More News from the World of Research

I continue to keep an eye out for interesting developments in the world of Alzheimer’s research.  A few have recently popped up for me. So here are some of them: 

1. SHIELD – A new acronym. You may be familiar with the mnemonic for recognizing stroke: FAST – face, arm, speech, time. So now there’s a new one for Alzheimer’s: SHIELD – sleep, head injury prevention, exercise, learning, and diet. Paying attention to these will reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s and at least slow it down if you do develop it. This mnemonic was developed by neuroscientist Rudolph Tanzi, co-director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. You can read more here. 

2. Your brain needs sleep. And speaking of sleep, we’ve had a lot to say about it and its relationship to Alzheimer’s disease. Now, there’s new evidence regarding how sleep works to protect the brain. It’s known that human growth hormone, or somatotropin, is released in the body while we sleep. It stimulates growth, cell reproduction, and cell regeneration, notably in the brain. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley concluded that sleep and growth hormone form a tightly balanced system with feedback loops. Neuroscientist Daniel Silverman is quoted as saying, "Sleep drives growth hormone release, and growth hormone feeds back to regulate wakefulness, and this balance is essential for growth, repair, and metabolic health." You can read more here. 

3. More on sleep and your brain. And still speaking of sleep, a study at the Mayo clinic found that chronic insomnia may be just as influential on the development of dementia as being a carrier of the APOE4 gene. This was found by following 2,750 people over the age of 70 for five and a half years. The study participants took annual cognitive tests and had brain scans. Researchers tracked the development of amyloid plaques and “white-matter hyperintensities.” The white-matter hyperintensities were damage to parts of the brain involved in communication within the brain. One thought is that these two factors might magnify each other. Here’s a link to the published research. You can read a more easily understood article here. 

4. Cocoa and multivitamin supplements may – or may not – delay cognitive decline. New research provides evidence that cocoa and multivitamin supplement consumption may reduce the progression of cognitive decline and help protect against cardiovascular disease. For brain health, the results were more compelling for multivitamins than the cocoa supplements. Called the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), it was conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital – an affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Boston – and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle (where my wife was treated for cancer a number of years ago). Wake Forest University also participated. The study involved 12,666 women aged 65 or older and 8,776 men aged 60 or older. They were followed for an average of 3.6 years through the end of 2020. At least with regard to the multivitamins, daily multivitamin slowed cognitive aging by approximately 60%, or the equivalent of 1.8 years over the 3 years of the study.  It was harder to find a positive effect from the cocoa for brain health.  However, the study suggested a 27% reduction in cardiovascular death and greater cardiovascular benefits among those taking the cocoa supplements regularly. Here’s a link to the research. Here’s a link to an article on the study. 

5. Are all ultra-processed foods (UPFs) bad? Perhaps not. While ultra-processed foods (e.g., frozen dinners, chips, soft drinks, and packaged snacks) are clearly inferior nutritionally to fresh fruits and vegetables, applying the same negative label to them all may be a mistake. According to some researchers from the UK, the label UPF is a blunt instrument that excludes some foods that may actually be good for you.  Since UPFS taste good and encourage eating (or overeating), they may be beneficial to older people who tend to lose weight, sometimes dangerously. And whole grain breakfast cereals would qualify as UPFs while being quite nutritious. Here’s an article on this. Here’s a link to the research. (This is all well and good, but I’m sticking with the MIND diet.)

M116 RIP, 1907-2024

Maria Branyas Morera, known to the world of science as Subject M116, died on August 19, 2024 at the age of 117.  Not surprisingly, she has been the subject of considerable interest and investigation.  Of course, everyone wants to live to 117 (don't they?), and so we want to know what her secret was.  The most notable evaluation of her story was published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine,  What were the takeaways?  Well, two were that she stayed away from toxic people, and she ate a lot of yogurt.  Apparently, a lot of yogurt.  (Yogurt is, of course, good for the gut microbiome.  And what's good for the gut is good for the brain.)  The researchers said that they "performed a high-throughput multiomics study of the world’s oldest living person, interrogating her genome, transcriptome, metabolome, proteome, microbiome, and epigenome, comparing the results with larger matched cohorts."  (Take that, you skeptics.) 

Maria was actually born in the United States to Spanish parents, but her family returned to Spain when she was 8, where she grew up and lived out her life.  Today, we think of Spain as a peaceful place, but it would have been racked by civil war, two world wars, the Spanish Flu, and then a terribly repressive government during the first half of her life.  (Remember for whom the bell tolls ... it tolls for thee.  (Apologies to Ernest Hemingway and John Donne.))

Not surprisingly, the findings of the Cell Reports study focused on both genetics and lifestyle.  She allowed doctors to collect samples of her blood, saliva, urine, and stool and these were studied.  These provided insights on aspects of her health, notably the health of her gut microbiome.  

The researchers observed that she had genetics that favored a long life.  Her lifestyle was what you would expect -- she was socially active (but not with toxic people), she didn't smoke, she didn't drink, and she got regular exercise.  (Although I'm not sure how many jumping jacks she was doing at 116.)  Regarding her diet, the researchers pointed out that she ate a lot of yogurt.  They thought that the yogurt reduced inflammation, which helped extend her life.  

In Catalonia, where her family originated and where she lived, the life expectancy for women is 86 years.  So she sure beat that.

One thing that surprised researchers was the very short length of her telomeres.  Telomeres are regions on the ends of chromosomes that shorten as you age.  They protect the chromosomes, but they shorten as you age and may be associated with lifespan.  Some research has gone into the hope that by preventing the telomeres from shortening, the folks that want to live to 117 and beyond can extend their lives.  This finding suggests that is a false hope.

I'm not sure what all of this means for the folks that want to live to 117.  In 2016, I was told I could expect to live to 85, although the way I feel today, I might go beyond that.  That's good enough for me.