Folate Deficiency Triples Risk Of Alzheimer's

Nutritional scientists used to think the key to a long and healthy life lay in antioxidants, and health conscious people, including me, were taking lots of vitamins C and E. Couldn’t hurt and might help, we thought. Then research showed that people taking more than 400 IU of vitamin E per day had a 10% higher risk of death compared to those who did not! My vitamin E capsules went down the drain that very day, and I felt that the scientists of the world had led me down the primrose path.

Now the future seems to lie, not in plastics, but in folates. And the research seems solid. So solid that my 78-year-old husband’s doctor has him taking supplements of folic acid, the pharmaceutical equivalent of the folates in food.

Remember the Kame Project, in which subjects who drank fruit or vegetable juice more than three times a week cut their risk of Alzheimer’s by a whopping 76%? Well, every year it seems more likely that it’s the folates in those fruits and vegetables that were working those wonders.

In fact, the latest research, as reported on February 5, 2008, in Science Daily, found that folate deficiency is associated with a tripling in the risk of developing dementia among elderly people.

Where Do We Find These Folates?

Folates occur most often in leafy vegetables such as spinach, turnip greens, lettuces, dried beans and peas, and in certain fruits. Here is a chart from the NIH Office Of Dietary Supplements. As you can see, both tomato juice and orange juice are fairly good sources, and I assume those were the main things the Kame Project subjects, the ones who cut their risk of Alzheimer’s by 76%, were drinking on a regular basis.

The one-a-day vitamin capsules that my husband and I take also supply 100% of our daily requirement of folic acid, giving us one more reason we should take those daily vitamins. The vitamin manufacturers obviously keep up with the scientific literature, and I appreciate this more every year.

Here are some earlier posts about the relation between diet and Alzheimer’s:

Live Longer With The Mediterranean Diet

It’s Scary – I’m Forgetting Things

Prevent Alzheimer’s With Good Cholesterol

Prevent Alzheimer’s By Your Diet

Vitamin B12, Key To The Aging Brain

An Oxford University study found that “individuals with lower vitamin B12 levels at the start of the study had a greater decrease in brain volume. Those with the lowest B12 levels had a sixfold greater rate of brain volume loss compared with those who had the highest levels of the vitamin.”

Interestingly, individuals with the greater rate of brain loss were not deficient in B12 – they were merely low in it.

Best Sources of B12

Vitamin B12 is naturally found in foods that come from animals, including fish, meat, poultry, eggs, milk, and milk products. Seafood is an especially good source of B12, as are fortified breakfast cereals. Milk and eggs have quite a bit less than fish and fortified cereals, as you can see on this chart from the National Institutes of Health.

Vegetarians – and especially vegans, who do not use milk or eggs – should strongly consider a dietary supplement. And older people who don’t “bother” with proper meals need either a dietary supplement or a special effort to eat foods rich in B12 – especially since brain volume loss can result merely from low levels in B12.

Belly Fat Is Linked To Alzheimer's

Unfortunately, the location of our fat counts. Researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research found that the bigger the belly in midlife, the more difficult it is to avoid dementia and Alzheimer’s later on. And you don’t even need to overeat much to have problems because, if you’re naturally apple shaped, with most fat around your waist, excess weight is more dangerous to your health than if you’re naturally pear shaped. The researchers found, in fact, that people who were in the upper 20 percent of belly size had a 2.72 times greater risk of dementia, compared to people in the bottom 20 percent.

(Speaking as a naturally apple shaped lady, I can add that apple shaped people also have a difficult time finding jeans that fit. They all pooch out at the hips for those apparently lucky and hippy pear-shaped people.)

Belly fat also increases the risk of diabetes, heart trouble, and stroke.

We all know we should keep down our weight. But, sadly, keeping down weight is even more important for apple-shaped people than it is for pear-shaped people.

Let me add that, if you’re looking for healthy ways to take off weight and keep it off, do visit my 1000 Best Sites For Families And Seniors. Click on Diets, Nutrition in the lefthand column to find some of the best information on the Web.

Improve Your Memory With Blueberries

I’m leery of “miracle” foods, but the benefits of blueberries have been demonstrated by solid research. The first piece of research, sponsored by the USDA, came out in 1999, and it showed that blueberries helped the memories, balance, and coordination of “aging rats.” I feel a kinship with aging rats, and on the strength of their success made frozen blueberries a snack food. (Why frozen? I was trying to lose weight, and, if you dole out the frozen blueberries in extremely small portions, then wait for them to thaw, then slowly eat them, and then wait awhile longer, then go back to the refrigerator and spoon out another tiny frozen portion and wait for it to thaw . . . you see how the technique works.)

