Could Preventing Stroke Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease?

Although most people fear Alzheimer’s disease far more than stroke, in reality you should find the possibility of stroke more terrifying. A stroke is much more likely to strike and be more destructive and, in fact, tiny strokes may be the precipitating factor that pushes your brain over the brink into severe brain failure or Alzheimer’s. In a ground­breaking study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March, 1997, Dr. David Snowdon, noted brain researcher at the University of Kentucky, re­ported the astonishing news that one or two small strokes

in strategic parts of the brain boosts your chances of Alzheimer’s-type dementia twenty times over! His insights, gained from studying the structure and functioning of the brains of a large group of elderly nuns after death (the so-called Nun’s Study), suggest that Alzheimer’s-type plaques and strokes damage different specific regions of the brain, and that together they produce a synergistic whammy—worse damage and dementia than either alone. “Stroke plus Alzheimer’s is not one plus one equals two. It’s more like one plus one equals four or five,” says Dr. Snowdon.

Amazingly, your brain can show evidence of Alzheimer’s damage, but if a stroke does not come along, your brain may continue to function fairly normally—with little intel­lectual decline, memory loss, or so-called dementia. Such “tiny strokes may be the switch that flips a mildly deterio­rating brain into full-fledged dementia” as Time magazine put it. In short: “If you remain stroke-free, you can handle more lesions of Alzheimer’s,” says Dr. Snowdon. He spec­ulates that a stroke on top of Alzheimer’s injuries simply potentiates brain cell destruction. Widespread inflamma­tion was also present in the brains of those most severely affected intellectually.

Dr. Snowdon’s discovery is important because there are strategies to prevent strokes, whereas there are only promis­ing, but uncertain ways to stop the initial brain injuries of Alzheimer’s. The idea, then, says Dr. Snowdon, is to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s damage by preventing strokes. Even postponing Alzheimer’s dementia by five years would slash in half the number of people with overt symptoms of the disease, he says.

BOTTOM LINE: Reduce your odds of stroke and you stay many steps away from Alzheimer’s and the con­sequent intellectual downslide known as dementia.

ASTONISHING WAY TO AVOID AND SURVIVE A STROKE

One antistroke secret is simple: Eat fruits and vegetables, drink tea. It’s strikingly clear that eating fruits and vegeta­bles helps prevent strokes and lessen damage should you suffer a stroke. Medical researchers have been screaming this message for more than two decades. It’s a mystery why fruits and vegetables are such powerful stroke-fighters; it could be their high antioxidants, potassium, folic acid, or many factors combined. But the evidence is so utterly com­pelling that the first thing you should do to avoid stroke is eat more fruits and vegetables.

As part of the large-scale Framingham Study, Harvard researchers followed 832 men, ages forty-five to sixty-five for twenty years; the more fruit and vegetables the men ate, the less likely they were to have a stroke or a warning sign of stroke, a TIA (transient ischemic attack). In fact, increas­ing intake of fruits and vegetables by three servings per day reduced overall stroke rates 22 percent and risk of hemor­raghic or bleeding stroke by 51 percent! A serving is one fruit or vegetable or one-half cup. The fruits and vegeta­bles had an impact unrelated to blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, drinking, exercise, or fat or calorie intake. In short, some magical ingredients in fruits and vegetables appear to help protect against stroke regardless of what else you do. In this study, vegetables had more antistroke power than fruits.

Women, too, slash stroke risk by eating fruits and veg­etables, particularly carrots, according to a previous Har­vard study that tracked 90,000 women nurses for eight years. Just eating slightly less than a carrot a day cut the odds of stroke in the women an astounding 68 percent com­pared with eating carrots only once a month! Eating spinach also dramatically deterred strokes. A common stroke-fighting element in the vegetables could be the antioxidant beta-carotene, said researcher JoAnn E. Man­son, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

A more recent thirty-year look at 1,843 men (middle-aged when the study started) found that those who ate fruits and vegetables with the most beta-carotene and vitamin C were least apt to have nonfatal or fatal stroke. Indeed, the highest intake of beta-carotene decreased risk about 15 per­cent compared with the lowest intake. And vitamin C sup­pressed stroke risk about 30 percent.

