5 Top Conditions That Shorten Lives and are Preventable

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

More bad news for plus-sized Americans: Obesity is the leading cause of preventable life-years lost in the nation, a new study finds.

Obesity steals more years than diabetes, tobacco, high blood pressure and high cholesterol — the other top preventable health problems that cut Americans’ lives short, according to researchers who analyzed 2014 data.

“Modifiable behavioral risk factors pose a substantial mortality burden in the U.S.,” said study lead author Glen Taksler, an internal medicine researcher at the Cleveland Clinic.

“These preliminary results continue to highlight the importance of weight loss, diabetes management and healthy eating in the U.S. population,” Taksler said in a clinic news release.

Obesity was linked with as much as 47 percent more life-years lost than tobacco, his team said.

Tobacco, meanwhile, had the same effect on life span as high blood pressure, the researchers found.

The researchers noted that three of the top five causes of life-years lost — diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol — can be treated. And helping patients understand treatment methods, options and approaches can have a significant effect, the study authors said.

The findings also emphasize the importance of preventive care, and why it should be a priority for physicians, Taksler’s team said.

However, the researchers acknowledged that some people’s situations may be different than those of the general population. For example, for someone with obesity and alcoholism, drinking may be a more important risk factor than obesity, even though obesity is more significant in the general population.

“The reality is, while we may know the proximate cause of a patient’s death — for example, breast cancer or heart attack — we don’t always know the contributing factor(s), such as tobacco use, obesity, alcohol and family history,” Taksler said. “For each major cause of death, we identified a root cause to understand whether there was a way a person could have lived longer.”

The findings were scheduled for presentation Saturday at the annual meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine, in Washington, D.C. Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Hearing Tests Miss Common Form of Hearing Loss

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

One in five Americans has hearing loss so severe that it interferes with communication, said a 2011 study published in Archives of Internal Medicine. But there may be many more people who have “hidden hearing loss,” but remain undiagnosed because the damage wasn’t detected by commonly used hearing tests, according to a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

People who have hidden hearing loss appear to have normal hearing when their hearing is tested using audiograms — the gold standard for measuring hearing — where hearing is typically tested in a quiet room.

The reason some forms of hearing loss may go unrecognized in the clinic is that hearing involves a complex partnership between the ear and the brain. Researchers found that the central auditory system can compensate for significant damage to the inner ear by turning up its volume control, partially overcoming the deficiency, says study lead author Richard Salvi.

“You can have tremendous damage to inner hair cells in the ear that transmit information to the brain and still have a normal audiogram,” says Salvi. “But people with this type of damage have difficulty hearing in certain situations, like hearing speech in a noisy room. Their thresholds appear normal. So they’re sent home.”

The reason hearing loss isn’t detected lies in the way hearing signals travel to the brain: About 95 percent of sound input to the brain comes from the ear’s inner hair cells.

“These inner hair cells are like spark plugs in an 8-cylinder engine,” says Salvi. “A car won’t run well if you remove half of those spark plugs, but people can still present with normal hearing thresholds if they’ve lost half or even three-quarters of their inner hair cells.”

Ear damage reduces the signal that goes the brain. That results in problems hearing, but that’s not what’s happening here, because the brain “has a central gain control, like a radio, the listener can turn up the volume control to better hear a distant station,” Salvi says.

Sound is converted to neural activity by the inner hair cells in the auditory part of the ear, called the cochlea.

The neural signals then travel from the cochlea to the auditory nerve and into the central auditory pathway of the brain. Halfway up the auditory pathway the information is relayed into a structure known as the inferior colliculus, before finally arriving at the auditory cortex in the brain, where interpretation of things like speech take place.

For people with inner hair cell loss, sound is less accurately converted to neural activity in the cochlea, but it is amplified as it travels. Once the signal gets high enough to stimulate neurons in the brain, “It’s like your brain has a hearing aid that turns up the volume,” Salvi said.