A new British scientific study using blueberries on human subjects came out in April, 2008. It found that “phytochemical-rich foods, such as blueberries, are effective at reversing age-related deficits in memory.” The wording implied that there are a number of “phytochemical-rich foods” that would improve memory. But which foods are they?

More Foods That Improve Memory

The USDA study on rats found that extracts of blueberry, strawberry or spinach all improved short-term memory, but only blueberries improved balance and coordination as well. The British researchers, however, used only blueberries -- one-half cup daily for 12 weeks -- with their human subjects, and found that “improvements in spatial working memory tasks emerged within three weeks and continued throughout the period of the study.”

As it turns out, these researchers have big plans for trying other foods rich in flavonoids on people with cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s. But they haven’t got to it yet. So they can’t really say whether strawberries or spinach or any number of other foods might be equally beneficial to older people with and without Alzheimer’s.

What Exactly Are These Phytochemical-Rich Foods?

I went to ANSWERS.COM, which has many specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias. ANSWERS.COM says that a phytochemical is “a member of a wide range of chemicals found in fruits and vegetables that may have beneficial effects on human health. Phytochemicals are biologically very active. They include antioxidants, phyto-oestrogens, and compounds that modify potential toxins and carcinogens.”

And WIKIPEDIA.ORG says that “foods high in phytonutrients, or superfoods, are:

“- soy – protease inhibitors, beta sitosterol, saponins, phytic acid, isoflavones
- tomato – lycopene, beta carotene, vitamin C
- broccoli – vitamin C, 3,3'-Diindolylmethane, sulphoraphane, lignans, selenium
- garlic – thiosulphonates, limonene, quercitin
- flax seeds and oil seeds – lignans
- citrus fruits – monoterpenes, coumarin, cryptoxanthin, vitamin C, ferulic acid, oxalic acid
- blueberries – tannic acid, lignans, anthocyanins
- sweet potatoes – beta carotene
- chilli peppers – capsaicin
- legumes: beans, peas, lentils – omega fatty acids, saponins, catechins, quercetin, lutein, lignans.”

The truth is that scientists have only begun to study the phytochemical-rich “superfoods.” They don’t even know what all the superfoods are, much less what they can do. We can therefore look forward to many more important discoveries about the role of superfoods in our diet.

Live Longer With The Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet isn’t a fad weight-loss diet. It’s what millions of people have been eating for thousands of years. It’s true that you can lose weight on this diet. You can also gain weight on it, if you, say, fling about the olive oil, binge on pasta, and finish up with a few pieces of baklava. But, on the average, people eating the Mediterranean diet live longer and live healthier than most others. I'm sure they live longer and healthier than those eating a fast-food American diet with lots of munchies. And people eating the Mediterranean diet are less likely to get Alzheimer’s.

Learn more about living longer with the Mediterranean diet from my TOUR THE SITES website. Scroll down its left margin to Diets, Nutrition. You’ll find there much information on healthy eating – including, of course, the Mediterranean diet.

Alzheimer’s And The Mediterranean Diet

In 2006 researchers reported on a study of 2,258 older adults in New York. They scored the food intake of the participants from 0-9, depending on how near they came to the Mediterranean diet. The higher the score, the nearer to the Mediterranean diet.

Compared with those with the lowest scores, those with middle scores were 15 percent less likely to have Alzheimer's disease, and those with the highest scores were 40 percent less likely to have Alzheimer's disease.

In 2008 researchers in Italy reported on pooled data from 12 international studies on the Mediterranean diet. They found that those who closely followed the Mediterranean diet were

– 9 percent less likely to die from heart disease or other cardiovascular problems;

– 6 percent less likely to develop cancer or die from it;

– 13 percent less likely to have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease.

For Those Who Already Have Alzheimer’s

The Mediterranean diet helps here too. In 2007 researchers reported on a study that followed 192 people with Alzheimer’s disease in New York for an average of four and a half years. “Alzheimer's patients who adhered to the diet to a moderate degree lived an average 1.3 years longer than those people who least adhered to the diet. And those Alzheimer's patients who followed the diet very religiously lived an average four years longer,” said study author Nikos Scarmeas, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

What Exactly Is The Mediterranean Diet?

According to WEB MD: the Mediterranean diet includes high intake of certain foods:

– Fruits including apples, oranges, orange or grapefruit juice, peaches, apricots, plums, and bananas;

– Vegetables including tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, raw or cooked carrots, corn, yams, spinach, collard greens, and yellow squash;

– Legumes including peas, lima beans, lentils, and beans;

– Cereals including cold breakfast cereals, white or dark bread, rice, pasta, and potatoes (baked, broiled, or mashed);

– Olive oil and other oils with monounsaturated fatty acids.

