By Patrick Holford What does any animal, perhaps your dog, do after exercising or going for a walk? Sleep. Sleep is how the brain recovers. There is now overwhelming evidence that sleep is a ‘brain essential’ and just like Goldilocks, it seems we need just the right amount....
Developing dementia is the second biggest health fear, after cancer. But what can you do about it? The conventional view is that genes play a big part and that factors under our control, including diet, lifestyle and health status, account for up to 40% of risk and therefore up to 40% of...
Keeping our brain’s structure and neural network healthy may seem like a mystery at times, but often the best advice is simple: ‘use it or lose it!’ The exercise and stimulation your brain gets from an active physical, social and intellectual lifestyle is vital to keeping it healthy. Just...
---- Last week a discovery, published in the journal Science, showed that a high level of an abnormal ‘phosphorylated-tau’ protein triggers brain cells to self-destruct. It also gives a vital clue as to how to stop your brain cells dying with specific vitamins. When cells become largely...
Last month’s newspaper headlines pitched the new anti-amyloid Alzheimer’s drug as a ‘turning point’. The pitch has a lot in common with the statin story. Last month’s newspaper headlines pitched the new anti-amyloid Alzheimer’s drug as a ‘turning point’. (Read our response...
----- By Patrick Holford Life is a balancing act between making energy by combusting glucose or ketones with oxygen, which generates ‘oxidant’ exhaust fumes and dealing with these 'oxidant fumes' which harm the body. Skin goes crinkly, age spots develop all due to oxidation. That’s...
Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric promoting the new Alzheimer’s anti-amyloid drug. The results – increased brain shrinkage, a third getting brain bleeding or swelling and questionable clinically meaningful benefit – are not good. However, reading this week’s headlines claiming a...
Incidence and prevalence of AD/dementia WHO – 27,000 dementia diagnosis a day - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dementia Livingston G, Huntley J, Sommerlad A, Ames D, Ballard C, Banerjee S, Brayne C, Burns A, Cohen-Mansfield J, Cooper C, Costafreda SG, Dias A, Fox N,...
Failure of yet another anti-amyloid drug is hailed as ‘the beginning of the end for Alzheimer’s’, according to the Times headline today. It certainly was the end for two, possibly three volunteers given the experimental drug, according to the BBC [1] . Like other anti-amyloid drugs,...
New research shows that the combination of B vitamins and omega-3 are a dynamic duo against dementia, stopping the brain shrinkage that is the hallmark of Alzheimer’s. The discovery, hailed as the “a major step towards Alzheimer’s prevention" was first made at the University of Oxford,...
