Mental Health

19 natural remedies for anxiety

You’re anxious, worried, freaked. You’re upset about (pick one): money, health, work, family, love. Your heart is beating fast, your breathing is shallow and rapid, your mind is imagining doom, and you wish you could just relax…now! Whether you have a full-blown anxiety disorder or are just freaking out, you may not want to try medication—at least not yet.

There are many safe nondrug remedies for anxiety, from mind-body techniques to supplements to calming teas. Some start working right away, while others may help lessen anxiety over time.

Chamomile

If you have a jittery moment, a cuppa chamomile tea might help calm you down. Some compounds in chamomile (Matricaria recutita) bind to the same brain receptors as drugs like Valium.

You can also take it as a supplement, typically standardized to contain 1.2 percent apigenin (an active ingredient), along with dried chamomile flowers. In one study at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, in Philadelphia, patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) who took chamomile supplements for eight weeks had a significant decrease in anxiety symptoms compared to patients taking placebo.

L-theanine (or green tea)

They say Japanese Buddhist monks could meditate for hours, both alert and relaxed. One reason may have been an amino acid in their green tea called L-theanine, says Mark Blumenthal, of the American Botanical Council.

Research shows that L-theanine helps curb a rising heart rate and blood pressure, and a few small human studies have found that it reduces anxiety. In one study, anxiety-prone subjects were calmer and more focused during a test if they took 200 milligrams of L-theanine beforehand.

You can get that much L-theanine from green tea, but you’ll have to drink many cups—as few as five, as many as 20.

Hops

Yes, it’s in beer, but you won’t get the tranquilizing benefits of the bitter herb hops (Humulus lupulus) from a brew. The sedative compound in hops is a volatile oil, so you get it in extracts and tinctures—and as aromatherapy in hops pillows.

“It’s very bitter, so you don’t see it in tea much, unless combined with chamomile or mint,” says Blumenthal. Hops is often used as a sedative, to promote sleep, often with another herb, valerian. Note: Don’t take sedative herbs if you are taking a prescription tranquilizer or sedative, and let your doctor know any supplements you are taking.

Valerian

Some herbal supplements reduce anxiety without making you sleepy (such as L-theanine), while others are sedatives. Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) is squarely in the second category. It is a sleep aid, for insomnia. It contains sedative compounds; the German government has approved it as a treatment for sleep problems.

Valerian smells kind of nasty, so most people take it as a capsule or tincture, rather than a tea. If you want to try it, take it in the evening—not before you go to work! Valerian is often combined with other sedative herbs such as hops, chamomile, and lemon balm.

Lemon balm

Named after the Greek word for “honey bee,” lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), has been used at least since the Middle Ages to reduce stress and anxiety, and help with sleep. In one study of healthy volunteers, those who took standardized lemon balm extracts (600 mg) were more calm and alert than those who took a placebo.

While it’s generally safe, be aware that some studies have found that taking too much can actually make you more anxious. So follow directions and start with the smallest dose. Lemon balm is sold as a tea, capsule, and tincture. It’s often combined with other calming herbs such as hops, chamomile, and valerian.

Exercise

Exercise is safe, good for the brain, and a powerful antidote to depression and anxiety, both immediately and in the long term. “If you exercise on a regular basis, you’ll have more self-esteem and feel healthier,” says Dr. Drew Ramsey, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University.

“One of the major causes of anxiety is worrying about illness and health, and that dissipates when you are fit.”

The 21-minute cure

Twenty-one minutes: That’s about how long it takes for exercise to reliably reduce anxiety, studies show, give or take a minute. “If you’re really anxious and you hop on a treadmill, you will feel more calm after the workout,” Ramsey says.

“I generally ask my patients to spend 20 to 30 minutes in an activity that gets their heart rate up, whether it’s a treadmill or elliptical or stair stepping—anything you like. If you rowed in college, get back to rowing. If you don’t exercise, start taking brisk walks.”

Passionflower

In spite of the name, this herb won’t help you in love. It’s a sedative; the German government has approved it for nervous restlessness. Some studies find that it can reduce symptoms of anxiety as effectively as prescription drugs. It’s often used for insomnia.

