|
The First in a
Series on
BRAIN
CARE BASICS
:
Brain Fog, Brain Cells
and Alzheimer's
|
|
Experience a little brain fog these days
and you're likely to panic. After all, it's the sharp
brains that keep their jobs in a downsizing economy.
And the human brain's been getting in some trouble
lately.
Keeping brain function and good brain
health going in a world where the incidence of
Alzheimer's Disease is growing exponentially is a
challenge. In 2050, ADI
(Alzheimer's Disease International, a
consortium of 73 Alzheimer's organizations)
predicts nearly a million new cases
every year.
Right now 5.3 million
Americans are living with Alzheimer's and
every 70 seconds someone in America
develops the incurable illness.
What's going on?
To summarize: The human brain weighs
only three pounds and is composed of some 100
billion neurons that connect with each other in a
network of trillions of synapses.
This is where something goes horribly wrong for
some people, especially in later life. Their
neurons turn into plaques and tangles filled with
brain amyloid deposits. This amyloid plaque is not
friendly to the brain's nerve cells, or neurons.
The result is Alzheimer's Disease with its
loss of memory, thinking and language skills
and behavioral changes.
Scarey stuff, and information
that could leave one feeling terrified and
powerless.
But wait - are there things we can
do to reduce our chances that we will turn into one
of those statistics? Short answer: it looks like
it.
For example, Alzheimer
prevalence is among the lowest in India: among
Indian adults ages 70-79, Alzheimer incidence is
4.4
times less than the rate
in the United States. How
come?
A UCLA-Veterans Affairs
study suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in
turmeric and curry spice, inhibits the accumulation
of destructive beta amyloid in the brains of
Alzheimer's patients and also breaks up
existing plaques. They even report that curcurmin
is more effective in inhibiting formation of the
Alzheimer protein fragments (beta amyloid) than
many other drugs being tested as Alzheimer's
treatments. The researchers found the low molecular
weight and polar structure of curcumin allow it to
penetrate the blood-brain barrier effectively and
bind to beta amyloid.
This certainly bears out my
experience clinically. I've used a medicinal
liquid Turmeric 1:1 (from MediHerb, Australia) from
Curcuma longa rhizome 5 g) at 5 cc once or twice a
day with great results, usually within a
month.
The typical diet in India
contains lots of this substance from the spices
they use - turmeric and curry. So even if you
don't have access to medicinal quality Turmeric,
sounds like your brain health would benefit greatly
from adding it to your food.
|
|
Q: How many neurons can you fit
on the head of a
pin?
A. 30,000.
Q. If put end-to-end, how long would
the blood vessels in the human brain be?
A. 400 miles.
|
|
|
YOUR EMOTIONAL
HEALTH:
An Easy-to Follow System
for Improving your Emotional Health Is Now
Underway...
|
How your brain
functions has everything to do
with your emotional life and
how you manage it. In fact,
your emotional health and
well-being is one of the
greatest assets you possess -
more precious than your
financial bottom line,
even.
Unfortunately as
adults, many of us have been
trained away from - negatively
conditioned, even - from
including our active, conscious
participation in our emotional
lives as a central, even
essential, part of taking care
of our health.
We weren't born
that way, however. As infants
and children our emotional
lives were just part of what we
dealt with moment-by-moment-by
moment. We tended to 'emotional
ouches' in each moment just
like the physical ouches that
are part of every child's
experience.
Instead, we had
to unlearn
that natural
integration and wall off our
emotional lives so they were at
the very least separate from
the rest of our self, and
sometimes even buried so they
were totally
disowned.
By the time whole cultures do
this to children, it makes for
a pretty dysfunctional
world!
Happily a group of adults is
now doing something about that.
They are getting a map of how
healthy emotional lives evolve.
They are learning what to do in
each phase of that emotional
life to improve their own
health and well-being, and to
support that in their children,
grandchildren, partners,
friends, parents, co-workers
etc. In that small way they're
contributing to a better life
for themselves and their
world.
If you'd like to get an
overview of what that map looks
like and what they are
learning, you can see a
description by clicking
here
And if you think
you might like to have that
crucial information for
yourself sometime, you can sign
up there without obligation to
be notified of the next
opportunity.
|
|
A
Starting
Place to
Reintegrate
Your Emotional
Life
If you'd like
to re-integrate your own emotional life and make it
once again a normal part of your everyday life,
something you attend to like you attend to needs
for hunger, food, rest, companionship, exercise,
and to do so without spending a dime, here's a
resource for you, a place to get started:
Click
here...
You're welcome to forward this
to others so they can have greater health and well
being too!
|
|
