Mark’s Daily Apple

Move Your Body for Your Brain1

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They’ll be coming out in waves after this news…

A study presented Wednesday at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting suggests that regular physical exercise may offer a protective benefit against mild cognitive impairment.

How cognitively impaired are we talking here? Think forgetting where you left your keys, remembering events, appointments, or to check Mark’s Daily Apple every day (as if you could ever forget that!) or recalling the details of a conversation.

Conducted as part of an ongoing study of aging, researchers from the Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic surveyed 868 people ages 70 to 89 about their exercise habits between ages 50 and 65. Researchers also screened all participants for signs of mild cognitive impairment.

According to the study, those that reported participating in moderate exercise such as brisk walking one to five times per week were less likely to experience cognitive impairment problems than their peers who exercised less. However, the researchers note that cognitive impairment did not appear to be influenced by exercise activity within the previous year.

Speculating on the mechanism behind the link, the study’s lead author suggests that “exercise induces chemicals that protect brain cells, or exercise is simply a marker for an overall healthy lifestyle, or there is some positive interaction among exercise, healthy lifestyle and intellectually stimulating activity.”

Acknowledging his rather shaky opinion regarding the link, he calls for further research to explore the findings.

Groundbreaking stuff? Well, no, not really. But it does add to the growing body of research suggesting that the benefits of exercise extend beyond physical health. In fact, these findings are likely to prove especially pertinent to the growing legions of baby boomers who, if the study’s findings are correct, could benefit tremendously from starting a regular exercise routine to stave off some of the cognitive declines associated with aging. In addition, while a long track record of physical activity is certainly preferential, the study suggests that even adopting an exercise routine in your 60s can yield significant benefits in the future.

So, the next time you’re pondering where you left your keys or why on earth you would put your cell phone in your shoe, consider logging a few extra trips around the block. You’ll thank us (because you will remember to) later down the road!

zappowbang Flickr Photo (CC)

Further Reading:

Mature Muscle?

The Role of Lean Muscle Mass and Organ Reserve in Aging

Posted: Aging, Fitness, Health, Personal Improvement, Prevention

Antioxidants and the Stress of Eating6

The Best Part of Waking Up…

Sorry, we’re not talking about how to politely show your Aunt Mildred how much you appreciate her tomato jello mold. Research from the Agricultural Research Service suggests that eating antioxidant rich foods such as berries with each meal can neutralize the free radicals inevitably created by the oxidative stress of regular digestion.

As if you needed another reason to eat your fruits and veggies…

To learn more about the effects of antioxidants on postprandial, or after-meal, oxidative stress, Prior and co-investigators collaborated in four clinical studies with healthy female volunteers. The scientists found that the antioxidant capacity of volunteers’ blood plasma samples declined after eating a test meal that lacked antioxidants. But the scientists also found, for the first time, that consuming grapes with that same test meal prevented the decline in plasma antioxidant capacity of the volunteers during the first two hours following the test meal—the time digestion is the most rapid. Prior, based at the ARS-funded Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center in Little Rock, Ark., noted that omitting antioxidant-rich foods from meals could lead to cellular damage by free radicals. Such damage is thought to increase risk of atherosclerosis, cancer and other diseases.

via Science Daily

Scientists included this experiment in their ORAC research, a study that assessed the antioxidant capacity of a variety of fruits.

We love it when solutions are simple, and this one is no exception. Sure, we go on and on about the importance of antioxidants to combat every variety of physical and psychological stress, pollution, aging, etc. But it doesn’t get more “here and now” than including antioxidants to combat the stresses of eating itself. A little effort, in this case a cup of blueberries (or maybe a spinach salad and a glass of red wine), goes a long way.

Talk about neat; you could tie this one up with a bow. Now, if only dinner at Aunt Mildred’s house could be so simple.

