Best Foods for a Long Life

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation

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This summary of foods you should eat for a long life, was compiled by WebMD, and is well worth clicking through and reviewing.  It is not specifically about brain health, but the overlap between overall fitness and maintaining cognition is significant.

The 5 second version is fruits, vegetables, olive oil, berries, fish, beans, nuts and dairy.  But for a short blurb on why each of those foods helps which facet of your health, I highly recommend you review the WebMD slides.

Can B-12 Vitamins Prevent Memory Loss?

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation

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Can B-12 vitamines prevent memory loss?  As with so many questions, the answer to this one is "it depends".

Remember, there are many causes of memory loss, including depression, anxiety, diabetes, medications, thyroid disorders, head injuries, strokes, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, tumors, sleep disorders, and drug use, just to name the most common. Vitamin deficiency is also on the list of common causes, especially for older adults who become less proficient at absorbing B vitamins from the foods they eat.

According to a recent study conducted at Rush University Medical Center and published in Neurology, research subjects who had markers for vitamin B deficiency, such as brain shrinkage and high homocysteine levels, also performed worse on cognitive tests compared to subjects without vitamin B deficiency.  These findings are consistent with other studies linking vitamin B deficiency to poor cognition.

So, it would be a stretch to conclude that taking a B-12 supplement will protect a person from all causes of memory loss or cognitive decline.  However, the evidence suggesting that proper intake of B-12 is important to ongoing brain health is quite strong.  In that regard, think about including fish, meat, poultry, eggs, milk, and cheese in your diet as good sources of B vitamins.

A National Strategy for Alzheimer's

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation
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Since the National Alzheimer's Prevention Act was passed into law in November of 2010, the Obama administration has been legally bound to develop a national strategy to fight Alzheimer's disease.  As the first draft of the plan is nearing completion, certain themes have been clearly expressed by the public in terms of what they hope the plan includes.

As described in this Associated Press article published by Time,  the plan should address three elements that have been consistently advocated in public forums:

1. Primary care physicians need better training to make earlier diagnoses of cognitive problems
2. Huge spending discrepancies by the National Institutes of Health need to be adressed as Alzheimer's disease receives a tiny fraction of the support that cancer and AIDS receive
3. More community support programs are needed to help Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers survive at home during later stages of the disease

While it is still unclear what the first version of the strategy will look like, or how detailed it will be, I am pleased to see those priorities rising from the public realm.  Two of them are completely focused on the pragmatic benefits of doing a better job with the scientific knowledge we already have, while only the NIH budget issue seems to be focused on funding new (and probably elusive) scientific breakthroughs.