B-complex vitamins may help slow progression of dementia

The Methodist Hospital System: Large doses of B-complex vitamins could reduce the rate of brain shrinkage by half in elderly people with memory problems and slow the progression of dementia.

A two-year clinical trial in England has shown that B vitamins, including B-6, B-12 and folic acid, slow down mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition which is a major risk factor for Alzheimer disease and other forms of dementia.

Dr. Gustavo C. Román, medical director of the Alzheimer & Dementia Center at the Methodist Neurological Institute in Houston, said that patients who already exhibit signs of dementia and test positive for high levels of homocysteine are more likely to respond well to the large doses of B vitamins. Homocysteine is an amino acid in the blood, and high blood levels are linked to an increased risk of developing Alzheimer disease.

Román has seen the impact of these B vitamins in his patients and found that injections of B-complex vitamins are more effective than oral supplements.

“I’m not saying that everyone who takes B vitamins will prevent dementia,” Roman said. “But in the right dosage and for the appropriate patients, the vitamin B-12 treatment could be a step toward modifying disease progression.”

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Getting older leads to emotional stability, happiness

Stanford University: It’s a prediction often met with worry: In 20 years, there will be more Americans over 60 than under 15. Some fear that will mean an aging society with an increasing number of decrepit, impaired people and fewer youngsters to care for them while also keeping the country’s productivity going.

The concerns are valid, but a new Stanford study shows there’s a silver lining to the graying of our nation. As we grow older, we tend to become more emotionally stable. And that translates into longer, more productive lives that offer more benefits than problems, said Laura Carstensen, the study’s lead author.

“As people age, they’re more emotionally balanced and better able to solve highly emotional problems,” said Carstensen, a psychology professor and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. “We may be seeing a larger group of people who can get along with a greater number of people. They care more and are more compassionate about problems, and that may lead to a more stable world.”

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Mind over matter: Study shows we consciously exert control over individual neurons

University of California — Los Angeles: University of California — Los Angeles Every day our brains are flooded by stimulation — sounds, sights and smells. At the same time, we are constantly engaged in an inner dialogue, ruminating about the past, musing about the future. Somehow the brain filters all this input instantly, selecting some things for long- or short-term storage, discarding others and focusing in on what’s most important at any given instant.

How this competition is resolved across multiple sensory and cognitive regions in the brain is not known; nor is it clear how internal thoughts and attention decide what wins in this continual contest of stimulation.

Now a collaboration between UCLA scientists and colleagues from the California Institute of Technology has shown that humans can actually regulate the activity of specific neurons in the brain, increasing the firing rate of some while decreasing the rate of others. And study subjects were able to do so by manipulating an image on a computer screen using only their thoughts.

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EarthTalk: What are the benefits of “hydroponic” growing of lettuce and other crops? and can pollution affect my child’s IQ?

Dear EarthTalk: What are the environmental benefits of the hydroponic growing of lettuce and other crops?
– Bruce Keeler, Oakland, CA

While organic agriculture is all the rage, growing by leaps and bounds to meet increased consumer demand for healthier food, another option that’s less well known but just as healthy is hydroponics, whereby plants are grown in nutrient-fortified water-based solutions without a soil substrate whatsoever. Besides not needing chemical fertilizers or pesticides (most of which are toxic as well as derived from petroleum), hydroponics also take up much less space than traditional agriculture, meaning that even an apartment window can yield impressive amounts of food throughout the calendar year.

Hydroponic growing not only eliminates
the need for chemical fertilizers and
pesticides but also takes up much less
space than traditional agriculture,
meaning that even an apartment window
can yield impressive amounts of food
throughout the calendar year.
Photo credit: Ars Electronica,
The Window Project

In traditional forms of agriculture, soil facilitates the process of providing the mineral nutrients that plants need to grow. Organisms in the soil break down the nutrients into inorganic basic forms that the plants can then take up accordingly and put to use photosynthesizing. Of course, some of the organisms the soil attracts are unwelcome, and not every speck of soil is ideal as a growth medium, so we have come up with ways to kill off unwanted pests (pesticides) and pump up the ground’s productivity (fertilizers).

But growing fruits and vegetables hydroponically obviates the need for fertilizers and pesticides — let alone soil — altogether. “Without soil, there is little to no microbial activity, so the plants depend on direct nutrients from nutrient solutions,” reports Alexandra Gross in E – The Environmental Magazine. “And because hydroponics occur in a highly controlled space and microbial activity is at minimum, pesticides, insecticides and herbicides are not needed.”

In most hydroponic systems, the nutrient solutions include inorganic salt fertilizers and semi-soluble organic materials such as bat guano (manure), bone meal and fish emulsion. Since growing hydroponically does not require chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the method is inherently “organic,” although the federal government doesn’t recognize it as such officially. Hydroponic farmers are trying to get the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to take soil out of the equation when it comes to defining organic so that their products can bear an organic certification label on store shelves and appeal to a quickly growing segment of green-minded consumers.

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Large-scale fish farm production offsets environmental gains

Pew Environment Group: Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.

Dr. John Volpe and his team at the University of Victoria developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.

“Scale is critical,” said Dr. Volpe, a marine ecologist. “Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large scale farming of salmon, for example, even under even the best current practices creates large scale problems.”

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Suicide-by-pesticide study ranks compound toxicity

New Scientist: Some pesticides are more toxic to humans than previously thought and the World Health Organization should adjust its figures accordingly to reduce self-poisoning.

So says Andrew Dawson at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, who studied 7461 pesticide-suicides and attempted suicides.

Agricultural pesticides are the most common means of suicide worldwide, resulting in more than 250,000 deaths each year. In their 6-year study, Dawson’s team found that, depending on the pesticide taken, fatality of cases arriving at two Sri Lankan hospitals varied between 0 and 42 per cent.

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Glucosamine causes the death of pancreatic cells

Université Laval: High doses or prolonged use of glucosamine causes the death of pancreatic cells and could increase the risk of developing diabetes, according to a team of researchers at Université Laval’s Faculty of Pharmacy. Details of this discovery were recently published on the website of the Journal of Endocrinology.

In vitro tests conducted by Professor Frédéric Picard and his team revealed that glucosamine exposure causes a significant increase in mortality in insulin-producing pancreatic cells, a phenomenon tied to the development of diabetes. Cell death rate increases with glucosamine dose and exposure time. “In our experiments, we used doses five to ten times higher than that recommended by most manufacturers, or 1,500 mg/day,” stressed Professor Picard. “Previous studies showed that a significant proportion of glucosamine users up the dose hoping to increase the effects,” he explained.

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