Like other sedatives, it can cause sleepiness and drowsiness, so don’t take it—or valerian, hops, kava, lemon balm, or other sedative herbs—when you are also taking a prescription sedative.

Be careful about using more than one sedative herb at a time, and don’t take passionflower for longer than one month at a time.

Lavender

The intoxicating (but safe) aroma of lavender (Lavandula hybrida) may be an “emotional” anti-inflammatory. In one study, Greek dental patients were less anxious if the waiting room was scented with lavender oil. In a Florida study, students who inhaled lavender oil scent before an exam has less anxiety—although some students said it made their minds “fuzzy” during the test.

In one German study, a specially formulated lavender pill (not available in the U.S.) was shown to reduce anxiety symptoms in people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as effectively as lorazepam (brand name: Ativan), an anti-anxiety medication in the same class as Valium.

Hold your breath!

Ok, let it out now. We’re not recommending that you turn blue, but yoga breathing has been shown to be effective in lowering stress and anxiety. In his bestselling 2011 book Spontaneous Happiness, Dr. Andrew Weil introduced a classic yoga breathing technique he calls the 4-7-8 breath.

One reason it works is that you can’t breathe deeply and be anxious at the same time. To do the 4-7-8 breath, exhale completely through your mouth, then inhale through your nose for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven. Now let it out slowly through your mouth for a count of eight. Repeat at least twice a day.

Eat something, quick

“Almost universally, people get more anxious and irritable when they are hungry,” says Ramsey, coauthor of The Happiness Diet. “When you get an anxiety attack, it may mean your blood sugar is dropping. The best thing to do is to have a quick sustaining snack, like a handful of walnuts, or a piece of dark chocolate, along with a glass of water or a nice cup of hot tea.”

In the long term, diet is key to reducing anxiety, says Ramsey. His advice: Eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet with carefully selected meat and seafood, plenty of leafy greens (such as kale) to get folate, and a wide variety of phytonutrients to help reduce anxiety.

Eat breakfast

Stop starving yourself, advises Ramsey. “Many people with anxiety disorders skip breakfast. I recommend that people eat things like eggs, which are a satiating and filling protein, and are nature’s top source of choline. Low levels of choline are associated with increased anxiety.”

Eat omega-3s

You know fish oils are good for the heart, and perhaps they protect against depression. Add anxiety to the list. In one study, students who took 2.5 milligrams a day of mixed omega-3 fatty acids for 12 weeks had less anxiety before an exam than students taking placebo.

Experts generally recommend that you get your omega-3s from food whenever possible. Oily, cold-water fishes like salmon are the best sources of the fatty acids; a six-ounce piece of grilled wild salmon contains about 3.75 grams.

Stop catastrophizing

When you’re attacked by anxiety, it’s easy to get into a mind set known as “catastrophic thinking” or “catastrophizing.” Your mind goes to the bad terrible really horrible just unbearable things and what if they really do happen? “You think, ‘This could really ruin my life,'” says Ramsey.

Instead, take a few deep breaths, walk around the block, and consider the real probability that this problem will really spin out into catastrophe. How likely is it that you’ll lose your job, never talk to your sister again, go bankrupt?

Chances are a catastrophic outcome is a lot less likely than you think when you’re consumed with anxiety. “Very few events really change the trajectory of your life,” says Ramsey.

Get hot

Ever wonder why you feel so relaxed after a spell in the sauna or a steam room? Heating up your body reduces muscle tension and anxiety, research finds. Sensations of warmth may alter neural circuits that control mood, including those that affect the neurotransmitter serotonin. Warming up may be one of the ways that exercise—not to mention curling up by a fire with a cozy cup of tea—boosts mood.

As one group of researchers put it, “Whether lying on the beach in the midday sun on a Caribbean island, grabbing a few minutes in the sauna or spa after work, or sitting in a hot bath or Jacuzzi in the evening, we often associate feeling warm with a sense of relaxation and well-being.”