Thoughts? Cheers? Sad stories about family-induced food stresses? Share them here – with a nice cup of antioxidant-rich tea.

greenapplegrenade Flickr Photo (CC)

Further Reading:

A Visual Guide to Antioxidants

16 Ultimate Super Foods

Modern Forager: Fruits/Vegetables and Antioxidants

Posted: Aging, Diet, Health, Prevention, Stress

Your Belly Bone’s Connected to Your Brain Bone6

We’re not impressed.

A study published online in this month’s Neurology suggests that people whose waistline expands once they hit age 40 are more likely to develop dementia in their 70s than their slimmer peers.

For the study, researchers measured the abdominal fat of 6,583 people between the ages of 40 and 45 living in Northern California. After an average of 36 years, 16% of participants had developed dementia.

Based on this data, the researchers determined that those with the highest abdominal fat measurements were roughly three times more likely to develop dementia than those with the lowest levels of abdominal fat. These findings held true regardless of whether the individual was of normal weight overall, overweight or obese, although the researchers note that future dementia risk was highest among obese individuals with high abdominal fat measurements. According to researchers, women were more likely than men to have high abdominal fat levels, along with non-whites, those with less than a high school level of education, smokers, and people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes.

Commenting on the findings, one study author notes that “considering that 50% of adults in this country have an unhealthy amount of abdominal fat, this is a disturbing finding.” Speculating on the mechanism behind the link, she cites previous studies suggesting that high abdominal fat in elderly adults results in greater deterioration of the brain, adding that “these findings imply that the dangerous effects of abdominal obesity on the brain may start long before the signs of dementia appear.”

This study is interesting, really it is, but the bottom line is, how many times do we have to hear about the dangers of being overweight before someone steps in and does something? Already, we know that carting around excess pounds ups the risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, osteoarthritis, some cancers – and now dementia – and yet the majority of Americans stand by and don’t do anything about it! However, when a study comes out even suggesting that some drug, food compound or heck, even lifestyle choice, in some way influences cancer risk, people clamor to comply with the new rules. Perhaps it is because when someone dies from a disease such as cancer, their death is attributed to the cancer itself, whereas when it comes as a result obesity, the death is typically chalked up by family members – and even medical examiners – as a heart attack, or coronary artery disease or whatever was the final “nail in the coffin” if you will, for the overweight person in question.

Perhaps it’s time for researchers in their studies to explicitly state the link between obesity and mortality risk – yes, it seems obvious to many, but to the millions of Americans who continue to indulge in unhealthy food and not equate it to actual health risks, perhaps the additional explanation is necessary.

Tim Zim Flickr Photo (CC)

Further Reading:

Study Suggest Carbohydrate-Rich Diet, Obesity Linked to Esophageal Cancer

Physical Inactivity Linked to Prostate Cancer

Higher Cancer Risk if You’re Fat

Posted: Aging, Health, Personal Improvement, Prevention, Weight loss

My Knee is Killing Me… No, Really.14

Paleo Ponderings

One of the standard defenses uttered by those who desperately cling to the fast food and couch-potato lifestyle is, “why should I live like a hunter-gatherer? Their average lifespan was only 35 years.” Ipso fatso, if we clearly weren’t designed to live long, why make all those diet and exercise sacrifices?” This common faulty assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived “nasty, brutish and short” lives has always bugged me. Research suggests that Grok and his family were actually generally healthy (robust is the term), productive - and even so appreciative of their lives that they felt the need to express themselves through art. There are recent studies that suggest there may even have been a selective benefit within tribal units for grandparents – meaning that getting older may have actually had a selective benefit far past procreating. So, if they were so robust and if our genes truly evolved to allow us to live long lives, then why was the average lifespan relatively short? I had always assumed that it was things like deaths during childbirth, infections, accidental poisoning, even tribal warfare that brought the average lifespan down. But then I got a real-life experience of what might have affected the average more than anything else. And it’s really mundane, folks.

