Scientists in Germany found that increased physical activity was associated with a lower incidence of dementia. In this study, researchers recruited 3,485 elderly residents in Bavaria and asked them about their physical activity. None of the participants had dementia at the start of the analysis, but after two years of follow-up, researchers found that those who exercised at least three times a week were half as likely to have developed dementia compared with people who reported no physical activity. Based on his results, says lead author Dr. Thorleif Etgen, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at München University, “It doesn’t make a big difference if you have moderate or high physical activity. The important message is that you do any activity. And even if you start late in life, at 60 or 70, there is a benefit, for it’s never too late to start exercising.”

The key words are “moderate or high,” according to another study published Monday in the Archives. Dr. Qi Sun, a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health, analyzed 13,000 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study and found that when it came to exercise, more was better. Compared with women who jogged for 20 minutes a week, those who jogged three hours a week or walked briskly for five hours a week were 76% more likely to age successfully, free of chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, as well as mental and physical impairment.

Sun’s group found that this benefit occurred across all weight divisions, meaning that even among those who were overweight or obese, women who exercised improved their odds of aging without chronic disease. The effects may apply across different age groups as well; the women were at least 60 years old by the time they enrolled in the study, and while Sun was not able to determine how long they had been exercising prior to that, the results suggest that the health benefits are not limited to the young.

That was the same message of the final exercise paper in the journal, by researchers at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. In this trial, a group of 246 elderly women were randomly assigned to an 18-month exercise regimen or a wellness program. The women participating in the four times weekly exercise sessions, which involved aerobics and balance and muscle training, improved their bone mineral density by nearly 2%. The women in the wellness group, which focused on walking, muscle relaxation and breathing skills, had a 0.33% increase in bone density over the same time period. Perhaps more important, participants in the exercise group saw no increase in their risk of experiencing a fracture-causing fall, compared with a 66% higher risk in the control group.

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When inflammation arises in the body as a result of infection or injury, the immune response also appears to accelerate memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s, according to a recent study published in the journal Neurology. In this study of changes in patients’ cognitive abilities over a span of six months, Alzheimer’s patients who had chronic (ongoing) inflammation as a result of, for instance, obesity or arthritis experienced four times the amount of memory loss as compared with patients without such inflammation. And those with chronic inflammation who also experienced an acute immune response (short-term, such as from an infection) were even worse off: their memory loss accelerated 10 times faster than patients without any inflammation.

“When we started the study, we thought short-lived events would be impor­tant,” says lead author Clive Holmes, a professor of biological psychiatry at the University of Southampton in England. “We hadn’t realized how important chronic inflammation was going to be.”

So how does inflammation, whether from an infection or from chronic dis­ease, damage the brain? The answer lies in the body’s immune response, which launches an attack on invading pathogens, releasing inflaming proteins such as tumor necrosis factor, or TNF. This molecule causes the vagus nerve, which extends from the brain to the abdomen and controls vital functions such as heartbeat, to send an electrical im­pulse to the brain, thereby directing the brain to secrete its own immune messengers.

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Cell phone exposure may be helpful in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, a new study shows.

The study, involving mice, provides evidence that long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use may protect against, and even reverse, Alzheimer’s disease.

The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

“It surprised us to find that cell phone exposure, begun in early adulthood, protects the memory of mice otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms,” study researcher Gary Arendash, PhD, of the University of South Florida, says in a news release. “It was even more astonishing that the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones actually reversed memory impairment in old Alzheimer’s mice.”

The researchers say they found that exposing old mice with Alzheimer’s disease to electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones reduced brain deposits of beta-amyloid. Brain plaques formed by the abnormal accumulation of beta-amyloid are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, which is why most treatments try to target the protein.

The study involved 96 mice, including mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s disease and normal mice. Both the Alzheimer’s mice and the normal rodents were exposed to the electromagnetic field generated by standard cell use for two one-hour periods daily for seven to nine months.

The researchers say that if cell phone exposure was begun when the Alzheimer’s mice were young adults, and before signs of memory loss became apparent, their cognitive ability was protected. And if older mice with Alzheimer’s were exposed, their memory impairment improved. What’s more, months of cell phone exposure even boosted the memories of normal mice, the researchers write.

The researchers say the memory benefits in normal mice of cell phone exposure took months to show up, suggesting a similar effect in humans might take years. However, they also caution that “care should be taken in extrapolating our results to cell phone use and [electromagnetic wave] exposure in humans.”

