Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks
Most people think of aging in association with a decline of
the brain and body. While it's true that your body systems
tend to breakdown faster the older you get, this is not out
of your control. You do not have to allow your physical or
mental capacities to weaken with time. You can do something
about it and keep your Brain Fit.

Befriending Grandfather Time

It's not about trying to prevent aging, that's impossible.
But you do have a lot of control over how gracefully you
enter your older years and you can work on your brain at
any age, in fact, the sooner the better.

While there is no magic elixir of youth, many nutrients
show a benefit of keeping minds sharp throughout life. A
couple of new studies highlight a few of these nutrients in
particular.

Eat your spinach

One nutrient, folate, has long been suspected to provide
benefit to the brain. It's known that folate is a crucial
nutrient during pregnancy for appropriate neurological
development, but it seems to play a significant role in the
older adult brain as well.

Several studies show that people with higher levels of
folate in their blood do better on cognitive tests. Now,
new data using a large population of participants from 60
to 90 years old, add fuel to that argument.

Researchers studied over a thousand older adults by looking
at their folate levels, performance on cognitive tests and
brain scans to determine how all of these related. They
found that higher folate levels associated with better
performance on mental tasks, especially related to
processing speed.

They also found that higher folate levels associated with
fewer breakdowns of white matter tracts in the brain. White
matter is like the 'wiring' that connects different parts
of the brain together. So maintaining your white matter
'wiring' literally allows you to connect your thoughts.

What foods are high in folate? Spinach, asparagus, lentils
and garbanzo beans are some of the best folate sources. A
half cup of all these foods provides about 200 micrograms,
which is half of your minimum daily requirement of 400
micrograms.

Teaching old dogs new tricks

Another couple of nutrients, alpha-lipoic acid (LA) and
acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC), also received recent high marks
in brain research recently. This study used dogs and
provided some insight into the brain boosting benefits of
these two nutrients. While dogs are not people, they
provide a good model for studying certain aspects of
cognitive decline.

LA and ALC have been implicated in brain health in the
past, both individually and as part of complex food
mixtures. They most likely work by protecting the health of
your mitochondria, which are the power plants in all of
your cells. Brain cells in particular require a lot of
energy to do their job and mitochondria are very important.

The new study looked at LA and ALC acting together, given
as supplements. The results showed that old dogs that
received the supplement had a striking improvement in the
ability to learn new tricks, especially related to spatial
learning.

Wide varieties of animal and plant sources contain these
nutrients. LA is high in kidney, heart and liver as well as
spinach and broccoli. A form of ALC is high in beef,
chicken and dairy. But this mostly lacks the acetyl part,
which is good for making brain chemicals involved in
memory. The best source of the right form of ALC for brain
health is probably supplements.

You are what you eat

These studies don't suggest that you can just start popping
supplements in order to ensure life-long brain health and
fitness. However, they do support the notion that some
nutritional supplements can help, especially if combined
with a healthy diet and regular moderate exercise.

The old adage that 'you are what you eat' applies to your
brain as well. In fact, it probably applies to your brain
more than anything else since the brain uses 5 to 10 times
it's share of the energy that you get from your food. Even
though the brain only weights about 2% of your body, it
uses 10 - 20% of the calories that you consume.

Your diet literally goes to your head.

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