Take a ‘forest bath’

The Japanese call it Shinrin-yoku, literally “forest bath.” You and I know it as a walk in the woods. Japanese researchers measured body changes in people who walked for about 20 minutes in a beautiful forest, with the woodsy smells and the sounds of a running stream.

The forest bathers had lower stress hormone levels after their walk than they did after a comparable walk in an urban area.

Learn mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness meditation, originally a Buddhist practice but now a mainstream therapy, is particularly effective in treating anxiety, says Teresa M. Edenfield, a clinical psychologist in the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Durham, N.C., who often uses it to treat anxiety patients. “The act of practicing mindful awareness allows one to experience the true essence of each moment as it really occurs, rather than what is expected or feared,” she says.

How to begin? You can start by simply “paying attention to the present moment, intentionally, with curiosity, and with an effort to attend non-judgmentally,” Edenfield says.

Breath and question

To stay mindful, ask yourself simple questions while practicing breathing exercises, Edenfield suggests. “Sit in a comfortable place, close your eyes, and focus on how your breath feels coming in and out of your body. Now ask yourself silent questions while focusing on the breath.”

What is the temperature of the air as it enters your nose? How does your breath feel different as it leaves your body? How does the air feel as it fills your lungs?

Give yourself credit

Are you having anxious thoughts? Congratulations. You’re aware of your emotional state, and that awareness is the first step in reducing anxiety, says Edenfield.

“Remember to give yourself credit for being aware that you are having anxious thoughts, and probably body changes. This is truly a skill of mindfulness that must be learned, and is essential in making the next steps of intervening through strategies such as positive self-talk, cognitive reframing, or the use of mindfulness or relaxation strategies.”

Source: Fox News

 

Kids of less-educated moms may have noisier brains

A mother’s level of education has strong implications for a child’s development. Northwestern University researchers show in a new study that low maternal education is linked to a noisier nervous system in children, which could affect their learning.

 “You really can think of it as static on your radio that then will get in the way of hearing the announcer’s voice,” says Nina Kraus, senior author of the study and researcher at the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, is part of a larger initiative working with children in public high schools in inner-city Chicago. The adolescents are tracked from ninth to 12th grade. An additional group of children in the gang-reduction zones of Los Angeles are also being tracked.

Kraus and colleagues are more broadly looking at how music experience, through classroom group-based musical experience, could offset certain negative effects of poverty.  But first, they wanted to see what biological effects poverty may have on the adolescents’ brain. In this particular study, 66 children – a small sample – in Chicago participated.

Those whose mothers had a “lower education” tended to have not graduated from high school. Kraus’s study did not directly track income of families, but most children in the study qualified for free lunch (to be eligible, a family of four must have income of about $29,000 or less).

Researchers found “children from lower-SES (socioeconomic status) backgrounds are exposed to less complex and linguistically rich input in addition to hearing fewer words per hour from their caregivers,” according to the study.

The new study shows that in a group of adolescents from inner-city Chicago, the nervous system is different, depending on an individual’s mother’s level of education– both in the absence of stimulation, and when the brain is stimulated by sound. The same children who showed more “noise” in the nervous system performed worse on standardized tests of memory and reading. Researchers used scalp electrodes to measure the ongoing electrical activity in kids’ brains.

Among children of less-educated mothers, study authors found more noise in the absence of sound, compared to those with mothers who had more education.  Additionally, the nervous system’s response to sound was less strong and less precise among children of less-educated mothers.

“You have this double whammy, if you will, of having a poorer signal coming through, and heightened background neural activity,” Kraus said. “That’s a signal-to-noise disaster.”

Kraus and colleagues also found that when children of lower-educated mother hear the same sound repeatedly, nervous system responses tended to vary, whereas those of more highly-educated mothers responded the same way each time.

“If the nervous system responds inconsistently to the same sound, how is a kid to learn what the sound means, because he’s getting this jittered input?” Kraus said.

Researchers saw that the sound waves and brain waves physically resemble each other, so they could see what components of the sounds a child’s brain is processing, or not. “The implications are very important once, vis-a-vis education. It just reinforces the idea that education is important, not just for you but for your children,” Kraus said.

