5 tips to keep memory sharp

Feeling like the absent-minded professor lately? Here are some memory-improving strategies to keep your brain sharp.

Ginkgo to Think

Ginkgo, the oldest surviving species of tree, has been traced back 300 million years and is one of the most widely studied plants. The leaf of the ginkgo tree is shaped like a human brain, and some believe this is why, in Asia, it has always had a reputation of benefiting the mental processes.

A dwindling memory and decreased concentration is largely caused by decreased blood flow to the brain and loss of brain cells; ginkgo has been confirmed to boost circulation to the brain and other organs, improving memory and cognitive functions. Additionally, ginkgo is used far and wide as a longevity tonic in Asia and Europe.

The best-known and most commonly available form of ginkgo is as teas and herbal extracts, but ginkgo nut, used in the culinary traditions of Asian cultures, also has therapeutic properties and is also said to strengthen lung function.

Mental Gymnastics Keep Your Mind Nimble

It is normal to become more absent-minded as we age, and in fact, most people over the age of 40 experience some memory loss. The most likely causes of a forgetful memory include poor concentration due to brain-chemical imbalance, tiredness, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. If you find you are more forgetful than usual, try these steps and see if there isn't some improvement in your cognitive clarity:

1-Get an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep each night.

2-Do a half an hour of cardiovascular exercise every day, such as brisk walking, slow jogging, biking, or swimming. This will improve circulation and increase blood flow to the brain.

3-Turn yourself upside down for a couple of minutes daily.

4- Mental fitness activities are imperative to prevent age-related cognitive decline. Read and learn new things, find new hobbies, do crossword puzzles, add up your bill in your head while shopping, memorize a set of phone numbers forward and backwards; all these can stimulate brain cell activities and in some cases even grow new brain pathways

5-Work with your physician to find a supplemental regimen that helps improve your cognitive capabilities. Memory-enhancing supplements and herbs include B-complex vitamins, magnesium, CoQ10, alpha-lipoic acid, fish oil, flax seed oil, Chinese club moss, ginkgo, and ginseng. A supplement that has been well-documented in Europe for reversing age-related dementia and memory loss is phosphatidylserine (PS), a compound made by the body from the amino acid serine. Taken in supplement form, PS lowers stress response and promotes the release of neurotransmitters in the brain that facilitate thought, reasoning, and concentration.

I hope you find your days more memorable for many years to come! I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me. May you live long, live strong, and live happy!-

Dr. Mao

Paving the Way for Memory Lane
Posted by Dr. Maoshing Ni
on Tue, Mar 20, 2007, 8:18 am PDT

Drug-resistant plague a 'major threat', say scientists

The plague bacterium could easily develop drug-resistance and become a major health threat, warn scientists.

A study, published this week (21 March) in PLoS ONE, found that the drug-resistance genes in a plague bacterium from a 1995 case of the disease were the same as those in many common bacteria and are able to 'jump' from bacteria to bacteria.

The researchers say this illustrates how easily Yersinia pestis — the bacterium causing plague — can develop resistance to antibiotics, which are vital in the treatment and prevention of the disease. There is no vaccine available for plague.

The authors say this "represents a significant public health concern".

In 1995, a new multi-drug-resistant form of Yersinia pestis was found in a 16-year-old boy in Madagascar. The strain had developed resistance to eight antibiotics including streptomycin and tetracycline.

Researchers discovered that the genes conferring this resistance are also in common food bacteria — such as salmonella, E. coli and klebsiella — from market samples of beef, pork, chicken and turkey in the United States.

As these genes are able to transmit themselves between bacteria, it raises the possibility of drug resistant Y. pestis emerging easily.

Lead author Jacques Ravel, of the US-based Institute for Genomic Research, says, "Our agricultural and medical use and abuse of antibiotics is generating a large reservoir of bacteria carrying resistance genes. These genes can move from bacteria to bacteria."

The key to containing any outbreak of plague lies in prompt treatment with common antibiotics such as tetracycline and streptomycin, which can reduce death rates from 60 to 15 per cent.
"Without antibiotics it is going to be extremely difficult to contain the disease. This is not a scenario we want," Ravel told SciDev.Net.