I made an unusually bad dive while playing my favorite game “Ultimate Frisbee” last September, slamming my knee hard into the ground and driving my knee-cap down my shin. The result was a torn quadriceps muscle, a ruptured prepatellar bursa and a smashed nerve. An x-ray revealed no other damage and my orthopedist said the soft-tissue injury would heal in 8-12 weeks. He advised me to use pain as my guide and come back slowly. Since I had no pain at all (smashed nerve, remember) I felt like I was recovering fairly quickly – to the point of even resuming my beach sprints in early December. As everything was on track, I decided to go snowboarding six days in Aspen over Christmas break. But despite wrapping the knee every day and taking it fairly easy, (wink, wink - and again no pain) I came home with a very swollen, black and blue knee. By the end of the week, I was unable to bend it more than a few degrees. An MRI revealed a large “organized hematoma” over the quad and kneecap which needed to be removed surgically – otherwise I would carry it with me forever. I went under the knife on January 9. It turns out that the original torn quad muscle had never repaired itself and was leaking blood into the space causing the hematoma. So my surgeon removed the hematoma and stitched the quad back to the patellar tendon. Total recovery time now: 12 weeks.

I tell you all this to illustrate a perfect example of why Paleolithic people may have had such a short lifespan. Here I am 54 years old, with the body of a 25-year-old (and the mind of a 17-year-old) looking forward to living well past 100…but I am effectively incapacitated for over two months now by an injury caused by a random fall. Of course, I have the luxury of modern surgical procedures to repair the damage and get me back on my feet (more on that in a later post) – but had this been 10,000 years ago, my inability to run towards dinner or away from a predator or to stand my ground against an invading tribe might well have been the beginning of the end of me. A small accident that today we take for granted – a fall from a tree branch, off a cliff, a broken arm or a rolled ankle - may have been enough to seriously jeopardize an otherwise healthy older person. The fact that I don’t have the same testosterone levels I had in my 20’s (when I could recover from an injury in two weeks) puts added pressure on my being able to safely afford two or three months of relative inactivity before I am able to hunt and gather effectively once again. The big revelation for me was that our ancestors had all the genetic potential to live to 80, 100 or longer – the lifestyle almost by definition precluded death by any degenerative diseases - but that daily living presented so many obstacles that eventually your number was up. Hence the “average” lifespan dropped and ruined it for everyone.

Alfer22 Flickr Photo (CC)

Further Reading:

Would Grok Chow the Cheese Plate?

What’s All This Talk About Inflammation?

Extreme Exercise: Ultimate Frisbee Included

Medieval Serfs Ate Better Than We Eat

Who Needs Shoes Anyway?

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Technorati Tags: knee, hunter-gatherer, paleo, lifespan, injury, prepatellar bursa, bursitis, Grok

Posted: Aging, Health, Men's Health, Primal Health, Sisson Said What?, Women's Health

Reader Response: Being Fit is Good for Sex5

Last week we heard from reader, primalman08, in response to the Top 10 Reasons to Stay Healthy post:

I would like to encourage you to do more on the sexual benefits of living well. In my practice, I am astonished and saddened to hear about the lack of sex people over 50 are having with their partners. It goes well beyond just ED. It has to do with fatigue, low libido, poor body image and difficulties with positioning due to BMI. I hate to be so frank about it, but it is true and I feel it is very important. I hope that you/we can spend more time addressing this highly personal, highly important topic.

Physical health, we wholeheartedly agree, is downright crucial for sexual well-being, for numerous reasons. And we think it’s a message that’s gotten lost in the ad mix these days. Yes, at this point the images of claw footed bathtubs on hilltops and log cabin jam sessions have etched (or mercilessly seared) themselves into the collective consciousness of our society. (Ladies: the pharmaceutical industry has had a harder time coming up with ideas for you. In 2004, Viagra’s makers literally threw up their hands and gave up, citing women’s confounding lack of causal connection between arousal response and sexual interest.)

Annoyingly omnipresent as these ads are, we’ll give them this: they have encouraged the more seasoned of our society to envision the possibility that they can enjoy healthy sexual functioning in their later decades. Our beef with the ads: society’s growing association between healthy sexual functioning with a pill instead of overall health itself.

