sedentary lifestyle

Dementia or something else? See which health conditions that are often mistaken for the degenerative disease

Posted by

0


Image: Dementia or something else? See which health conditions that are often mistaken for the degenerative disease

(Natural News) The Alzheimer’s Association defines dementia as “a general term for loss of memory and other mental abilities severe enough to interfere with daily life.” However, over 40 percent of dementia diagnoses are actually wrong.

Here are seven health conditions that are often confused for dementia or Alzheimer’s.

  1. Side effects of artificial flavors, food colors, and sweeteners – These artificial additives are linked to dementia symptoms. Studies have determined that aspartame, an artificial sweetener, can impair cognitive function and cause memory loss.
  2. Inflammation from food allergies, low-level infections, Lyme Disease, and mold – Inflammation occurs when the body tries to get rid of toxic elements or organisms. Studies imply that neuroinflammation may cause mental disorders.
  3. Mercury or other heavy metal poisoning – Silver amalgam fillings contain 50 percent mercury that isn’t stable or inert. The mercury in filling “off-gasses, crosses the blood-brain barrier, and destroys neurons even without contact.” It’s hazardous to remove these fillings unless mercury-safe protocols are observed. Annual flu shots also contain heavy metals like aluminum and mercury.
  4. Nutritional imbalances and deficiencies – Deficiencies of folate (vitamin B9), magnesium, omega 3s, probiotics, selenium, vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin D, and other nutrients may cause the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and dementia. To address deficiencies, follow a balanced Mediterranean-style diet to slow down cognitive decline and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. Coconut oil can boost brain health while turmeric can improve your memory.
  5. Prescription medication side effects – Drugs, like pain medications, psychotropic drugs, statins (for lowering blood cholesterol), and sleep medication may severely disrupt cognition and increase the risk of dementia.
  6. Stress and stagnation or inactivity – Stress will elevate cortisol levels, and this causes inflammation. Inflammation then results in cognitive impairment, delayed healing time, hormone imbalances, hypertension, increased blood sugar levels, and susceptibility to disease. The body’s self-healing mechanisms requires the unimpeded flow of blood, lymph, and other fluids, which are improved with exercise. However, if you lead a sedentary lifestyle, cells in your body may shut down or become blocked, which can impede the natural healing process. Misdiagnosis linked to stress and inactivity often occurs in individuals with depression or alcohol addiction. (Related: The many ways stress makes you sick.)
  7. Thyroid and other hormonal imbalances – Individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia often have low T3 thyroid hormone levels, which aren’t measured in standard thyroid tests. At least 10 to 15 percent of residents in all nursing home residents are misdiagnosed due to low T3 levels.

https://www.brighteon.com/embed/5805404356001

Determining a cure for dementia

Experts from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging are collaborating on a new program that can help individuals with dementia, which may prevent misdiagnosis in patients with other conditions.

The research team reported that this is the first study of its kind and that it can prove that natural therapies may help slow the progress of dementia and even reverse it. Data from the paper, titled “Reversal of Cognitive Decline: A novel therapeutic program” and published in the journal AGING, revealed that out of the 10 participants diagnosed with dementia, nine “got their minds back.”

100% organic essential oil sets now available for your home and personal care, including Rosemary, Oregano, Eucalyptus, Tea Tree, Clary Sage and more, all 100% organic and laboratory tested for safety. A multitude of uses, from stress reduction to topical first aid. See the complete listing here, and help support this news site.

As people grow older, their fear of developing cognitive decline increases. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the several types of dementia. An individual with the disease may have problems with their behavior, memory, and thinking. The symptoms of Alzheimer’s tend to develop and worsen gradually until they interfere with simple daily tasks.

At least 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s while 30 million people worldwide are diagnosed with the condition. Experts posit that by 2050, 160 million individuals around the world, including 13 million Americans, will have the disease. To date, Alzheimer’s, the third leading cause of death in the U.S., can’t be treated.

Dr. Dale Bredesen, the study’s lead author and a professor of neurology at The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA, supposes that different factors affect the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s. For the study, Dr. Bredesen and his colleagues developed personalized and comprehensive protocols to address memory loss in 10 patients.

The study results were positive, and nine of the 10 participants showed improvement in their memories after being on the program for only three to six months. Out of the 10 patients, six patients have discontinued working or were struggling with their jobs when they joined the study. Once they joined the program, the six participants were able to work again or continue working with improved performance.

Five of the participants had memory loss linked to Alzheimer’s while the rest had amnestic mild cognitive impairment and subjective cognitive impairment. Only one patient with late-stage Alzheimer’s didn’t improve.