The Mediterranean diet also includes moderate amounts of fish of all types, low intake of meat and poultry, low to moderate amounts of dairy products, and a moderate amount of alcohol (usually wine served at meals).


Some versions of the Mediterranean diet add moderate amounts of lean chicken in addition to the fish – an easier version for many to follow.

Prevent Alzheimer's With "Good" Cholesterol

We hear so much about the “bad” kind that we forget the good – that is, the HDL – cholesterol. Yet, in a study summarized in MED HEADLINES, researchers found “that a high level of HDL lowers the risk of heart attack, aids numerous biological processes, removes excess cholesterol from the bloodstream, helps nerve cells develop, and controls the production of beta-amyloid. Alzheimer’s disease patients have a build-up . . . of beta-amyloid.”

We find more evidence that good cholesterol staves off memory loss and dementia in the British Whitehall II study segment in which 3,673 British civil servants were analyzed regarding the effect of HDL on memory function as they got older. A key finding: At 55 years of age, participants with low levels of HDL were at 53% higher risk of impaired memory than those with high levels of HDL.

What Foods Are Rich in Good Cholesterol?

"Bad" cholesterol hangs out in popular foods like fatty meat and cheese. Good cholesterol is plentiful in olive and other vegetable oils, avocados, and nuts. (And, yes, the healthful qualities of the newly popular Mediterranean Diet have quite a bit to do with the good cholesterol in it.)

WEIGHT WATCHERS advocated a low-fat diet for years – until this information about good cholesterol came out. Now they advocate small amounts of olive oil, avocado, or nuts as part of a reducing diet. And, you know, when my husband and I tried that, we found that the little bit of oil left us feeling much more satisfied for much longer and kept us on our diet.

This excellent article by the MAYO CLINIC expands the good-cholesterol list with oatmeal and fish.

Healthy Recipes With Good Cholesterol

When I tried to find some healthy recipes for the kind of fish that is rich in omega-3s, even Google failed me. I kept hitting one earnest explanation of omega-3s after another, but no recipes . . . until I found MARTHA STEWART. She has some delicious ones.

I had no such problem with avocados. Avocado recipes abound, and here is the largest selection of good avocado recipes I found, at AVOCADO.ORG, of course.

It's Scary -- I'm Forgetting Things

When your information highway turns into an overgrown bicycle path, IT’S SCARY. I know, I’ve been there. I kept complaining to my doctor about my memory. I asked her if I should take ginkgo to help it, but she thought that would have a bad effect on my blood pressure. And scientific research has since given the final word: ginkgo biloba does NOT prevent Alzheimer’s.
And an earlier scientific study indicated that ginkgo fails to help people’s memory, period.

Omega-3s Do Help Prevent Alzheimer’s

My doctor did recommend that I take omega-3 fatty acids, which are in fish oil and flax seed oil. And recent research has confirmed that there is an anti-Alzheimer’s mechanism in fish oil. My husband and I are not that fond of fish, and we have been taking the fish oil capsules instead. They’re cheaper than fish too.

Watch Your Wallet!

Watch your wallet when it comes to the fad of putting omega-3s into all sorts of products. I saw an ad for Kellog’s Live Bright™ Health Bars, with omega-3 fatty acids, which bars cost more than $4 each from Amazon, probably still more if you go to a “brain games” house party. The bars contain only 100 mg. of omega-3s. One inexpensive fish oil capsule has 1,000 mg. Three ounces of canned salmon has 1,200. These health bars do have the advantage of dark chocolate, which is not only good for you but tastes extremely delicious. And, hey, if you don’t mind the cost, get a bunch. But do read the article in USA Today first.

Prevent Alzheimer's By Your Diet

An astonishing study from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine showed that subjects who drank fruit and vegetable juice three or more times per week cut their risk of Alzheimer’s by a whopping 76 percent, compared to those who drank juices less than once per week. Which research results suddenly made the simple act of drinking fruit or vegetable juice appear to be one of the best ways to avoid Alzheimer’s!

For the study, part of the Kame Project, the researchers identified 1,836 dementia-free subjects in the Seattle population, and collected information on their dietary consumption of fruit and vegetable juices. They then assessed cognitive function every two years for up to 10 years, coming up with the surprising results described above.

These particular Kame Project results, which were reported in 2006, sent researchers in new directions. They have resulted in further important discoveries about Alzheimer’s prevention – which discoveries will be covered in later posts.