Another brain-protecting miracle agent in fruits and veg­etables and tea are flavonoids—non-nutrient chemicals, such as quercetin and catechins and pigments. Dutch researchers found that those who ate the most flavonoids in fruits, veg­etables, and tea were 73 percent less likely to suffer a stroke than those eating the least flavonoids. In this case, black tea was the biggest contributor to antistroke flavonoids in the diet. Drinking about five cups of tea a day versus two-and-a­half cups per day reduced the risk of stroke 70 percent.

THE AMAZING POTASSIUM PROTECTION

Another secret ingredient of fruits and vegetables is potas­sium, and eating a little extra potassium (also in fish and milk) may save you from a deadly stroke. The evidence is con­sistent and compelling. A pioneering classic study a decade ago in California came to the stunning conclusion that just an extra serving of a potassium-rich food (400 milligrams) every day reduced the risk of fatal stroke by a startling 40 percent! A mere extra banana or apple or half cup of spinach a day spelled the difference between life and death. By analyzing the diets of 859 men and women over age fifty, Dr. Kay Tee Khaw, and colleagues at the University of California, docu­mented that the intake of potassium predicted who was most apt to have a stroke twelve years later.

Among those who ate the least potassium (less than 1950 milligrams per day) compared with those who ate the most (more than 3500 milligrams a day), the risk of fatal stroke skyrocketed 2.6 times in men and 4.8 times in women. The protective difference: only 400 milligrams of potassium a day. Further, the more potassium foods the subjects ate, the more their stroke risk dropped.

And there’s more evidence that potassium may save you from stroke:

Harvard researchers tracked 43,738 male health profes­sionals for eight years and recently noted that those who took in the most potassium in foods and supplements had the lowest rates of stroke. Men in the top 20 percent of potassium intake were 38 percent less apt to have a stroke than those in the lowest 20 percent. Lowest-risk men ate about eight servings of fruits and vegetables a day, twice that of men with the highest stroke risk. Moreover, men who took diuretics for high blood pressure and also took potassium supplements (about 1000 milligrams daily) were 64 percent less apt to have a stroke than diuretic takers who did not take potassium.

One of the most persuasive recent studies measured blood levels of potassium in 824 men and women partici­pating in the Northern Manhattan. Stroke Study. Those with the highest blood potassium were 40 percent less likely to have a stroke.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota find that potassium does more to fight strokes than just lower blood pressure. Potassium also protects the lining of blood ves­sels, the endothelium, against free-radical damage in animals with high blood pressure. Thus, potassium may directly combat high-blood-pressure-induced damage to arteries, making them less susceptible to a stroke.

WHAT TO EAT TO ESCAPE STROKES

Each of these foods provides the extra 400 milligrams of daily potassium shown to slash the odds of fatal stroke by 40 percent.

·      1/2 cup cooked fresh spinach (423 milligrams)·      1/2 cup cooked fresh beet greens (654 milligrams)1 tsp. blackstrap molasses (400 milligrams)1 cup tomato juice (536 milligrams)1 cup fresh orange juice (472 milligrams)·          1/4 cantaloupe (412 milligrams)·      1/2 cup acorn squash (446 milligrams)10 dried apricot halves (482 milligrams)2 carrots (466 milligrams)·      1/2 cup cooked sweet potato (455 milligrams)·      1/2 cup cooked green lima beans (484 milligrams)1 cup skim milk (418 milligrams)·      1/2 Florida avocado (742 milligrams)1 banana (451 milligrams)2 ounces almonds (440 milligrams)1 ounce roasted soybeans (417 milligrams)17-ounce baked potato without skin (512 milligrams)17-ounce baked potato with skin (844 milligrams)·      1/2 cup baked beans (613 milligrams)3 ounces (about eight) canned sardines (500 milligrams)3 ounces swordfish steak (465 milligrams)

