Will the Omega-3s Help to Prevent Alzheimer's Disease?
'Old people don’t need companionship. They need to be isolated and studied so that it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use.' Homer Simpson
Reading some of the horror stories in the newspapers, one could almost believe that Homer Simpson was expressing society's opinion and attitude to the elderly. But while there is some truth to it, it is far from the whole story. My colleagues, who specialise in geriatric medicine, are deeply committed. Indeed, as more and more people survive into old age, authorities are (at last!) beginning to take the problems of the elderly seriously.
Why, you might well ask?
In my view it's for no better reason than they can vote. And, as we have already seen, mental decline, whether attributed to age or a specific dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease, is not confined to old age - far from it. Alzheimers, other types of dementia, and cognitive decline, are all seen in younger age groups - they're just commoner in old age. Moreover, as I have suggested earlier, the roots of Alzheimer's disease, and other forms of cognitive decline, begin a lot earlier than when the condition becomes obvious.
What does that mean?
Well, in my view it means that we should do our utmost to help ourselves before ever we develop symptoms. And the wonderful part of this message is that we can so painlessly and readily do this.
*** Breaking news ***
Work by Professor Cole and his colleagues in America and Japan has just shown a way in which DHA may well be working. It raises the levels of a protein known as LR11, which protects against Alzheimer's disease - see the reference Ma Q-L, Teter B, et al below.
But while paying attention to the all-important DHA, don't forget to get the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s right!
I've already discussed the way to do this clearly and extensively in The Brain Food Diet. If you have further questions after reading the book, please feel free to get in touch with me through the website contact form, or directly, to:
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Further Reading
Andersson C, Lindau, et al (2006). Identifying patients at high and low risk of cognitive decline using Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test among middle-aged memory clinic outpatients. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 21: 251-59.
Barberger-Gateau P, Letenneur L, et al (2002). Fish, meat, and risk of dementia: cohort study. BMJ 325: 932-33.
Chapman DP, Williams SM, et al (2006). Dementia and its implications for public health. Preventing chronic disease: public health research, practice, and policy 3(2): CDC 1-13.
Connor WE and Connor SL (2007). The importance of fish and docosahexaenoic acid in Alzheimer disease. Am J Clin Nutrition 85: 929-30.
Conquer JA et al (2000). Fatty acid analysis of blood plasma in patients with Alzheimer's disease, other types of dementia, and cognitive impairment. LIPIDS 35:1305-1321.
Engelhart MJ, Geerlings MI, et al (2002). Diet and risk of dementia: does fat matter? The
Freund-Levi Y, Eriksdotter-Jonhagen M, et al (2006). Omega-3 fatty acid treatment in 174 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease: OmegAD study: a randomized double-blind trial. Arch Neurol 63:1402-08.
Friedland RP (2003). Fish consumption and the risk of Alzheimer disease: is it time to make dietary recommendations? Arch Neurol 60: 923-24.
Green KN, Martinez-Coria H, et al (2007). Dietary docosahexaenoic acid and docosapentanoic ameliorate amyloid-β and tau pathology via a mechanism involving presenilin 1 levels. J of Neuroscience 27(16): 4385-95.
Hashimoto M, Tanabe Y, et al. Chronic administration of docosahexaenoic acid ameliorates the impairment of spatial cognition learning ability in amyloid beta-infused rats. J Nutr. 2005 Mar;135(3):549-55.
Kalmijn S, Launer Lj, et al (1997). Dietary fat intake and the risk of incident dementia in the Rotterdam Study. Ann Neurol 42: 776-82.
Kawas CH, Corrada ScD, et al (2003). Visual memory predicts Alzheimer’s disease more than a decade before diagnosis. Neurology 60: 1089-93.
Knapp M and Prince M (2007). Dementia
Kyle DJ, Schaefer E, et al (1999). Low serum docosahexaenoic acid is a significant risk factor for Alzheimer’s dementia. Lipids 34(Suppl): S245.
Lukiw WJ, Cui JG, Marcheselli VL, et al (2005). A role for docosahexaenoic acid-derived neuroprotectin D1 in neural cell survival and Alzheimer disease. J Clin Invest 115(10):2774-83.
Ma Q-L, Teter B, et al (2007). Omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid increases sorLA/LR11, a sorting protein with reduced expression in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD): relevance to AD prevention. Neurobiology of Disease 27(2):14299-14307.
Miyanaga K, Ynoemura K, et al (1995). Clinical effects of DHA in demented patients. J Clin Ther Med 11:881-901.
Morris MC (2006). Docosahexaenoic acid and Alzheimer disease. Arch Neurol 63: 1527-28.
Morris MC, Evans DA, et al (2003). Consumption of fish and n-3 fatty acids and risk of incident Alzheimer disease (2003). Arch Neurol 60(7):940-6.
Nakada T et al (1990). Membrane fatty acid composition shows delta-6-desaturase abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease. Neuroreport 1(2):153-155Ryan F (2007). Between Clouds (12and the Sea. Swift Publishers,
Ryan F (1996). Virus X.
Schaefer EJ, Bongard V, et al (2006). Plasma phosphatidylcholine docosahexaenoic acid content and risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease. The
Solfrizzi V, Terano T, et al (1999). Docosahexaenoic acid supplementation improves the moderately severe dementia from thrombotic cerebrovascular diseases. Lipids 34(S): S345-46.
Tully AM, Roche HM, et al (2003). Low serum cholesteryl ester-docosahexaenoic acid levels in Alzheimer’s disease: a case-control study. Br J Nutr 89: 483-89.
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