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| | How healthy is your Brain? |
Extracted and adapted from the Alzheimer's Prevention Plan by Patrick Holford with Shane Heaton and Deborah Colson 
| The Alzheimer's Prevention Plan Patrick Holford | The Alzheimer's Prevention Plan is based on cutting-edge research into nutritional medicine from experts around the world. It contains a specially formulated Alzheimer's prevention diet and a ten-step plan to enhance your memory, which includes: A simple test to discover your risks - and reverse it in eight weeks Memory-boosting vitamins and minerals Essential fats that help your brain think faster Simple lifestyle changes and exercises to keep your mind young
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If your memory isn't as good as it used to be, your concentration is flagging and your mind is not so sharp, you may be another victim of a widespread epidemic of brain drain. Officially called age-related memory decline, far too many people are experiencing declining cognitive function too early. However, both memory loss, and Alzheimer's disease are preventable. | There are ten other short questionnaires in the book, The Alzheimer's Prevention Plan, including the Alzheimer's Risk Factor Check, four neurotransmitter checks and four Essential Brain Foods Checks. |
Your brain can be your greatest friend or your worst enemy. If it's working you have the ability to think clearly, to imagine, to sense, to dream, to feel. It is your brain that makes you who you are. If it's not working you can feel flat, unhappy, confused, forgetful - life becomes a foggy struggle. So, how is your brain and what are you doing to keep it healthy? Why is it that we service our cars, keep our muscles and weight in trim, but do little to maintain the health of our brain? More than any other organ of the body, the health of your brain is the key to living a happy, fulfilling and pain-free life. This mere 3 pounds of mainly fat and water is not only the most complex and mysterious part of us, it also is the most regenerative, hardwiring a new neuronal connection every minute, and the most energy-expensive. On a sedentary day your brain will consume as much as 40% of all the calories you eat, thinking an estimated 60,000 thoughts! More than any other organ of the body it depends on a second by second supply of the right nutrients. So, how is your brain? Is it firing on all cylinders or is your mind less sharp and your memory less reliable than it used to be? There are three ways to give your brain an MOT. Psychological tests physical tests and chemical tests
Let's kick off with the psychological. Many people, young and old, experience memory and concentration problems. In Britain's largest every health and diet survey, the Optimum Nutrition UK Survey (ONUK) published in 2004, we asked over 37,000 people questions such as those shown in column 2 in the mind and memory check. Here's what we found: 52% of respondents suffer from anxiety 46% report feeling depressed 43% had difficulty concentrating and felt confused 38% felt nervous or hyperactive 32% reported poor memory or difficulty learning new things
Now check yourself out using the questionnaire above. Are you worse or better than average? But who wants to be average when you could be as sharp as a razor? Age-related memory decline The fact that older people tend to have higher scores doesn't mean it's all right to be 'average'. My goal for you is to be better than average, and keep your mind, mood and memory razor sharp throughout your life. According to the drug companies, there is an epidemic of age-related memory decline. "Age-associated memory impairment affects many more people than Alzheimer's disease, although, it's certainly true, it is a much less severe condition. We believe at least 4 million people in the UK suffer from this," says Dr Paul Williams from Glaxo pharmaceuticals, who have been researching drugs to enhance memory and mental performance. Age-related memory decline or 'mild cognitive impairment', as it is often called, is a long way off dementia or Alzheimer's and there is no guarantee that one will lead to another. However, as you will see, these milder symptoms are the first sign of potential problems later in life, and the key to prevention is to start early. The ability of the brain to make new brain cells and to make the 'neurotransmitter' messenger chemicals that control your mood and memory depends on one critical process. It's called methylation. Think of it like your brain's tool box. There's a billion acts of methylation every second that can fix damage, make more adrenalin, detoxify an 'anti-nutrient' or do any one of hundreds of essential chemical balancing acts in the brain. And there is one chemical in the blood, called homocysteine, which determines how good you are at this methylation business. Homocysteine is to your brain like cholesterol is to your arteries. Your homocysteine level predicts, more accurately than any other chemical measure, your risk for memory, mood and concentration problems. If your level is high you substantially increase your risk of dementia or Alzheimer's later in life. That's the bad news. The good news is that you can rapidly reduce your homocysteine level, and your risk, and test your homocysteine level using a simple home test kit. To understand methylation we need to know a bit about body chemistry. You eat 10 tons of food in your lifetime and, somehow, this