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There’s more good news on the fish front: A large study conducted in developing countries found that a diet rich in fish may lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. And the more fish people ate, the less likely they were to develop the serious memory loss of dementia. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that a fish-rich diet may offer benefits for brain health.

Past research has suggested that eating fish may help to ward off dementia, but most of those studies were carried out in the United States other developed countries. Studies of people living in Italy, France and Spain who eat a traditional Mediterranean diet rich in fish as well as fruits and vegetables, for example, have shown that the diet may have brain-protective effects.

The findings are consistent with earlier reports that suggest that eating oily fish like tuna, salmon, mackerel, sardines and anchovies may help to keep the mind and memory sharp. Eating fish may also help to ease the agitation and depression of Alzheimers, other research shows.

Fish oils contain omega-3 fatty acids like EPA and DHA, which are known to be good for cardiovascular health. They also may help protect the brain against strokes and memory loss. DHA, or docosahexaenoic acid, and EPA, or eicosapentaenoic acid, are both thought to have disease-fighting properties.

In addition to fish, DHA and omega-3 dietary supplement pills are also widely available in pharmacies and health-food stores. Other foods high in these “good” fats include almonds, walnuts and many other types of nuts, as well as canola, walnut, soybean and flaxseed oils. Because many of these foods are a rich source of calories, however, it is best to eat them in place of, rather than in addition to, other foods.

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A large, 5-year study showed that the people in their 70s who were the most active and adhered the best to a Mediterranean-style diet were 61–67 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease compared with the least active and least Mediterranean-minded of the group.

Exercise
The most active in the study group got about an hour and a half of exercise weekly. That’s just a few 30-minute walks a week — a pretty manageable commitment. Better yet, aim to walk 30 minutes every day.

Diet
People with the lowest dementia risk ate the highest amounts of fruit, veggies, legumes, and fish, but less meat and dairy products. Monounsaturated fats, like olive oil, also accounted for more of their fat intake than saturated fats. All very typical ratios in a Mediterranean-style diet that doctors and health experts alike recommend for all sorts of reasons. These nutrient-dense, healthy-fat-focused foods could help protect brains against disease and cognitive decline and help protect the body from lots of other bad things, too.

A new study conducted by a Wheaton College professor has concluded that people that play action and puzzle games are better able to think through complex problems.

Rolf Nelson, a professor of psychology, conducted the study and published his findings in the November edition of the journal Perception. In the study, he had 20 students try to solve a spatial relation problem. The students were then given a puzzle game or action game to play. Once done with the game, the students were given the chance to finish the spatial relation problem again.

Results showed that puzzle players finished the task slower, but with more accuracy, while action players finished the task quicker but less accurately. Both groups finished quicker than if they had not played a game at all.

The goal of the study, according to the abstract from the journal:

To understand the way in which video-game play affects subsequent perception and cognitive strategy, two experiments were performed in which participants played either a fast-action game or a puzzle-solving game. Before and after video-game play, participants performed a task in which both speed and accuracy were emphasized. In experiment 1 participants engaged in a location task in which they clicked a mouse on the spot where a target had appeared, and in experiment 2 they were asked to judge which of four shapes was most similar to a target shape. In both experiments, participants were much faster but less accurate after playing the action game, while they were slower but more accurate after playing the puzzle game. Results are discussed in terms of a taxonomy of video games by their cognitive and perceptual demands.  

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Understanding exactly how the brain encodes and stores memories is one of the central, unsolved mysteries in neuroscience. Currently the most widely accepted theory is long-term potentiation (LTP)—the lasting communication established between two neurons when they are stimulated simultaneously.

As a person processes an event, two neurons pass information through a small space called a synapse. This chemical conversation triggers an intricate cascade, inviting nearby neurons to fire and ultimately creating a network of connections with varying strengths. Afterward, this pattern of connections, or memory, remains within the network of neurons that processed the event.

Although many areas of the brain contain synapses capable of creating strong patterns of connectivity, the hippocampus is a particularly favorable spot for recording memories. This brain region plays a critical role in learning new information, forming spatial memories and storing short-term memories as long-term ones.

Memories formed with the hippo­campus are especially rich because they integrate input from several areas of the brain, and the ­hippocampus contains densely packed layers of neurons. In addition, damage to this region and nearby areas causes profound and perm­anent amnesia—an inability to store new memories or to recall old ones—and is observed in patients who have Alz­heimer’s disease.

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