Does Nicotine Help Memory?

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation

According to a recent study published in Neurology, there may well be a relationship between memory and nicotine.  But before you run out and take up smoking, let's examine the facts.

First, the study was conducted on a small number of participants (74), all of whom had a mild, prior memory deficit, and the nicotine was delivered through a transdermal patch, not through smoking cigarettes.  After six months, those who had received a nicotine patch outperformed a placebo group on cognitive tests of attention and memory.  In fact, the group receiving nicotine improved their baseline scores while the placebo group showed a decline in thinking abilities over the six month trial.

For sure, the well-documented risks associated with smoking (which include cognitive decline) would preclude any reasonable argument about smoking to preserve brian health.  But nicotine, if delivered without the burden of smoking, has been shown to interact with receptors in the brain and improve some chemical signals along neural circuits. It is more than plausible that this is a benefit we could one day harness for improved cognition.

The major caveats on this particular study are that it was very small, the noted cognitive gains were considered minimal, and many of the authors work for companies that sell nicotine patches.  Nonetheless, this early stage work is noteworthy and bodes well for future benefits.

Blueberries and Brain Health

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation
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If you look for news about brain health, you have no doubt seen lots of coverage this week of a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry suggesting great cognitive benefits from drinking wild blueberry juice.

There are solid theoretical grounds to support this finding but it may be a little early to celebrate the end of dementia. While I always root for these studies to be confirmed through more rigorous methods, I will keep my expectations low on this one for the following reasons.

First of all, many studies have been initiated on the theoretical groundwork that foods rich in anti-oxidants might foster brain health and could confer improved cognitive capabilities. To date, none of these studies has been verified positive in that regard.

Secondly, this latest study was very small with only 18 research subjects enrolled; nine of whom drank blueberry juice and nine of whom were given a placebo drink.

And finally, the results are reported in a slightly misleading way. The statistically significantly improvement on two tasks (paired associate learning and list recall) was derived by comparing an initial score for each subject to their scores after 12 weeks of "therapy" (consuming either blueberry juice or a placebo drink believed to be blueberry juice). While both groups improved over the 12 weeks, there was not a significant difference between the group who got the blueberry juice and the group who got placebo. In this regard, we may find that all of the "gains" reported in this small test were due to the placebo effect.