I was very glad to read this article, Go Nuts! in Health Care Insights listing all the health benefits of nuts and seeds. I enjoy a small handful of walnuts and fruit in yoghurt every day, and 4 dark chocolate covered almonds at night. Given that my dad had dementia, albeit as a result of a stroke, and his sister/ my aunt had Alzheimer's, I'm glad to know that in addition to dancing and dance therapy, eating nuts and seeds is good for brain health. According to Nancy Lombardo Emerson, "Nuts and seeds are stars among brain healthy foods, and eating a daily portion of a variety will help you reduce LDL cholesterol, blood sugar, oxidative stress and inflammation, all risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and some other brain diseases." Glad to know that eating foods I like turns out to be good for my health.
Emerson is a researcher and assistant professor at B.U.Alzheimer's Disease Center. On that site, I found a link to NH Public Radio station program, Alzheimer’s Disease: What We Know and What We Are Learning, featuring Dr. Robert A. Stern, Co-Director of BU Alzheimer's Disease Clinical and Research Program and Dr. Paul Raia, Vice President for Patient care and family support for the Alzheimer’s Association of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. I found the following comment insightful:
alzheimer's
paul corrao - Thu, 12/04/2008 - 11:03
paul corrao, m.d. I studied neuropathology at several institutions, including the AFIP. The classic triad associated with dementia- neurofibrillary tangles, intranuclear inclusions, and amyloid plaques- can only be diagnosed with a brain biopsy or at post mortem. The kicker, though, is that these findings are only statistically associated with Alzheimer's. You can have the disease without one of the three, and even without all three. Conversely, cases are known where the clinical picture of Alzheimer's is described in the absence of the above triad. The same is true of the assertions about genetic changes. The changes described are only statistically associated with greater risk for dementia. In any given case, all bets are off. I don't deny that there are people who exhibit a dementia-like picture, but I contend that there are economic, political, sociological and philosophical considerations to this issue that are being overlooked or ignored. I have in mind the extent to which we seek a pharmacological cure to every human problem; that the problem at times is the disposition of an elderly relative, in the face on great social pressures otherwise; the fate of property; the possibility that what we are are really seeing is a biological manifestation of the limits and destructiveness of hyperindividualism in American life; the excessive pressures to produce and consume in our culture, which renders other forms of nonmaterial contribution, like wisdom, superfluous and counter-productive in modern life; and so forth. Readers should not miss the role this issue is playing, for example, in fund raising for NHPR. Also, as our economy becomes more and more a service one, raw material in the form of dependent individuals is needed to keep the system going. Nhpr has a right to raise funds, but the issues I raise should not be omitted in the process.
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