in more prosaic words—are bits from the cells lining the blood vessels in the brain.
People with mild cognitive impairment had more of these brain bits in their blood than those without.
You can read the paper itself here:
What this means
The science here is obviously still young (being as it is still in progress), but this will likely contribute greatly to early warning signs of dementia, by catching mild cognitive impairment in its early stages, by means of a simple blood test, instead of years of wondering before getting a dementia diagnosis.
And of course, forewarned is forearmed, so if this is something that could be done as a matter of routine upon hitting the age of, say, 65 and then periodically thereafter, it would catch a lot of cases while there’s still more time to turn things around.
As for how to turn things around, well, we imagine you have now read our “How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk” article linked up top (if not, we recommend checking it out), and there is also…
Do Try This At Home: The 12-Week Brain Fitness Program To Measurably Boost Your Brain
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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What’s the difference between Christmas cake and Christmas pudding? One has more sugar and fat
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For well over 100 years, Australians have been able to buy Christmas pudding and Christmas cake as part of their festive celebrations.
You might have some vague idea both originated in the northern hemisphere, but aren’t quite sure which one’s which.
Which is the one that’s boiled for hours? Is it the pudding or the cake you set alight? Do they both contain dried fruit? And which one’s healthier?
GettyImages. RTimages/Getty Let’s start with Christmas pudding
Christmas pudding originates from medieval England. It started as a savoury dish made with meat, root vegetables and dried fruit.
Over time, the meat was replaced with sugar and more dried fruits (known as “plum”). The dish became a sweeter, dense dessert, similar to the version we know today.
It was this plum pudding version that became associated with Christmas. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it became known as Christmas pudding.
Serving and preparing Christmas pudding includes various religious and superstitious rituals. These include setting the pudding on fire, and hiding a coin in the pudding to symbolise good fortune and wealth.
This artwork by F.C. Harrison for the UK’s Empire Marketing Board was used to promote Christmas pudding internationally (1926-39). The National Archives UK/Wikimedia Commons A recipe from 1861 describes the ingredients of Christmas pudding as suet (beef kidney fat), breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, fruit peel, sugar, spices, flour, eggs, salt, milk and brandy (if alcohol was included).
The pudding was wrapped in cloth and cooked by boiling for about six hours. It was then decorated with a sprig of holly and served with brandy sauce. The most theatrical element of the Christmas pudding is bringing it to the table amid flames of burning brandy.
Australia’s Country Women’s Association shared a more modern recipe for Christmas pudding in 2020. This uses butter instead of suet, and has added chopped figs, almonds and baking powder, but otherwise remains much the same.
Of course, you can buy Christmas pudding at the supermarket, which you generally have to boil or steam for a far shorter time than the homemade version, or you can heat it in the microwave.
What’s Christmas cake, then?
Christmas cake can also trace its origins back to medieval England and the enriched fruit breads of the period.
But it wasn’t until the second half of the 19th century until the Christmas cake, as we know it, appeared. It likely evolved from twelfth cake (also called twelfth night cake), traditionally served on January 6.
The first recipe called “Christmas cake” appeared in a book published in 1861.
The many ingredients of the Christmas cake have been adapted over the years, according to changes in price and availability, and the changing role of women in the household.
What has remained consistent is the idea of the rich, fruity cake as a special dish to be enjoyed at Christmas, as well as at weddings and birthdays.
Christmas cake has evolved in both its ingredients and how it’s decorated. flowcomm/Flickr, CC BY-SA An analysis of Christmas cake recipes over the years found most cakes were made by creaming butter and sugar, beating in eggs, then adding flour, spices, fruits, nuts and any other flavourings (such as essences or spirits).
Unlike Christmas pudding, which is boiled, Christmas cake is baked in the oven.
Christmas cakes were traditionally decorated with a layer of marzipan (almond paste) and icing, followed by other Christmassy elements such as sprigs of holly or decorative paper.
However, the tradition of decorating with icing has mostly disappeared from Australian versions. The rest of the recipe remains much the same.
Which one’s healthier?
Let’s compare the nutrient composition of Christmas pudding with un-iced fruit cake, similar to Christmas cake.
You can see from the table below that Christmas pudding is a slightly more indulgent option. It’s marginally higher in energy, protein, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugar and sodium (salt).
However, if a Christmas cake is iced, this will add to the amount of its sugar and total energy. And if you eat your cake or pudding with cream, ice cream or brandy butter, this will also add to the energy and nutrients consumed.
What’s the take-home message?
Both Christmas cake and Christmas pudding are important dishes that contribute to celebrations at this time of year. Whichever you choose as part of your celebrations, you are taking part in a long-running tradition.
Try not to focus too much on which one’s healthier, unless you have a medical reason to avoid any of the ingredients.
Instead, take a moment to enjoy and reflect on the cultural significance of these celebratory dishes and how the tradition of Christmas cake or Christmas pudding made its way into your life.