Kamal Krishna Datta, former director of India's National Institute of Communicable Diseases — who oversaw the 1994 plague outbreak in Surat, western India — said the discovery "needs to be widely shared and discussed and the disease surveillance mechanism strengthened through a global network."

Plague is one of the oldest diseases known to humans and has caused over 200 million deaths worldwide.

In the past five years alone, plague has been reported in Algeria, India, Malawi and Zambia. The last reported case was in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006. Link to full paper in PLoS ONEReference: PLoS ONE 2(3): e309 (2007)

Organic vs. locally grown

Following the recent cover story article in TIME magazine, there's been a lot of interest in (and debate over!) organic and locally grown produce. Here's what you need to know to make an informed personal decision.

What's ORGANIC?

For plant foods to be considered organic they can't have been subjected to any synthetic fertilizers or chemicals (like pesticides); the land they're grown on must be certified organic; and genetic modification and irradiation are off limits.

When it comes to animal foods, organic refers to livestock that has access to the outdoors, has been given only organic feed for at least a year, and hasn't been treated with antibiotics or growth hormones.

What is LOCALLY GROWN?

Locally grown is a less definitive term, some say it applies only to foods grown within a 100-mile radius, others stretch it to 250-miles, and one pioneer of the movement defines it as food grown within a "day's leisurely drive from your home."

It also usually means seasonal food from small farms, as opposed to the massive agribusinesses where most supermarket food comes from.

What's the BEST Option?

As a nutritionist, I'd have to say that no matter what type of produce you buy -- locally grown, organic or conventional -- it's VITAL for your health.

Tens of thousands of studies have confirmed that the intake of fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of chronic illness and improve the quality of life.

That said, in the perfect world I'd recommend the following:
Buy as much seasonal, locally grown produce as you can ... you get the chance to connect with your food, help local business, support the environment and get super fresh-delicious produce (securing nutrient density because there's less time spent in transit).

However, depending upon where you live, you are limited to seasonal food items.

So for greater variety, supplement with store bought organic (consider frozen organic to secure nutrient density and slightly reduce cost).

If money or availability is an issue, I'd limit your supplemental organic purchases to what many experts claim to be the most heavily sprayed 12 items and stick with conventional for the rest.

Suggested 12 foods to buy ORGANIC:
Apples
Cherries
Grapes,
importedNectarines
Peaches
Pears
Raspberries
Strawberries
Bell peppers
Celery
Potatoes
Spinach

Keep in mind that many local farmers do NOT use pesticides....however, they can't advertise themselves as certified organic because it's a long and expensive process.

Therefore, if you'd like to support your local farmers (and organic matters to you) - ask local farmers about their farming methods, you may be pleasantly surprised with the answers.

Posted by Joy Bauer, M.S., R.D., C.D.N.
on Wed, Mar 14, 2007, 9:28 am PDT

Should you go Organic or Locally Grown?

Antioxidant Supplement

The myth of helpful vitamins is apparently shattered by a new study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, which surprisingly indicates that vitamins actually increase the risk of death.

Scientists at the Copenhagen University Hospital (also known as "Rigshospitalet" - or simply "Riget" (as in Lars von Triers mini-series The Kingdom) from Denmark, have recently unveiled in the Journal of American Medical Association the conclusions of their intensive study concerning the use of antioxidant supplements like beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E.

Goran Bjelakovic, M.D., Dr.Med.Sci., of the Center for Clinical Intervention Research, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues conducted an analysis of previous studies to examine the effects of antioxidant supplements (beta carotene, vitamins A and E, vitamin C [ascorbic acid], and selenium) on all-cause death of adults included in primary and secondary prevention trials.

In their study they used electronic databases and bibliographies, identifying and including in it 68 randomized trials of 232,606 participants in the review and meta-analysis. The authors reviewed 385 publications, since October 2005. The effect of antioxidant supplements on all-cause mortality was analyzed with random-effects meta-analyses and reported as relative risk (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

In an analysis that pooled all low-bias risk and high bias risk trials, there was no significant association between antioxidant use and mortality. In 47 low-bias trials involving 180,938 participants, the antioxidant supplements were associated with a 5 percent increased risk of mortality. Among low-bias trials, use of beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E was associated with 7 percent, 16 percent and 4 percent, respectively, increased risk of mortality, whereas there was no increased mortality risk associated with vitamin C or selenium use.

