Dementia Has Stabilised
According to this report on the BBC web site, research from the University of Cambridge has shown that dementia levels are stabilising.
A few years ago, Oxford University proved a link between having low B12 levels at 50 and dementia, if you had dementia in your family.
Could it be, that GPs, who now check out bloods regularly are having an effect?
When first tested at 50, my B12 levels were non-existent. Now at 68, they’re spot on!
And what is one way to help your B12 levels? – Go gluten free!
As other studies at other world-class universities, like Nottingham, have shown that a gluten-free lifestyle lowers your changes of getting cancer, I think that going gluten-free because of my coeliac disease, wasn’t one of the worst lifestyle decisions I made.
A New Approach To Fighting Alzheimer’s Disease
Last night, I received my alumni e-newsletter from Liverpool University. There was this article about a new approach to fighting Alzheimer’s Disease. This is a key sentence.
We are using a new approach, harnessing the natural ability of sugars, based on the blood-thinning drug heparin, to block the action of BACE.
BACE is an enzyme, which according to the article causes some of the problems of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Let’s hope that the research succeeds.
The Monster Loony Party’s Thoughts on the Cambridge Busway
This story is priceless and puts one of Britain’s worst transport projects in perspective.
Loony politician Lord Toby Jug has launched a campaign to have Cambridgeshire’s guided bus route rebuilt in rubber and stretched to the Channel Isles so St Ives can become a tax haven.
Lord Toby, leader of the Cambridge and Huntingdon branch of the Official Monster Loony Party, is also campaigning to have a witch-ducking stool built on the Quay at St Ives.
This would be used so that council officials who came up with the “crackpot” guided bus scheme can be dunked in the River Great Ouse every hour.
Lord Toby Jug is also raising money for Alzheimer’s Disease research.
The Jigsaw Starts to Fit Together!
Oxford University has today published findings, that show that cocktails of various vitamin B’s might actually help in the treatment of Alzeimher’s.
I’ve covered this sort of work before in Keeping the Brain Healthy.
I’m no medic, but the more you delve into this subject, the more it seems that the B vitamins are more and more important.
Sir Terry Pratchett
Sir Terry wrote and read part of the Richard Dimbleby lecture last night. It was a moving and very powerful performance as the writer is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.
His plea for a right to die, when he chooses is summed up with this last sentence of the lecture.
Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.
He is right and everybody should see or read his lecture from last night. The Guardian has an edited version here.
Alzheimer’s Disease and Mobile Phones
I was sent an article about gluten-free food and this unrelated extract stood out.
Mobile phones and Alzheimer’s disease – Recent research suggests that mobile phone radiation may halt the progression of Alzheimer’s in mice but experts take issue with both the research methods and the report’s conclusions.
A summary of the research offers this explanation.
The researchers showed that exposing old Alzheimer’s mice to the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones erased brain deposits of beta-amyloid, a protein strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Clumps of beta-amyloid form so-called brain plaques that are a hallmark of the disease.
As an engineer, I’m not surprised if this happens. Irradiating things has all sorts of effects. Some are positive and some are downright dangerous.
Now, it has also been shown that low-levels of B12 may lead to Azheimer’s and other brain problems.
It would strike me as an engineer that these two areas of research are perhaps some of first pieces of a jigsaw, that if we can solve it, will lead to ways of possibly delaying the onset of what is a very nasty disease.
I hope so.
Terry Pratchett on Assisted Suicide
Terry is on the BBC Breakfast program at the moment. A lot of sense about assisted suicide.
Living Alone Increases Change of Dementia
Swedish research has shown that if you live alone and have a particular gene variant, you are more likely to develop dementia or Alzheimer’s. Not good. The full article is on the BBC and here’s an extract.
The researchers studied 2,000 men and women from eastern Finland aged around 50 and again 21 years later.
They looked at their marital status and also carried out genetic tests to see if they carried the gene APOE variant 4.
People living alone in middle-age had twice the risk of dementia than those who were living with a partner.
But widows and widowers had three times the risk of dementia.
And those with the APOE gene variant who had lost their partners and remained living alone had the highest risk of all of developing Alzheimer’s.
Not good.
Ronnie Biggs
It is wrong that Ronnie Biggs is being kept in jail. He has had several strokes, he can’t speak and what else does he suffer from. He is no threat and would be cheaper to keep in a hospital than a prison. So why not let him out on grounds of costs alone?
In his excellent book, Prison Gate, David Ramsbotham talks of lifers with severe mental disorders and Alzheimer’s who are cluttering up prisons. Like Biggs, they are no threat.
We must be humane in our treatment of prisoners as we will only lower the whole of society to their level.
The Anonymous Widower 