You might be asking yourself: Is nature or nurture to blame? “It’s difficult to know where the deprivation starts,” Kraus said. “The data here point to environmental causes.”

Although this study did not measure other lifestyle factors directly, low maternal education is associated with poorer nutrition, less availability of books in the home, less exercise and less encouragement of children do their homework, Kraus said. All of these deficiencies could play a role in the development of a child’s nervous system.

Previous research has also indicated that a mother’s education matters in terms of a child’s auditory development and auditory language enrichment, which is necessary for language skills to develop. A study by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley found that by the time a child from a family on welfare is 3 years old, he or she will have heard 30 million fewer words than if the parents are professionals. By the fourth year, an average child in a professional family would have accumulated experience with almost 45 million words, compared to an average child in a welfare family (13 million words).

Welfare children tend to also hear far more discouraging language than those whose parents are professionals, the research showed. When young children aren’t being exposed to a wealth of words, and the language they do hear is more negative than what their peers hear, their development can be noticeably different.

The researchers are interested to see what effect music education has on these children and the others in their study. Their hypothesis is that music will help, especially with strengthening language skills.

“In the same way as getting linguistic stimulation is a form of enrichment, because you are making sound-to-meaning connections all the time, and you are strengthening circuits in the nervous system that are important for language, music also strengthens many of these same circuits,” Kraus said.

A second study released this week in JAMA Pediatrics shows poverty also affects the hippocampus and amygdala parts of children’s brains.

Source: CNN health

Speaking a second language delays dementias, even in the illiterate

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There’s more evidence that speaking a second language can delay the onset of dementia later in life — this time in a population where even illiterate people reaped the benefits of being bilingual.

Conducted in Hyderabad, India, the largest study of its kind so far found that speaking two languages slowed the start of three types of dementia — including Alzheimer’s disease — by an average of 4.5 years.

“Being bilingual is a particularly efficient and effective type of mental training,” said Dr. Thomas H. Bak, a researcher at The University of Edinburgh and a co-author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Neurology. “In a way, I have to selectively activate one language and deactivate the other language. This switching really requires attention.”

That kind of attention keeps the brain nimble and may ward off not only Alzheimer’s disease, but other cognitive conditions such as frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia, the new study found.

Bak is part of the team led by Dr. Suvarna Alladi, a professor of neurology at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad. The researchers examined case records of 648 patients with dementia who entered a memory clinic at a Hyderabad university hospital between June 2006 and October 2012.

Slightly more than half of the patients, some 391, spoke more than one language in a place where many people grow up learning three or more languages, including Telugu and Dakkhini along with English and Hindi.

Previous studies have focused on the impact of bilingualism on dementia mostly in immigrants in Canada, which may have influenced the results, Bak said.

“It really brought up the question, is it the bilingualism or is it is being an immigrant?” he said. “They have very different lifestyles, very different diets, which can affect the outcome.”

Still, those studies also found that speaking more than one language delayed dementia by the same span of time, four to five years.

The Indian patients offered a chance to examine the issue in a society where many people are naturally multilingual and shift easily among different languages in different social settings.

“If I live in Hyderabad, I am practically always switching,” said Bak. “There will not be a day when I don’t have a chance to practice.”

The researchers found that patients who spoke a single language developed the first symptoms of dementia at age 61, versus age 65 ½ in those who were bilingual. The delay was slightly more than three years for Alzheimer’s disease, but about six years for frontotemporal dementia and about 3.7 years for vascular dementia.

In people who couldn’t read, the delay of dementia was about six years later in those who were bilingual versus those who spoke only one language — evidence that education isn’t the key in postponing problems, the researchers said.

The effect of bilingualism on dementia onset was independent of other factors including education, gender, occupation and whether patients lived in urban or rural areas, the authors said.

Speaking more than two languages didn’t appear to increase the effect, a result that surprised researchers, Bak said. Other studies have found that the more languages spoken, the greater the protection against dementia.

An outside expert who documented the first physical effects of the delay of dementia in people who speak more than one language praised the new study.

