Aging Brains Battle Free Radicals
Can Berries Reverse Aging?
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Free Radicals, Antioxidants, and Your Healthy Brain
Brain aging is a sort of concoction of wounds incurred in the healthy brain's long-time battle against unhealthy stuff tossed at it. Anxiety, worry, stress, alcohol, tobacco, couch potato-ism, and less-than-good nutrition are all enemies. One major attacker is oxidative stress. That happens when your brain can't balance its chemistry or defend itself against free radicals made in brain cells. During environmental stress, free radicals can increase dramatically, causing significant damage to cells. Most of the time, cells defend themselves with enzymes and antioxidants like vitamin C. But the trick is to make sure we have enough to combat free radicals. You've heard a lot about free radicals and how diet can provide weapons against them. Fruits and vegetables have powerful antioxidants. Suspecting certain fruits to be strong allies to the brain, scientists turned their attention to berries, particularly blueberries and strawberries.
A Study in Blue...berries
An interesting study by scientists at Tufts University looked at both the berries and at their affect on brain chemistry in rats. During normal aging, the brain undergoes changes resulting in some mental and physical declines.
Those things happen to all of us, to one degree or another, and are more pronounced in older people with ALS, Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease. The Tufts study seems to show that nutritional antioxidants, like those found in blueberries, can reverse the declines -- both physical and mental. In addition, strawberries seem to positively effect an important function called "hippocampal plasticity". The hippocampus is a section of the brain that has to do with memory and thinking processes.
In the lab at Tufts University, they worked with rats and mice. That doesn't always mean guarantee the same in humans but pick up any medical journal, magazine, or newspaper and you'll find reports on studies indicating just about the same thing. Free radicals are bad. Antioxidants are good. You get antioxidants in various foods including fresh fruits and vegetables. By the way, nutritional scientists are beginning to believe that organically grown vegetables and fruits are the best way to go.
The Big Picture
Previous studies relate milk's nutritional value to similar effects and studies are proving conclusively that regular exercise and physical training help regulate these same chemicals. So, the conclusion you can draw on your own, at this point, without much scientific thinking is that you have control of your own health to a large extent. More and more, it's obvious that moderating the way we eat and dedicating a small part of our day to comfortably rigorous physical activity, can not only help us live longer, it might ensure that the quality of life we live is much improved.
What You Can Do for Yourself
- Make sure you get enough fruits and vegetables. Add strawberries and blueberries to a breakfast milkshake (made without ice cream), a lunchtime salad, or dessert at dinner. Try serving a couple tablespoons of ricotta or Marscarpone cheese (you can sweeten with a bit of honey) decorated with fresh, perfect strawberries or blueberries.
- Talk with your doctor about The Mediterranean Diet, The South Beach Diet, or The Dash Diet. There are easy to read books about each of the three plans, and each plan is pretty straightforward, easy to live with long term, and based on fresh wholesome, free-radical foods.
- Take a look at a href=" http://www.cspinet.org/nah/10foods_bad.html" Ten Foods You Should Never Eat and Ten Super Foods for Better Health.
- Considered Dr. Jo Lichten's Healthiest Fast Food for Busy Travelers. This might be a good one to memorize. As you travel, it's really difficult to grab a bite that isn't filled with fat and salt. This doctor's list looks at the most popular fast food restaurants and gives great ideas for beverages and foods.
- Work exercise into your day - find a partner, if you can. Check with your doctor. Make sure you understand your capabilities. Then try plain old activities -- you won't even recognize them as a workout. Take short walks during the day. Get up and take a 10 minute walk before breakfast, one at lunch and one after dinner. Who can't spare 10 minutes? Ride your bike to visit a friend who lives nearby. Dust every piece of furniture in the house, pull weeds for 20 minutes, or wash your car.
Try choosing one of these ideas and making an absolute commitment to yourself to adopt it as a lifestyle. Once you get that one under control, try another one. Changes are made in baby steps. It's never too late.
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