turns into you. Your body is quite literally a sea of chemicals, a hairy bag of salty soup concocted out of millions of them, from glucose to fats, and amino acids to hormones and neurotransmitters. Methylation keeps your mind sharp. Methylation happens a billion times a second. It is like one big dance, with biochemicals passing methyl groups from one partner to another. Take noradrenalin. The body produces this chemical to keep you happy and motivated. However, if you are under stress, it adds a methyl group to noradrenalin to make adrenalin, which gives you a burst of energy and aggression known as the 'fight or flight syndrome'. These methyl groups come from the food you eat. When you eat, for example, a piece of fish containing the amino acid methionine, it's incorporated into your bloodstream and inside your cells and a methyl group is taken away from the methionine, leaving you with homocysteine. Ideally, the body adds a different methyl group back to homocysteine to convert it into an extraordinarily important chemical called S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe, pronounced 'Sammy', for short). SAMe is a natural mind and mood booster. This is because it can readily give up its methyl group to help alter other body chemicals and keep your brain in balance, or picking up other methyl groups. If your level of homocysteine is high this means you've got a log-jam in your body and brain's chemistry and it means you've become a poor 'methylator'. As we shall see, this is one of the main likely causes of Alzheimer's disease. Having a high level of homocysteine is not only strongly associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease; it's also associated with declining memory and mood in general. The nutrients that improve methylation, thereby lowering your homocysteine level, are vitamins B6, B12, folic acid, as well as trimethylglycine (TMG), B2, zinc and magnesium. In summary, the brain needs these nutrients: Vitamins (especially antioxidants A, C and E and B vitamins) Minerals (especially zinc and magnesium) Essential fats (both omega 3 and 6 fatty acids) Phospholipids (especially phosphatidyl choline and serine) Amino acids (found in protein) Glucose (evenly supplied in low 'GL' carbohydrate foods) Oxygen (from breathing)
To make neurons and neurotransmitters including: And depends on methylation to do it. For healthy methylation (to keep homocysteine levels low) the brain needs: The question is are you getting enough from your diet to maximise your brain function and minimise your risk? The chances are you are not. These nutrients not only keep your brain working well, they keep it working fast. A healthy brain of a young person processes a thought at a speed of 320 milliseconds, roughly a third of a second. People with age-related memory decline take 498 milliseconds, roughly half a second. Older people of a similar age will take 396 milliseconds. So age appears to slow thinking, but nothing like as much as those who have begun the disease process that so often leads to Alzheimer's. On other measures of speed of processing information, those with age-related memory decline or Alzheimer's showed marked differences in mental processing speed. Of course, it's not just the speed of your mind, but also the ability to process and store memories that counts, but it's amazing to think that the difference between a healthy brain and that of a person with cognitive decline is a mere 100 milliseconds. That doesn't sound like much to lose. In chapter 9 you'll see how a shortfall of DHA during pregnancy not only slows down a child's brain speed at birth, but their brain is still thinking more slowly 6 or 8 years later! That's the effect of not getting enough of one single nutrient. By the end of this book you'll know exactly what you need to know to guarantee you are getting an optimal supply of every single vital brain nutrient to keep your brain thinking fast and working well. And we'll explore what goes wrong in Alzheimer's and dementia, so you know why it's preventable and how to prevent it. In Chapter 17 Patrick Holford and his co-writers recommend the Alzheimer's Prevention Diet. The key principles of this are:Eat essential fats and phospholipids Eat slow-release carbohydrates, and avoid refined ones Eat vitamin-, mineral- and antioxidant-rich foods Eat enough protein Avoid harmful fats, refined carbohydrates, sugar and excess caffeine and alcohol
This is explained in more details in the book in a simple to follow, point by point way. Brain-boosting supplements are described in detail in chapter 18. Patrick recommends the following basic daily supplements for everyone: Added extras 2 x homocysteine formula, if your Homocysteine score is 6-9 (using the simple Homocysteine home blood test) 4 x homocysteine formula, if your H score is 9-15, or 6 x homocysteine formula, if your H score is above 15 1 x antioxidant formula 2 x brain-friendly nutrient formulas 1 x tablespoon of lecithin granules, or a heaped teaspoon of high-PC lecithin a day
Other optional extras (e.g. acetyl-L-carnitine, lipoic acid, glutamine powder, niacin, ginkgo biloba or vinpocetine, ginseng) | Patrick Holford BSc (Psych) Dip ION is a Director of the Mental Health Project and a Clinical Director at the Brain Bio Centre in London. |
Note: The information on this website is not a substitute for the personal advice of a qualified medical professional.
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