The conclusion was that the treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality, while the potential roles of vitamin C and selenium on mortality still need further investigations."

Our systematic review contains a number of findings. Beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E given singly or combined with other antioxidant supplements significantly increase mortality. There is no evidence that vitamin C may increase longevity. We lack evidence to refute a potential negative effect of vitamin C on survival. Selenium tended to reduce mortality, but we need more research on this question," the authors write."

Our findings contradict the findings of observational studies, claiming that antioxidants improve health. Considering that 10 percent to 20 percent of the adult population (80-160 million people) in North America and Europe may consume the assessed supplements, the public health consequences may be substantial. We are exposed to intense marketing with a contrary statement, which is also reflected by the high number of publications per included randomized trial found in the present review."

"There are several possible explanations for the negative effect of antioxidant supplements on mortality. Although oxidative stress has a hypothesized role in the pathogenesis of many chronic diseases, it may be the consequence of pathological conditions. By eliminating free radicals from our organism, we interfere with some essential defensive mechanisms . Antioxidant supplements are synthetic and not subjected to the same rigorous toxicity studies as other pharmaceutical agents. Better understanding of mechanisms and actions of antioxidants in relation to a potential disease is needed," the researchers conclude.

However the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry received with reservation the conclusions of the new study, underlining the benefits humans get from ingesting vitamin-supplements.

Andrew Shao, vice president for science and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade association representing the dietary supplement industry, said that "They included every trial under the sun," Shao said. "Some [studies] were a day long, some were several years long. The majority of trials involved very sick patients -- treatment trials that were very, very different from how antioxidant supplements are used by most consumers, which is to maintain health.

"The antioxidants in the study have widely different modes of action, one other critic of the study noted. "It's like putting two very different drugs together and drawing one conclusion," he explained.

In addition, he said, "they do not mention anywhere in the report what people are dying of," which makes it is difficult to attribute the deaths to the supplements and not to some other causes."You don't see people dropping dead right and left from overdoses of antioxidant supplements," he added. "It is just not happening. You have to explain to me how some essential nutrients kill you in a couple of years.

"Antioxidant supplements "have been shown in a number of studies to have no adverse effects," Blumberg said. "They are not toxic, but evidence that they prevent heart disease and cancer is equivocal."Biochemist Balz Frei, director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, also argued that all the original studies used the supplements to try to produce an improvement in patients who already had a disease."That may work with a drug, but it is never going to work with a dietary supplement," he said. "You can't undo the damage of decades by giving a dietary supplement for a couple of years."Usually, vegetarians receive only about 5% of their energy from saturated fat (versus 10% for meat eaters), have greater blood levels of antioxidants, and have far less free radical-promoting iron in their blood. All of these factors may contribute to heart health. Vitamin E studies are frequently conducted using subjects who already have heart disease.

In a University of North Carolina study based on a questionnaire, vitamin E supplements significantly reduced the risk of mortality from breast cancer in women who had been previously treated for it. The women, who were studied for 12-14 years, had to take vitamin E for at least three years to see benefit, which included a significantly reduced risk of breast cancer recurrence.

In another extensive and intensive study, the American Cancer Society queried 991,522 US adults about their use of vitamin supplements. Following up 16 years later, it was found that people who took vitamin E supplements for 10 years or longer reduced their risk of death from bladder cancer by 40%. Vitamin E supplementation of shorter duration was not protective.

Moreover, researchers reported in 2006 that a derivative of vitamin E causes the death of cancer cells and have used this knowledge to make the agent an even more potent cancer killer. The substance, called vitamin E succinate, or alpha tocopheryl succinate, kills cancer cells by causing them to undergo a natural process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis.

Also, the majority of scientific studies indicate that vitamin C is not only safe, but that it may actually help to prevent certain types of cancer, including cancers of the stomach, bladder and colon. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have become so impressed with the safety and cancer-fighting ability of vitamin C that they have recommended raising the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for vitamin C from the current 60 mg/day to 200 mg/day. The NIH based their proposal on the growing body of research showing that five servings a day of fruit and vegetables high in vitamin C can help to prevent cancer.