Margaret Murray, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Swinburne University of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How Healthy Are Zero/Low-Alcohol Beers, Wines, Etc?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝A family member is expecting, do you think it would be safe for her to have “alcohol free” alcohol drinks that just have a tiny bit of alcohol?❞
We’ll answer this question, and cover some related ones while we’re at it.
First of all, congratulations to your family member, and good health to her!
Notwithstanding toasts that say such things as “good health!”, alcohol is, of course, not a path to the best of health, and most people in pregnancy do choose to abstain completely.
With the caveat that we are not in a position to pronounce what is safe for any specific person (and our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies), what we can say is that, generally speaking, the following things are true:
- Alcohol is bad for the health
- The dose makes the poison
- The dose in zero- or low-alcohol (<0.5% ABV) drinks is zero or low
- Those do, however, still add up
In other words, one of those drinks might add up to basically nothing, but if you drink 6, then now that’s the equivalent of a 3% ABV regular beer.
Alcohol also increases all-cause mortality at any dose (even “low-risk drinking”): Alcohol Consumption Patterns and Mortality Among Older Adults
…and the World Health Organization has declared that the only safe amount of alcohol is zero: WHO: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health
On which note, no, not even the famous “small glass of red” is recommended: Can We Drink To Good Health?
For how that myth got started, see French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé’s explanation: Are You Making This Alcohol Mistake?
Pregnancy-specific considerations
Something quite similar to your question was recently studied, although it was less about the actual effects of zero- or low-alcohol drinks during pregnancy, and more about public perceptions, misperceptions, and general confusions around the topic.
Of the respondents to a targeted survey:
- 13.5% consumed “normal” alcohol during pregnancy (and this was more common among those who had been drinking at increasing-risk levels before pregnancy)
- 71.3% used zero- or low-alcohol drinks during pregnancy (with particularly high use (91.4%) among those who had previously been drinking at increasing-risk levels)
Of those in the latter category, respondents most commonly chose these drinks due to considering them a safer alternative, and to feel included in social events involving alcohol—as well as sometimes to keep hidden the fact that they were pregnant during the early stage.
You can find this paper here: The use of alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks in pregnancy in the UK
Now, you may be thinking: but that doesn’t tell us whether it’s safe; it just complains that people don’t know whether it’s safe enough and that existing guidance is insufficient!
And, you’re right. But guess what, in the entirety of PubMed (vast online library of published papers) that is the only result for the terms “safety low-alcohol pregnancy” (and similar searches yielded nothing remotely helpful at all).
So, the current state of the science is: “we don’t know” 🤷♀️
However, what we do know is that just abstaining completely is certainly safe.
Unless one is already such a heavy-drinker that the withdrawal becomes more physiologically dangerous than the alcohol itself. In such a case, that is way beyond the scope of what we can safely cover here.
This article is worth checking out, though: Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit
Reducing the harm
Pregnant or otherwise, many people do wish to drink at least a little bit, particularly around the holiday season.
To that end, see: An Addiction Expert’s Insights On Festive Drinking
And: How To Reduce The Harm Of Festive Drinking (Without Abstaining)
Want to learn more?
You might like this book we reviewed a while back:
The Non-Alcoholic Drinker: Mindful Choices, Social Success, And Mocktail Recipes for Every Celebration – by James Ellison ← this book is a very far cry from “rum and coke without the rum”, and instead will have you excited to go ingredient-shopping, and even more excited when you find out how great non-alcoholic things can taste if given the right attention.
Enjoy!
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Blueberries vs Raspberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing blueberries to raspberries, we picked the raspberries.
Why?
In terms of macros, blueberries have slightly more carbs, while raspberries have 2.5x the fiber and also slightly more protein, not that the protein figure is why people are eating raspberries, as a general rule of thumb. In any case, we say raspberries win this round based on the higher fiber content and resultantly much lower glycemic index.
In the category of vitamins, blueberries have more of vitamins A and K, while raspberries have more of vitamins B3, B4, B9, C, E, and choline, making for a convincing win for raspberries here.
When it comes to minerals, blueberries are not higher in any mineral, while raspberries are higher in calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. A very clear win for raspberries in this round.
Looking at polyphenols, both are good but blueberries have more polyphenols in total, so they score a win in this round.
Adding up the sections makes for a compelling overall win for raspberries, but blueberries have their merits too, so by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them
Enjoy!
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The Philosophy Gym – by Dr. Stephen Law
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If you’d like to give those “little gray cells” an extra workout, this book is a great starting place.
Dr. Stephen Law is Director of Philosophy at the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. As such, he’s no stranger to providing education that’s both attainable and yet challenging. Here, he lays out important philosophical questions, and challenges the reader to get to grips with them in a systematic fashion.
Each of the 25 questions/problems has a chapter devoted to it, and is ranked:
- Warm-up
- Moderate
- More Challenging
But, he doesn’t leave us to our own devices, nor does he do like a caricature of a philosopher and ask us endless rhetorical questions. Instead, he looks at various approaches taken by other philosophers over time, and invites the reader to try out those methods.