Behind the Dysfunctional Scene

The truth is, healthy men and women should be able to enjoy fulfilling sexual experience decades past middle age without the use of the latest pharmaceutical concoction. But healthy is the operative word here. There are, of course, many physiological and psychological factors behind sexual dysfunction.

For men, in particular, conditions that negatively impact vascular health, such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure as well as obesity, back pain, and lack of physical fitness all serve to raise the risk of sexual dysfunction and/or diminished performance/libido.

For women (as the Viagra anecdote illustrates), factors are more complex, including the above physiological conditions as well as other conditions. Just as ED is the common buzzword for men’s sexual dysfunction, HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder) has been applied to women’s common experiences in this arena. Experts estimate that 14-55% of women experience HSDD, with older women accounting for the upper percentages.

Add to the mix, we find all-too-common hormonal imbalance - and not just in terms of the “sex hormones.” Experts agree that hypothyroidism is a major factor in women’s sexual health. For some women, sexual dysfunction can be traced to unaddressed anatomical problems like prolapsed uterus, incontinent bladder and a weakened pelvic floor, conditions often related to childbirth.

Beyond the realm of physical conditions and impairments lies the more subjective side of one’s psychological experience of and interest in sex. Little wonder, is it, that stress figures into the picture for so many men and women. Given the physical toll stress can take on the body and its overwhelming ability to distract our thoughts and attention, stress naturally (but unfortunately) leaves us emptied of the motivation, creativity and emotional energy crucial to both the desire and the effort required for sexual fulfillment.

The Benefits of Health

So, besides popping a pill, what can the more mature among us do to retain and enhance our sexual functioning and fulfillment? While the initial proposals seem obvious, we don’t seem to hear them often enough. Since so much of sexual function relates to vascular health, it’s crucial to keep blood pressure in check and to prevent or actively treat diabetes and atherosclerosis. For both sexes, diet (i.e. low carb and good fatty acid balance) and exercise (i.e. moderate cardio and regular strength conditioning) that promotes hormonal balance is key.

It’s important, of course, to keep body mass index (not the best indicator of health, we know) as close as possible to recommended levels. Well-rounded physical fitness offers the benefits of sexual endurance as well as the muscular strength and litheness advantageous to positioning and comfort. Numerous studies have supported the impact of exercise and physical fitness on body image, sexual function, confidence, responsiveness, performance, and fulfillment. Keep in mind, however, that compulsive or exhaustive exercise can inhibit sexual functioning in both genders because of its impact on hormonal balance.

In addition to standard physical conditioning, women can especially benefit from exercise such as pilates and some yoga positions, that focuses on strengthening pelvic floor muscles. Look for a physical therapist with experience in this area or individual consultations with a well trained pilates instructor. A strong pelvic floor can support bladder control as well as significantly enhance arousal experience and orgasm.

Nutritional and herbal supplements can augment a healthy lifestyle to further boost sexual function. Gingko biloba, for example, is commonly advised for vascular health, while B-complex and other anti-oxidant supplements are recommended for lessening the physical toll of stress. Testosterone is a commonly discussed treatment for both men and women. We recommend lifestyle changes that will naturally sustain or enhance testosterone production. For men, strength training is key. For women, whose testosterone levels naturally don’t increase as much with exercise, we recommend diet and exercise that maintains overall hormonal balance and individual consultation with physicians regarding the impact of particular hormonal replacement therapies and birth control pills (which can blunt natural rises in testosterone during mid-cycle).

Thanks, as always, for the great questions, and keep ‘em coming! And please do offer feedback on this and all of our reader response posts.

krisdecurtis, notsogoodphotography, thecameo Flickr Photo (CC)

Further Reading:

The Secret to Great Abs

Washington Post: French Women Don’t Get Fat and Do Get Lucky

Technorati Tags: sex, sexual dysfunction, hormones, testosterone, hormonal imbalance, libido

Posted: Aging, Fitness, Health, How To, Personal Improvement