Dietary Improvements In Alzheimer’s Disease?

Here’s a copy of the public press release on a new study in animals that offers promise for an adjunctive dietary aid for treating Alzheimer’s disease. This is not a cure, I hasten to point out, but it helps you function at the best level you can at the point in the disease that the dementia has reached:

Healthy diet could slow or reverse early effects of Alzheimer’s disease

Patients in the early to moderate stages of Alzheimer’s Disease could have their cognitive impairment slowed or even reversed by switching to a healthier diet, according to researchers at Temple University.

In a previous study [http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2009_2010/12/stories/alzheimers.htm], researchers led by Domenico Praticò, an associate professor of pharmacology in Temple’s School of Medicine, demonstrated that a diet rich in methionine could increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. Methionine is an amino acid typically found in red meats, fish, beans, eggs, garlic, lentils, onions, yogurt and seeds.

“The question we asked now as a follow-up is if, for whatever reason, you had made bad choices in your diet, is there a chance you can slow down or even reverse the disease or is it too late — that there is nothing you could do,” said Praticò.

As in the previous study, the researchers fed one group of mice a diet high in methionine and another group a regular, healthy diet. After three months, they split the group receiving the methionine-rich diet into two, with one group continuing the amino-heavy diet while the second switched to the healthy diet for an additional two months.

“At the end of the study, when we looked at these mice, what we found — very surprisingly — was that switching to a more healthy diet reversed the cognitive impairment that had built up over the first three months of eating the methionine-rich diet,” said Praticò. “This improvement was associated with less amyloid plaques — another sign of the disease — in their brains.

Pratico said that the cognitive impairment that had been observed in the mice after three months on the methionine-rich diet was completely reversed after two months on the healthier diet, and they were now able to function normally.

“We believe this finding shows that, even if you suffer from the early effects of MCI or Alzheimer’s, switching to a healthier diet that is lower in methionine could be helpful in that memory capacity could be improved,” he said.

Pratico stressed that this was not a drug therapy for curing MCI or Alzheimer’s, but that it did demonstrate that a lifestyle change such as diet can improve some of the impairments that have already occurred in the brain.

“What it tells us is that the brain has this plasticity to reverse a lot of the bad things that have occurred; the ability to recoup a lot of things such as memory that were apparently lost, but obviously not totally lost,” he said.

Pratico also emphasized that the researchers believe that in addition to switching to a healthy diet, patients diagnosed with MCI or Alzheimer’s also need a regiment of physical as well as mental exercises.

“This combination won’t cure you, but we believe, as we saw in this study, that it will be able to slow down or even possibly reverse the effects on the cognitive impairment,” he said.

The study, “Normalization of hyperhomocysteinemia improves cognitive deficits and ameliorates brain amyloidosis of a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease,” is being published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (http://www.fasebj.org/). It was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Copies of this study are available to working journalists and may be obtained by contacting Preston M. Moretz in Temple’s Office of University Communications at pmoretz@temple.edu.

Acupuncture May Help Depression During Pregnancy

One of the agonizing choices that any expectant mother faces is whether or not to take medications during pregnancy for conditions that develop during the nine months. What if they find some problem or birth defect that the drug could cause — but they learn about it years after the pregancy is over.

Now a new study from Stanford University in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology has shown that acupuncture could provide an alternative to drugs for depression during pregnancy.  Acupuncture needs much more study for its safety, but as many proponents will tell you, it has a track record covering thousands of years (compared with just a few years for many drugs on the market today).  The study compared tailored acupuncture with two types of control groups, one getting acupuncture in points believed to be unrelated to the specific depression problem and one group getting massage.  This isn’t to say that massage might not be a great way to relax and unwind, but it may not provide the kind of help with mood problems that you might get from trying a course of acupuncture.

As with any alternative or over the counter treatment, check with your own physician to make sure the treatment is OK in terms of safety for you. But, now, at least, there is a potential option available for women who need help with depressed mood while pregnant but who do not want to create uncertain lifetime risks for their unborn child during development from the medications. Check out acupuncture instead.

Integrative Medicine: The What and The How – Choosing the Tools of Your Healing Plan

With integrative medicine, it is up to you to try out your treatment program and see if it helps you. If a treatment option helps you, stay with it. If it does not lead to improvements in your health or it actually worsens your health, it is time to move on. This sounds simple and obvious, but many people fall into a rut with this aspect of the process.

Look At Your Plan Objectively

Many times, for example, I have seen people with a history of depression whose doctor had put them on a particular antidepressant drug. Even if they were still depressed a year or two later, no one – not the patient or any provider – had questioned whether or not it was time to move on to a different antidepressant drug or even to a different form of treatment.

Somehow having connected the patient with a treatment that was supposed to help, even though it didn’t, was mistakenly seen as enough by everyone involved. People settled for labels instead of results of treatment. This is the kind of situation where it is not enough to “get some help.” It is up to you first, and your provider(s) second, to look objectively at whether or not the help is helping.

A Word about Conventional Medical Drugs

Most people with chronic disease are on conventional medical drugs when they start a fuller treatment plan. Do not stop your prescription drugs before it is time to try to do so or in a manner that is counterproductive – and only make changes under the supervision of a qualified prescribing doctor. Many people – but not all — find that they can gradually lower their medication doses or eventually stop the drugs altogether as other treatments begin to work.

However, it is not safe to reduce or stop your drugs too soon, at a time when nothing else has actually helped yet, unless the risk of doing so is minimal in your physician’s judgment and you agree (e.g., some increased pain or discomfort but not a flare in disease activity or death).

It is also often especially risky to stop drugs suddenly. Drugs are usually suppressing disease activity. Sudden removal of a drug from the body, which likely has generated a compensatory increase in disease activity behind the scenes to fight the drug effects, will unleash unopposed, increased disease activity. This is often dangerous and usually unnecessary.

Common Sense

Use common sense — I have heard of tragic cases of insulin-dependent diabetics, for instance, who stopped their insulin and died in diabetic coma with high blood sugars at the recommendation of an ignorant CAM provider who told them the new treatment would replace the insulin from the start and who misinterpreted the adverse effects of high blood sugar as a temporary healing crisis. It is easy enough to test your blood sugar and see if the insulin requirements go down – then it makes sense to reduce the drug accordingly in collaboration with the physician who prescribed it. If nothing changes, then you still need your insulin at the dose that your doctor originally prescribed.

Priorities

For most chronic diseases, prioritize your choices. The best way to get unstuck and to heal is to start with and prioritize the two most powerful levels of health care options. These are spiritual and constitutional.
The other key practical decision is to continue your drugs for now, as discussed above. Continue the essential aspects of your biochemical level – i.e., your Western conventional treatment, in consultation with your physician.

Mediterranean Diet with Olive Oil — Better for Health

A new study (Eur J Clin Nutr. 2009 Aug 26) reports that a diet rich in virgin olive oil increases levels of beneficial antioxidants better than other types of diets, over a 3-year period. Increasing total plasma antioxidant capacity with olive oil in the diet is advantageous in terms of not only its preventive role for various health problems, but also weight reduction.

Try switching over to olive oil as a primary source of fats in the diet. The data seem to be piling up to support its use.