“Being able to show that immigrant status was not a factor answers one remaining question, said Dr. Tom Schweizer, a neuroscientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Canada, who found in 2011 that bilingual people have twice as much brain damage as those who speak one language before they show signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

“The fact that the illiterate subjects were also showing this strong effect was also novel,” he added.

It’s still not clear exactly how language acquisition triggers protection against dementia, or whether another kind of intense brain activity such as learning an instrument or doing puzzles could mimic the effect, Schweizer said.

Going forward, conducting dementia research in other non-Western cultures will be key to understanding the effect of bilingualism on dementia, the authors of the new study said.

“For me, the most important message is that you cannot do all the studies in the same place,”Bak said. “In completely different contexts, in complete different populations, we found the same effect

Source: inagist.com

Blame your genes for your aging brain

Senior author John Blangero, Ph.D., a Texas Biomed geneticist, said that identification of genes associated with brain aging should improve our understanding of the biological processes that govern normal age-related decline.

In large pedigrees including 1,129 people aged 18 to 83, the scientists documented profound aging effects from young adulthood to old age, on neurocognitive ability and brain white matter measures. White matter actively affects how the brain learns and functions.

Genetic material shared amongst biological relatives appears to predict the observed changes in brain function with age.

Blangero said that the use of large human pedigrees provides a powerful resource for measuring how genetic factors change with age.

By applying a sophisticated analysis, the scientists demonstrated a heritable basis for neurocognitive deterioration with age that could be attributed to genetic factors. Similarly, decreasing white matter integrity with age was influenced by genes.

The investigators further demonstrated that different sets of genes are responsible for these two biological aging processes

Source: Newstrackindia

Number of patients declared ‘brain dead’ decreasing

A new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that the number of patients being declared “brain dead” has decreased over the past 10 years, but this has serious implications for organ donations and transplants.

 The researchers from Canada say they believe their findings may be a result of better injury prevention and improved care. But since the majority of organ donations rely on those who suffer from neurological death, this could lead to increased donor shortage.

To reach their findings, the team conducted a prospective cohort study involving 2,788 patients from Alberta, who were admitted to regional intensive care units as a result of various brain injuries over a 10.5-year period.

 Significant decrease in neurological death

Results of the analysis revealed that the number of neurological deaths as a result of brain injuries decreased over the study period.

The percentage of patients who progressed to neurological death stood at 8.1% in 2002 and 9.6% in 2004, but it reduced to 2.2% in 2010. Patients suffering from traumatic brain injury saw the biggest decrease in neurological death.

The study authors suggest that correlating reductions in traffic collisions and increases in improved care may have had an impact on the reduction of the number of patients suffering neurological death.

Data from Alberta Transportation revealed that the number of traffic-related deaths had reduced by 24%, from 404 deaths in 2006 to 307 deaths in 2010.

The number of nonfatal road collisions also reduced from 18,831 in 2006 to 13,552 in 2010.

Furthermore, the researchers say that clinical care of patients with brain injury has also improved in Canada over the last decade. They note there has also been an increase of specialists in neurocritical care, as well as improvements in surgery that can help reduce brain swelling.

 The study authors say:

“We found that the proportion of patients with brain injury who progressed to neurologic death decreased during the study period, particularly among those with traumatic brain injury.

The reasons for our findings cannot be determined with certainty from these data, but the change may reflect positive societal and health care system developments in injury prevention and care.”

 ‘Negative implications’ for organ donations and transplants

The researchers say although it is positive news that the number of people suffering neurological death has reduced, these findings have negative implications for the number of organ donations and transplants.

According to the researchers, organ donations after neurological death account for around 50% of all kidney transplants, 75% of liver transplants, 90% of lung and pancreas transplants, and all heart and small bowel transplants.

But if neurological deaths decrease, this means fewer organ donations and longer transplant waiting lists. The researchers say their findings may explain Canada’s current shortage of organ donations.

According to the Canadian Society of Transplantation, more than 4,000 Canadians are currently on the waiting list for an organ transplant, and last year there were only 1,800 transplants performed.