Salvi says it’s unknown how many people might have this type of hearing loss, but many older people have difficulty hearing in a noisy environment.

Spotting hidden hearing loss could be as simple as adding background noise to hearing tests.

An experimental drug called LY411575 may offer hope to people with hearing loss caused by a loss of sensory hair cells in the inner ear. The tiny hairs are vital to hearing, since sound vibrations agitate them, causing them to send signals to the brain. When the hairs are destroyed, the brain no longer receives signals that result in hearing.

The new drug works by inhibiting a protein called Notch, which keeps stem cells in the inner ear — or cochlea — from developing into new sensory hair cells. In a study of sound-deafened mice, hearing was improved in the areas where the hair cells were replaced.

Could Young Blood Boost Aging Brains?

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

A new study hints that young blood may harbor clues to a “fountain of youth” for older brains.

Researchers say blood from human umbilical cords appears to have helped reverse memory loss in aging mice.

The findings suggest that something in young blood is important in maintaining mental acuity.

No one, however, is saying that cord blood could be a magic bullet against Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia.

For one, any effects seen in elderly rodents may fail to translate to humans.

Instead, the findings might set the stage for new drugs that target the dementia process, said study lead author Joseph Castellano. He’s an instructor in neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“Part of what makes this exciting is that it suggests there’s more communication between the blood and brain than we’ve thought,” Castellano said.

The study builds on earlier work by the same Stanford team. There, the researchers found that old lab mice benefited from infusions of plasma (the liquid portion of blood) from young mice.

Specifically, the old mice showed improvements in learning and memory. This was measured by the ability to accomplish tasks like navigating a maze or building a nest.

The aim of the new study, Castellano said, was to see whether injections of human plasma given to mice could have similar effects.

It turned out that they did — at least when the plasma came from umbilical cords. Plasma from young adults had less of an impact. And plasma from older adults, ages 61 to 82, had no benefit at all.

That led to a critical question: What is it about umbilical cord blood that’s special?

The researchers found evidence that it might be a protein called TIMP2. It is present in high levels in cord plasma, they said, but declines with age.

What’s more, injections of TIMP2 benefited older rodents’ brains in the same way that cord plasma did.

Castellano said it was “surprising” that a single protein had such effects.

But, he noted, TIMP2 could be “upstream” of many biological processes. It belongs to a family of proteins that regulate other critical proteins. Those proteins, in turn, have the task of “chopping up” yet more proteins that exist in the matrix surrounding body cells.

But researchers know little about how TIMP2 acts on the brain, Castellano said.

“Now, we really need to get a better understanding of what it’s doing in the brain,” he said. “We are not saying we’ve found the protein that’s responsible for brain aging.”

Dr. Marc Gordon is a professor at the Litwin-Zucker Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y.

He agreed that the study identifies a protein “target” that should be studied further.

“But this is not saying that cord blood is a cure for aging,” Gordon stressed.

And it’s probably unrealistic to use cord blood as a dementia treatment, said Castellano.

Nor can anyone predict whether TIMP2 will point researchers toward new drugs for dementia. Findings in lab animals often fail to pan out in humans.

Plus, Gordon said, this study involved mice that were old, but did not have an “animal model” of Alzheimer’s. That refers to lab mice that are genetically modified to have Alzheimer’s-like brain pathology.

“What this could mean for human disease is purely speculative,” Gordon said.

Drugs for age-related brain disease have so far been “elusive,” Castellano said. The available medications for dementia symptoms have limited effects, and cannot stop the disease from progressing.

“We’re excited,” Castellano added, “about this knowledge that there are proteins present in the blood that evolve over the life span, and may affect brain function.”

The findings were published April 19 in Nature.

Forget Brain Games They Won’t Make You Smarter

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

If you think that you can improve your brain by playing brain-training games, save your time and money, say researchers from Florida State University.

“Our findings and previous studies confirm there’s very little evidence these types of games can improve your life in a meaningful way,” said Wally Boot, an expert on age-related cognitive decline and an associate professor of psychology at FSU.