The real gain of this book is not the mere enjoyment of reading, but rather in taking those thinking skills and applying them in life… because most if not all of them do have real-world applications and/or implications too.
The book’s strongest point? That it doesn’t assume prior knowledge (and yet also doesn’t patronize the reader). Philosophy can be difficult to dip one’s toes into without a guide, because philosophers writing about philosophy can at first be like finding yourself at a party where you know nobody, but they all know each other.
In contrast, Law excels at giving quick, to-the-point ground-up summaries of key ideas and their progenitors.
In short: a wonderful way to get your brain doing things it might not have tried before!
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Gut Feelings – by Dr Will Cole
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More and more, science is uncovering links between our gut health and the rest of our health—including our mental health! We all know “get some fiber and consider probiotics”, but what else is there that we can do?
Quite a lot, actually. And part of it, which Dr. Cole also explores, is the fact that the gut-brain highway is a two-way street!
The book looks a lot especially at the particular relationship between shame and eating. The shame need not initially be about eating, though it can certainly end up that way too. But any kind of shame—be it relating to one’s body, work, relationship, or anything else, can not only have a direct effect on the gut, but indirect too:
Once our “eating our feelings” instinct kicks in, things can spiral from there, after all.
So, Dr. Cole walks us through tackling this from both sides—nutrition and psychology. With chapters full of tips and tricks, plus a 21-day plan (not a diet plan, a habit integration plan), this book hits shame (and inflammation, incidentally) hard and leads us into much healthier habits and cycles.
In short: if you’d like to have a better relationship with your food, improve your gut health, and/or reduce inflammation, this is definitely a book for you!
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The Body Fat That Can Help Against Diabetes?
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When it comes to type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, one of the first things doctors will typically advise most people is to lose weight.
There is logic to this—it is known that body fat can reduce insulin sensitivity (spoiler: there’s nuance to this, though—more on this later!).
However, in many cases of advising people to lose weight, the first and foremost reason is a more a matter of Fat’s Real Barriers To Health.
So what’s this fat that can help?
We’ll get to that shortly.
First, let’s talk about the fat that really doesn’t help: visceral fat
We wrote more about visceral fat, here: Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It ← “visceral belly fat” is actually a redundant tautology repeated more than once unnecessarily (since the only place we get it is the viscera of the abdominal cavity), but including both terms makes the article easier to find when using our website’s search function 😉
Metabolically, it’s very different from subcutaneous fat. Now, we do need some! Those organs do need cushioning, after all. But it’s all-too-easy to have too much of a good thing, in which case, it becomes a very bad thing.
Researchers (Dr. Elsa Vasquez Arreola et al.) found that prediabetes can go into remission without weight loss, with about one in four people normalizing blood sugar despite no drop in body weight.
And, notably, remission without weight loss provides the same level of protection against future type 2 diabetes as remission achieved through losing weight.
This is a huge help, because focusing only on weight loss hasn’t worked well for many people, who become discouraged by being hounded to lose weight and then not being able to do so, and if they think their health is really going to be dependent on weight loss, they well just give up.
As it turns out, blood sugar improvements depend more on fat distribution than total body weight.
And why?
Let’s go back to those two types of fat we mentioned earlier:
- Visceral fat: fat stored around your internal organs increases inflammation and disrupts insulin function, raising blood sugar levels.
- Subcutaneous fat: fat stored under your skin (i.e. the fat you can reach to squish) can actively support healthy metabolism by releasing hormones that improve insulin sensitivity.
Now, with that in mind, guess what happened in the study? That’s right, people who reversed prediabetes without weight loss shifted fat away from abdominal organs towards subcutaneous stores, which explains why remission was associated with better insulin sensitivity and improved pancreatic beta-cell function.
You can read the paper in full, here: Prevention of type 2 diabetes through prediabetes remission without weight loss
What to do about it
Firstly, do see our previously-mentioned article: Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It for the dos and don’ts of getting healthier (which for most people means: lower) visceral fat levels.
Next up, see also: Body Fat & Pelvic Floor Problems: What Matters Most Is Where The Fat Is for the science behind “apple or pear” distributions, and how to switch it up.
You may also be wondering: Can We Do Fat Redistribution? And the answer is yes, and we are doing it all the time whether we want to or not, so we might as well know what things affect our fat distribution in various body parts. The article we just linked there shows how.
While we’re at it, one other place you really don’t want excess fat, for metabolic reasons, is your liver. So: How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
Want to learn more?
You might like this book that we reviewed a while ago:
Why We Get Sick – by Dr. Benjamin Bikman ← this is about insulin resistance, and, importantly, the invisible insulin resistance that precedes blood sugar imbalances by many years (it goes unnoticed because the pancreas will dutifully keep cranking out more and more insulin to keep the blood sugars stable, until one day it just can’t keep up anymore, and then and only then does prediabetes get diagnosed).
Enjoy!
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