“Our results likely help explain the relatively stagnant or even declining rates of deceased organ donation in some Canadian jurisdictions,” the researchers say.

“However, the rates of donation after neurologic death in Canada are unlikely to rise in the future. Thus, if organ transplantation rates are to increase, it will need to occur through alternative approaches, such as living donation, donation after cardiocirculatory death and innovations aimed at improving the use of donated organs.”

Source:

Increased iron in brain ‘may be marker for MS’

Diagnosing multiple sclerosis is not a simple process. It is often a question of ruling out other possibilities for the symptoms a patient is suffering and can be time-consuming. But researchers from The University of Western Ontario, Canada, may have found a way of speeding things up.

Iron deposits in the brain are a common feature of multiple sclerosis (MS), but it is not known if these are a cause or effect of the disease. Ravi Menon, PhD, from the Robarts Research Institute claims a new study brings us closer to finding the answer.

The research, published in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders, found iron deposits in deep gray matter in patients’ brains, suggesting the accumulation begins at a very early stage in the disease.

Worrying time for patients

As the National Multiple Sclerosis Society notes, the onset of MS can be a distressing time for patients. The range of symptoms is applicable to many diseases, which makes it a worrying time, and attacks may be separated by lengthy time intervals.

According to the Society, to reach a diagnosis of MS, doctors must:

  • Find at least two areas of damage in the central nervous system, which includes the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves
  • Find evidence that the damage occurred at least 1 month apart, and
  • Rule out all other possible causes.

This means that diagnosis is seldom possible after the first attack – these patients are referred to as having clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) – although the study notes that at least half of CIS patients will go on to develop MS.

Menon and his colleague, PhD candidate Matthew Quinn, used 3-Telsa Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans to look for iron deposits in the brains of 22 CIS patients, using 16 age and gender matched people as controls.

 

The results show that iron deposits among the CIS group were significantly higher than those of the control group. They also showed subtle damage to the brain’s white matter in the CIS group, even at this early stage.

And the researchers were able to rule out the connection between vein diameter and iron deposits.

Menon continues:

“So while the iron in the brain correlates with the disability of the subjects, the iron in the brain does not correlate with the actual diameter of the jugular veins. So the Zamboni hypothesis is incorrect as far as the iron being related to some kind of obstruction.”

By continuing to study the CIS patients every 4 months for the next 2 years, the researchers hope that this imaging technique will lead to an earlier diagnosis for MS patients.

Menon concludes:

“We’re looking at a couple of different approaches to diagnostics using this imaging research.  In suspected MS cases – the very first time they appear in clinic, if they have an abnormally high amount of iron in the frontal cortex of the brain – that’s probably a pretty good sign they have MS or some other white matter disease.”

Source:

Your smart phone is destroying your memory

Your Android and iOS phones are killing cognitive thinking and declarative memory, say experts

Dr Hozefa A Bhinderwala, psychiatrist at Saifee and Prince Aly Khan Hospital, received a call from his brother last week. “He said, ‘You are the doctor, but I performed a surgery today’.”

The specialist’s brother was referring to having managed to get his nine-year-old son to let go off his smart phone, which he was worried had grown into “an extended limb”. “As soon as my brother would get back home, his son would grab the phone and stay glued to it right until bedtime, playing games and fiddling with apps,” says the psychiatrist.

This is not a lone case. Dr Sangeeta Ravat, Head of the Department of Neurology at Seth G S Medical College and KEM Hospital, says the co-relation between mild Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (significant difficulties of inattention and impulsiveness or a combination of the two) among young adults and the excessive use of gadgets has been the subject of debate at recent medical conferences.

And if the Indian smart phone user study is accurate, we have reason to worry. The survey conducted by AC Nielsen across 46 cities in September and October 2012 revealed that the number of smart phones had touched 40 million, and almost half of the users were under 25. The dramatic growth was driven by a desire ‘to stay connected and have instant access to social networking sites’, it said.