Reprinted from Food—Your Miracle Medicine

Chromium as Brain Food – lower your sugar level to protect your brain

There’s another peculiar, and startling, hazard connected with high blood sugar that most people are quite unaware of, and it has serious implications for increased degenera­tive brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s. High levels of blood sugar can make your entire body, including your brain, age faster, which is hardly a happy thought. In short, high circulating levels of blood sugar, as well as eating lots of sugar, can harm your brain by accelerating the aging process through chemical reactions in cells.

Leading expert Anthony Cerami at the Picower Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, explains that glucose in the blood reacts with proteins to create aber­rant so-called “glycated or cross-linked proteins”—a kind of cellular debris that accumulates in cells, mucking up their mechanisms. These sugar-damaged proteins turn yel­lowish-brown, and are also called AGEs (advanced glyco­sylation end products), which is appropriate because they accelerate aging.

They cause bones to “yellow,” joints to stiffen, blood vessels to toughen and become clogged, and organs, including the brain, to malfunction. The process, says Dr. Cerami, resembles what happens to a chicken when you roast it in the oven. Its skin gets browned and crispy. We, too, are undergoing this “browning process” at body temperature as we age. “Basically, we are cooking very slowly over our lifetime,” he says. In nerve cells, this brown­ing process is not pretty.

These AGEs are just as dangerous to the brain as dam­age from oxygen-free radicals. In fact, AGEs compound their destruction by generating free radicals.

Researchers trying to solve the mysteries of human aging have known about AGEs for some time, and mainly blamed them on circulating levels of glucose in the blood—the higher the glucose, the greater the production of AGEs.

The sugar-damaged proteins are extremely high in the blood of diabetics, for example. Indeed, German re­searchers say that AGEs are the first step leading to dia­betic nerve damage known as neuropathy. Researchers also believe this “glycation” process is a culprit in the destruc­tion of brain cells leading to neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, and possibly even in age-related memory loss.

A leading researcher, Siegfried Hoyer at the University of Heidelberg, proposes that some forms of Alzheimer’s are tied to abnormalities in the way the brain metabolizes glu­cose, resulting in the overproduction of nerve-damaging AGEs, free radicals, and the formation of neurofibrillary tangles that kill off brain cells.

What’s new and alarming is that some researchers now say the risk of creating these destructive AGEs rises from con­sistently eating a diet high in simple sugars, independent of the blood glucose rises triggered by sugar intake. Roger B. McDonald, at the University of California at Davis, first showed that rats fed sucrose (ordinary table sugar) for most of their lives have shorter lifespans than rats fed compa­rable calories in starchy carbohydrates. In searching for the reason, he found that a high-sucrose diet created more AGEs. Indeed, he noted that the sucrose consumed, not blood glucose levels, mainly determined how many destruc­tive AGEs were created.

In other animal studies, Israeli researchers discovered that eating excessive fructose may be even worse than eat­ing sucrose or glucose. In a recent study, rats feasting on fructose showed the most damage from the sugar-protein reactions compared with those on high-sucrose or glucose diets. This is especially bad news, because in the last few decades consumption of fructose has skyrocketed, mainly due to the widespread use of high-fructose corn syrups in processed foods. Such fructose is used to sweeten soft drinks. That alone gives fructose extensive access to human brains, including young formative brains.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Inter­est, in 1996 the average American drank over 53 gallons of soft drinks!—up 43 percent since 1985. That’s compared with twelve gallons of fruit juices and twenty-seven gallons of milk. A twelve-ounce can of non-diet cola boasts ten tea­spoons of sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, and 150 calories. Although the use of artificial non-caloric sweeteners is also way up in recent years, sugar is still the primary sweetener by far.