A growing number of people believe that brain training protects them against memory loss associated with aging. “Brain challenges like crossword games are a popular approach, especially among baby boomers, as a way to try to protect cognition,” said Neil Charness, professor of psychology and a leading authority on aging and cognition.

The belief is fueling the brain-training industry, which has become a billion-dollar business. Games are available online and through mobile apps for about $15 a month. But the Federal Trade Commission is looking at companies’ brain-boosting claims, and fined one for false advertising.

“More companies are beginning to be fined for these types of inflated claims and that’s a good thing,” Boot said. “These exaggerated claims are not consistent with the conclusions of our latest study.”

For their study, the FSU team focused on whether brain games could improve the “working memory” needed for a variety of tasks. They set up one group of people to play a specially designed brain-training video game called “Mind Frontiers,” while another group of players performed crossword games or number puzzles.

Researchers tested whether the games enhanced players’ working memory and therefore improved other mental capabilities, such as reasoning, memory and processing speed.

That’s the theory behind many brain games: If you improve overall working memory, which is fundamental to so much of what we do every day, then you can enhance performance in many areas of your life. “The thing that seniors in particular should be concerned about is, if I can get very good at crossword puzzles, is that going to help me remember where my keys are?” said Charness.

The team examined whether improving working memory transfer would translate to better performance on other tasks, something the researchers called “far transfer.”

“The answer is probably no,” says Charness.

What does work to improve aging brains? Exercise, he says, and predicts that “exer-gaming,” which combines exercise with� brain games, will increase in popularity.

“If your real goal is to improve cognitive function and brain games are not helping, then maybe you are better off getting aerobic exercise rather than sitting in front of the computer playing these games,” he said.

One activity that might fit into the area of exer-gaming is dance. A study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that dance was the� most effective way to reduce the risk of dementia.

Seniors who took part in brain-stimulating activities such as reading, writing, and doing puzzles, lowered their risk of dementia by as much as 47 percent. �Ballroom dancing, which combines thinking � remembering how to perform dance patterns � reduced the risk of developing dementia by an astonishing 67 percent.

Magnesium Could Prevent Fractures in Elderly

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

You should be adding a magnesium supplement to your daily vitamin regimen in middle age to prevent fractures later, says a new study.

Bone fractures, which are often caused by osteoporosis, are one of the leading causes of disability in the elderly. Calcium and vitamin D are known to play a role in bone health, and while magnesium is a vital nutrient and an important component of bone, no studies have shown that supplements might have a beneficial effect on bone health.

Researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Eastern Finland followed 2,245 middle-aged men for 20 years. They found that men with lower blood levels of magnesium had an increased risk of fractures, particularly fractures of the hip.

Men who had higher blood levels of magnesium lowered their risk by 44 percent. None of the men who had very high magnesium levels suffered a fracture during the 20-year follow-up.  

However, dietary magnesium intake was not found to be linked with fractures. Only supplements were shown to be beneficial.

“The findings do suggest that avoiding low serum concentrations of magnesium may be a promising though unproven strategy for risk prevention of fractures,” said Dr. Setor Kunutsor of the University of Bristol.

Low blood levels of magnesium are common among the middle-aged and elderly, since the mineral becomes harder for the body to absorb as it ages, but the majority of people have no symptoms. Since blood magnesium isn’t measured routinely in the hospital, those with low levels are usually not diagnosed. The researchers believe their findings could help trigger initiatives to include blood magnesium screening in routine blood panels, especially for the elderly.

Magnesium may also help solve another problem faced by seniors — getting a good night’s sleep. British researchers found that magnesium helps cells keep track of the natural cycles of day and night.

Other studies show that magnesium provides a wide range of health benefits, including boosting the immune system and lowering the risk of heart attacks. Studies have also shown that people who have migraines tend to have lower levels of magnesium than those who are headache free.