Although the gadgets are designed to make life easier, and the user, work-smart, experts warn that their unrelenting pings and blitzkrieg of updates can throw the brain into overdrive, affecting its cells and blunting the mind over time. Here’s all that’s at stake:

Declarative memory reduced

Culprit: Reminder features Declarative memory refers to data that can be consciously recalled, such as important phone numbers, date and time of important meetings, and critical dates like your birthdays that we store in our brain. “While earlier, we’d easily remember at least 10 important phone numbers by rote, today we can’t recall any other than our own. Our mind is not challenged. Everything is fed in the phonebook, and under categories — family, work, miscellaneous. Sometimes, there are so many, we can’t recall the face to the name and number,” says Dr Ravat.

Underdeveloped human intelligence

Culprit: Absence of external stimuli Shraddha Shah, clinical psychologist with the Department of Neurology at KEM, is most concerned about the smartphone’s impact on children. She discusses Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development — a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence, which deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually acquire, construct and use it. Shah explains, “This mental process of awareness, perception, reasoning and judgement can only be built if the child experiences something physical, like playing with clay, blocks or a bat and ball. It isn’t possible if s/he is staring into a screen and conquering angry birds.” Physical activities, she adds, help build a child’s motor skills (a learned sequence of movements that combine to produce a smooth, efficient action in order to master a task) that can range from cutting a paper with a scissor to running and jumping. Phones can’t play a role here.

Human mind not meant to multi-task

Culprit: Multi-tasking features Dr Ravat is critical of the Internet which none of us can do without. Our increasing dependency on search engines like Google is making us poor thinkers, she argues. “Our minds are getting lazy because gadgets ensure we don’t use them enough,” she says.

In another interesting argument by neuro experts, the very advantage of smartphones becomes a cause for worry. Smartphones encourage you to carry out multiple tasks at once. Clifford Nass, professor of communication at Stanford University, reckons, “It is not physiologically healthy for you because (humans) are not built to do a multitude of tasks at one time. Your phone makes you feel like you have to respond, which then increases your stress and harms your cognitive thinking.”

Dr Bhinderwala agrees. Multitasking, he says, lessens our ability to focus on what is relevant, and rewires the brain to make us shallow thinkers. Varied communication features (SMS, video, Whatsapp, BBM, Facebook, Twitter) available on our finger tips, makes us less responsive to the immediate environment.

Dr Sandy Chapman, chief director for the Center for Brain Health in Dallas, who has studied the effects of technology on the brain, was quoted in nbcdwf. com, saying: “It’s really keeping us at this distracted level, so everything that we’re thinking about tends to be quicker, less synthesized, and that’s what’s making us dumber.”

Source:

 

11 Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease Discovered after a Large Study

The largest international study ever conducted on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the I-GAP (International Genomics Alzheimer’s Project) consortium has identified 11 new regions of the genome involved in the onset of this neurodegenerative disease.

This study gives an overview of the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease, opening up to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of AD. These results detailed currently in Nature Genetics, could not have been obtained without this unique worldwide collaborative effort.

Since 2009, 10 genes for Alzheimer’s disease have been identified. However, much of the individual susceptibility to develop the disease remains unexplained. So in February 2011, the leaders of the four largest international research consortia on the genetics of AD joined forces to accelerate the discovery of new genes. Supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and other components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in less than three years, the IGAP program identified more genes than had been identified over the previous 20 years. They collected genetic data on 74,076 patients and controls from 15 countries and were able to discover 11 new genes in addition to those already known, and identify 13 other genes, yet to be validated.

These 11 new confirmed genes may open new avenues to understanding the causes of AD. For example, one of the most significant associations was found in the region HLA-DRB5/DRB1 major histocompatibility complex. This finding is interesting in several ways. First, it strongly suggests the involvement of the immune system in AD. In addition, this same region has also been associated with two other neurodegenerative diseases, one known to have an immune mechanism, multiple sclerosis and another not previously thought to have a major immune component, Parkinson’s disease.