Important antidotes: You can reduce sugar-inspired brain-damaging “glycation” by taking the supplement alpha-lipoic acid, says Dr. Lester Packer at the University of California at Berkeley. That’s one reason lipoic acid seems to help prevent the onset of diabetes and its complications, notably neuropathy, he says. Recommended dose for dia­betics: from 300 to 600 milligrams of alpha-lipoic acid daily.

Dr. Cerami has also recently discovered that alcohol par­tially blocks the AGE formation. AGEs dropped 52 percent in diabetic rats given some alcohol daily for four weeks compared with rats not given alcohol. Dr. Cerami surmises this is one reason drinking some alcohol reduces risk of cardiovascular disease.

BOTTOM LINE: High blood levels of glucose as well as high intakes of sugar and fructose may lead to sugar-damaged proteins and nerve destruction. Remember: The brain was not designed to accommodate such con­sistent overloads of modern sugary foods and, under­standably, may react badly.

Skimping on chromium could put you in the doldrums and steal your memory. A reason: Chromium helps regulate blood glucose. Indeed, a chromium deficiency in some indi­viduals fosters impaired glucose tolerance and decreased number of insulin receptors (needed to process blood sugar), hypoglycemia, as well as high cholesterol and triglycerides.

Dr. Richard Anderson at the U.S. Department of Agri­culture says chromium tends to normalize blood sugar—raising or lowering it, as needed. His research showed that 1000 daily micrograms of chromium reversed glucose intol­erance and symptoms of diabetes. He recommends 200 micrograms of chromium daily to normalize blood sugar and prevent insulin resistance and diabetes in healthy adults.

Larry Christensen, Ph.D., chair of the psychology department at the University of South Alabama, says that people with major depression often have disturbances in processing glucose and consequently have exaggerated glu­cose responses, twice that of normal people. They also often have a marginal chromium deficiency. He says this chromium lack is compounded by the fact such persons often eat lots of sugar, perhaps in efforts to reverse their depression. But sugar depletes chromium, perpetuating a vicious circle that actually promotes depression.

In double-blind studies, Dr. Christensen found that a long-time high-sugar diet could promote persistent fatigue and depression in some people. In some individuals, he says, eating sugar creates a vicious cycle of mood swings, with a temporary burst of good feeling, followed by a down­swing as blood sugar and the brain chemical serotonin fall. To raise their spirits they load up on more sugar, which again, after dives and rebounds in their blood sugar, makes them feel worse. The only long-term solution: Eat sugar sparingly or not at all to smooth out the sugar-inspired roller-coaster moods, advises Dr. Christensen. Taking chromium may also help.

Since chromium can help alleviate poor glucose con­trol that impairs mental function, it’s definitely a “brain-boosting” nutrient.

HOW A HIGH-SUGAR DIET CAN BE BAD FOR YOUNG BRAINS

Sugar replaces high vitamin and mineral foods, creating a deficit in nutrients the brain needs to function optimally.Some studies find that kids on high-sugar diets do worse on IQ tests, get poorer grades, and have more mood swings.Certain children, such as those with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, are often super-sensitive to high sugar intakes. PET scans show their brains do not burn glucose as effi­ciently. High blood sugar stimulates a greater release of cortisol—the “fight or flight” hor­mone—in such children.A chronic high intake of refined sugar at an early age is associated with poor attention spans in both normal and hyperactive children.

High intakes of simple sugars, found in soft drinks and other processed foods, cause cellular damage (AGEs or glycation) in animals, known to promote nerve damage, premature aging in animals, and possibly degenerative brain dis­eases including Alzheimer’s.

BOTTOM LINE: Try to keep blood glucose at normal levels for both good intellectual function and good moods. Best way to do that: Eat in ways compatible with your brain’s evolutionary desires—choose low glycemic index carbohydrates that gradually raise blood glucose, making it steadily available to your brain. Cut back on sugar that may independently undermine good mental functioning and damage brain cells.