Doctors used a “systems approach” to treat the patients who joined the program. This “complex, 36-point therapeutic program” included:

  • Brain stimulation
  • Comprehensive changes in diet
  • Exercise
  • Sleep optimization
  • Specific pharmaceuticals and vitamins

The program also involved other steps concerning brain chemistry. Dr. Bredesen concluded that even if the program is complex and involves many lifestyle changes, the protocol is worth implementing since its only side effect was “improved health and an optimal body mass index, a stark contrast to the side effects of many drugs.”

You can read more articles about natural cures for the different conditions mistaken as dementia at Health.news.

Sources include:

GreenMedInfo.com

ALZ.org

Middle Age Is Not Too Late to Get Off the Couch

Posted by

0


Starting exercise later in life may still reduce risk of heart failure

Individuals in good health despite a sedentary lifestyle still benefit from initiating an exercise routine in middle age, according to a randomized study.

Changes in maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) indicated better fitness for those who were randomized to 2 years of exercise training, increasing from 29.0 to 34.4 mL/kg/min) by the end of the intervention. In contrast, VO2max stayed flat for controls (P<0.001 between groups), Benjamin Levine, MD, of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and colleagues found.

 LV stiffness (measured as curve fit of the diastolic pressure-volume curve) fell from a constant of 0.072 to 0.051 (P=0.0018), whereas there was no change in the controls (0.0635 to 0.062, P=0.83), the authors reported online in Circulation.

Additionally, exercise increased LV end-diastolic volume, whereas pulmonary capillary wedge pressure was unchanged, meaning patients gained a greater stroke volume for any given filling pressure, Levine’s group said.

“In previously sedentary healthy middle-aged adults, 2 years of exercise trainingimproved maximal oxygen uptake and decreased cardiac stiffness. Regular exercise training may provide protection against the future risk of heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction by preventing the increase in cardiac stiffness attributable to sedentary aging,” they concluded.

For their study, the investigators had randomized 61 middle-aged participants, 52 of whom stayed for 2 years in their exercise training (n=28) or attention control group (n=24). At baseline, participants exercised less than 30 minutes a day, three times a week.

Volunteers were excluded if they had hypertension, body mass index ≥30 kg/m2, untreated hypo- or hyperthyroidism, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tobacco use within the past 10 years, coronary artery disease, or structural heart disease.

 The exercise training group had to work out at least 30 minutes for 4 to 5 days a week, each session unsupervised but tracked with heart rate monitors. In addition, exercise physiologists met participants monthly throughout the intervention as training frequency, duration, and intensity progressed over time.

Of note was the 88% adherence to exercise.

“This study also demonstrated that exercise training can be adhered to by middle-aged adults over a prolonged period, suggesting that this may be an effective strategy to mitigate the deleterious effects of sedentary aging on the heart and forestall the development of heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction,” Levine and colleagues said.

The authors found no differences in results between men and women, but they cautioned that their study was not adequately powered to test for interaction by sex. Recruiting participants on a volunteer basis also may have limited generalizability to the general adult population.

Exercise increased health benefits after bariatric surgery

Posted by

0


After bariatric surgery, exercise can help improve glucose metabolism and cardiorespiratory fitness more than a sedentary lifestyle, according to recent findings published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“This is the first randomized, controlled clinical study that examines the effects of exercise on insulin sensitivity and other cardio and metabolic risk factors following bariatric surgery,” Bret Goodpaster, PhD, of the Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes at the Florida Hospital, said in a press release. “The data support the inclusion of an exercise program following bariatric surgery to further enhance the health of individuals who opt for surgery to lose weight.”

Goodpaster and colleagues evaluated 128 men and women who recently underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass to determine the effect of exercise after surgery vs. a sedentary lifestyle on insulin sensitivity and other cardiometabolic factors. Patients were divided into two groups: a 6-month semi-supervised moderate exercise protocol (n=66) or a health education control (n=62) intervention.

No significant differences were found between the groups for weight loss.

The intention-to-treat analysis revealed that compared with the education group, the exercise group had greater improvement in insulin sensitivity; however, this was not statistically significant (P=.18). The per-protocol analysis revealed that the exercise group had significantly greater improvements in insulin sensitivity when performing more than 120 minutes per week of exercise in the final 3 months of the intervention compared with the education group (P=.019).

At baseline, glucose effectiveness was similar between the groups. After the intervention, there was a greater improvement in the exercise group compared with the education group (P=.009).

Compared with the education group, significant improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness were found among the exercise group.

“Importantly, our study showed that aerobic exercise is feasible in this population — a result that directly counters the perception that severely obese individuals cannot respond to lifestyle intervention,” Goodpaster said. “Moreover, we have identified specific, non-weight-related health benefits that exercise confers on these individuals. We look forward to additional studies to determine the optimal amount and type of exercise that provides the best physiological results.”