Some of the newly associated genes confirm biological pathways known to be involved in AD, including the amyloid (SORL1, CASS4 ) and tau (CASS4 , FERMT2 ) pathways. The role of the immune response and inflammation (HLA-DRB5/DRB1 , INPP5D , MEF2C ) already implied by previous work (CR1, TREM2) is reinforced, as are the importance of cell migration (PTK2B), lipid transport and endocytosis (SORL1 ). New hypotheses have also emerged related to hippocampal synaptic function (MEF2C , PTK2B), the cytoskeleton and axonal transport (CELF1 , NME8, CASS4) as well as myeloid and microglial cell functions (INPP5D).

Finally, this work demonstrates that, given the complexity of such a disease, only a global collaboration of research efforts will quickly find solutions to tackle this major threat.

The four founding partners in this international consortium are, in alphabetical order, the Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC), the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE), the European Alzheimer Disease Initiative (EADI) and the Genetic and Environmental Research in Alzheimer Disease (GERAD) consortium.

Boston University and the Framingham Heart Study are well-represented in this landmark international effort. The neurology working group of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology is led by Sudha Seshadri, MD, professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), who is a senior investigator in the Framingham Heart Study and also one of the senior authors on this manuscript. Several other senior investigators, notably Anita L. DeStefano , PhD, professor of biostatistics Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) on behalf of CHARGE, and Lindsay A. Farrer, PhD, Chief of Biomedical Genetics and professor of medicine, neurology, ophthalmology, genetics & genomics, epidemiology, and biostatistics at BUSM and BUSPH on behalf of the ADGC, were key investigators in this effort. Farrer co-directs the data analysis effort for the ADGC which includes nearly all of the nation’s researchers working on the genetics of AD as well as many investigators and resources of the 29 NIA funded Alzheimer Disease Centers.

“This study clearly demonstrates that there really is strength in numbers to identify genes that individually have a small effect on risk of Alzheimer’s,” said Farrer. “But it’s not the magnitude of the odds ratio that’s really important. Each gene we implicate in the disease process adds new knowledge to our understanding of disease mechanism and provides insight into developing new therapeutic approaches, and ultimately these approaches may be more effective in halting the disease since genes are expressed long before clinical symptoms appear and brain damage occurs,” he added.

“This landmark international effort has uncovered new pathways and new genes in old pathways that are definitely associated with Alzheimer dementia, but we need to do much work to better understand how exactly these genes work in health and disease, and to perhaps make drugs from these genes and molecules,” said Seshadri. “We will continue to mine these results for new insights, even as we include more patients and use new technologies like whole genome sequencing to find more new pathways and genes,” she added.

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Long naps linked to diabetes

Taking long naps is associated with a higher risk for diabetes, according to new research.

The study suggests that naps may be beneficial or detrimental to the body, but that depends on their duration.

Researchers examined more than 25,000 Chinese men and women and grouped them based on their nap durations. The results showed that people who reported taking naps of an hour or longer had higher blood sugar and a higher risk of diabetes compared to people who didn’t take naps.

The relationship between napping and diabetes is not known to be causal, researchers said. They said one possibility for the link is that diabetes sometimes causes tiredness, which may encourage napping.

Researchers said that another possibility is that people who take longer naps tend to sleep less at night, and the lack of nighttime sleep could increase a person’s risk for diabetes

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Too Much Sugar Is Bad For Your Brain

People with higher blood sugar levels may be more likely to have memory problems.

That’s according to a new study of older adults who did not have diabetes.

German researchers found those with high blood sugar levels had lower scores on memory tests.

Dr. Dana Jane Saltzman works at Midtown Health and Wellness.

“people that had elevated blood sugars had worse memory, had worse retention of words that they gave them over a 30 minute period,” she says.

People in the study with higher blood sugar levels also had less volume in the area of the brain that’s important for memory.

Some studies show type 2 diabetes may increase the risk for dementia, including Alzheimer’s Disease.

Researchers say the findings suggest lowering blood sugar could be a way to prevent memory problems, even in people with normal blood sugar.

Dr. Saltzman says a healthy lifestyle is key for keeping blood sugar levels down.

“Exercise is absolutely fundamental 9:48:57 in conjunction with that to eat a good diet.”

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