My publication, Brain Aerobics Weekly, covers a wide range of subjects because not only is variety the spice of life, but some research shows that variety is a key element in keeping our brains active. Monday’s eclectic entry on foods reflects that. The goals were to provide curiosity-satisfying information on foods in the news as well as to get you to think about special foods in your own life. Learning and reflecting are worthy goals in themselves.
I make that observation, because Gina Kolata, in an article titled “Years Later, No Magic Bullet Against Alzheimer’s Disease,” for the New York Times reported, as the title suggests, that we don’t know what to do to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other debilitating forms of dementia. (August 28, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/health/research/29prevent.html?th&emc=th)
Ms. Kolata wrote, “The scene was a kind of science court. On trial was the question ‘Can anything — running on a treadmill, eating more spinach, learning Arabic — prevent Alzheimer’s disease or delay its progression?’ To try to answer that question, the National Institutes of Health sponsored the court, appointing a jury of 15 medical scientists with no vested interests in Alzheimer’s research. They would hear the evidence and reach a judgment on what the data showed.” The group read hundreds of research papers and listened to scientists from Duke University who had been commissioned to look at the body of evidence and weigh it.
As Ms. Kolata reported, “The studies included research on nearly everything proposed to prevent the disease: exercise, mental stimulation, healthy diet, social engagement, nutritional supplements, anti-inflammatory drugs or those that lower cholesterol or blood pressure, even the idea that people who marry or stay trim might be saved from dementia. And they included research on traits that might hasten Alzheimer’s onset, like not having much of an education or being a loner.”
We are getting better at detecting the disease earlier, but so far we have been unable to identify how to prevent it. “Currently,” the panel wrote, “no evidence of even moderate scientific quality exists to support the association of any modifiable factor (such as [those mentioned above]) with reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
That doesn’t mean that things like eating a healthy diet, exercising and staying engaged with family and friends aren’t helpful; only that “the quality of the evidence” was too low to provide proof. In part, that’s because we now believe that Alzheimer’s disease begins years before cognitive changes are evident, and people live on average another 10 years or more after the onset of obvious 
symptoms, which means rigorous studies might need to last for decades. Such studies are neither easy to fund nor conduct.
In the meantime, Dr. James R. Burke, a member of the Duke group and director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at Duke tells his patients that even if good health cannot prevent Alzheimer’s, it might delay its onset. “We don’t have compelling evidence or proof that this will prevent Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. But those measures, he adds, “would improve quality of life.”
And ultimately, quality of life is the goal anyway. We’re all going to die of something, but we hope to live well while we can. I contend that we can all have a high quality of life, including people with Alzheimer’s disease, but it begins by starting now to lead that healthy lifestyle, invoke a positive attitude and nurture relationships.
What do you think?
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