From BBC.Co.Uk

Eating a curry once or twice a week could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, a US researcher suggests.

The key ingredient is curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric.

Curcumin appears to prevent the spread of amyloid protein plaques – thought to cause dementia – in the brain.

But the theory, presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ annual meeting, has been given a lukewarm reception by UK experts.

“ If you have a good diet and take plenty of exercise, eating curry regularly could help prevent dementia ”
Professor Murali Doraiswamy Duke University
Amyloid plaques, along with tangles of nerve fibres, are thought to contribute to the degradation of the wiring in brain cells, eventually leading to symptoms of dementia.

Professor Murali Doraiswamy, of Duke University in North Carolina, said there was evidence that people who eat a curry meal two or three times a week have a lower risk of dementia.

He said researchers were testing the impact of higher doses – the equivalent of going on a curry spree for a week – to see if they could maximise the effect.

Animal studies

Professor Doraiswamy told the meeting: “There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic research on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits.”

“You can modify a mouse so that at about 12 months its brain is riddled with plaques.

“If you feed this rat a curcumin-rich diet it dissolves these plaques. The same diet prevented younger mice from forming new plaques.

“The next step is to test curcumin on human amyloid plaque formation using newer brain scans and there are plans for that.”

Professor Doraiswamy said a clinical trial was now underway at the University of California, Los Angeles, to test curcumin’s effects in Alzheimer’s patients.

He said research had also examined turmeric’s therapeutic potential for treating conditions such as cancer and arthritis.

Good diet

He stressed that eating a curry could not counter-balance the increased risk of dementia associated with a poor diet.

“ Indian communities that regularly eat curcumin have a surprisingly low incidence of Alzheimer’s disease but we don’t yet know why ”
Dr Susanne Sorensen Alzheimer’s Society
However, he said: “If you have a good diet and take plenty of exercise, eating curry regularly could help prevent dementia.”

Professor Doraiswamy predicted it might be possible to develop a curry pill which had the same therapeutic effect.

However, Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, stressed that people would need to eat a lot of curry – over 100g of turmeric curry powder – to get a clinical dose of curcumin.

She said: “Professor Doraiswamy’s unpublished research applies only to animal models; his hypothesis has not been confirmed in human clinical trials.

“We look forward to the results of the human curcumin trial at UCLA.”

Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Indian communities that regularly eat curcumin have a surprisingly low incidence of Alzheimer’s disease but we don’t yet know why.

“Alzheimer’s Society is keen to explore the potential benefits of curcumin in protecting the brain and we are conducting our own research into this area.

“A cheap, accessible and safe treatment could transform the quality of life of thousands of people with the condition.”

From MedIndia.net:

Researchers have found a combination of laser therapy to safely and effectively treat one of the most common skin conditions that plagues teenagers and adults alike-acne.

Dermatologist Macrene Alexiades-Armenakas, MD, PhD, FAAD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., demonstrated how photodynamic therapy combined with a long-pulse, pulsed-dye laser and topical 5-aminolevulinic acid provides long-lasting clearance of acne lesions.

“Laser technology has made great inroads in the treatment of acne, which until recently has been treated almost exclusively, and with varying degrees of success, with topical, systemic and hormonal medications,” said Alexiades-Armenakas.

She added: “Now, we have solid evidence-based medicine supporting the effectiveness of certain laser therapies as a long-term solution for treating active acne. The key is to distinguish the benefits and limitations of these available technologies and select the most effective treatments for each acne patient.”

In a preliminary study, Alexiades-Armenakas examined whether a combination of photodynamic therapy (PDT) with a photosensitizer known as topical 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and activated by long-pulse, pulsed dye laser could safely and effectively clear mild to severe cases of acne.

PDT works by using laser or light energy, in this case a pulsed dye laser was used, to activate the ALA, which is a solution that penetrates into the oil glands and is applied to the skin one hour prior to treatment.

As it penetrates, ALA binds to the oil glands and sensitizes the cells to light.

The researchers treated 14 patients with ALA PDT, who received one to six treatments depending on the severity of their acne and continued to use topical medications during and after the study.

The control group consisted of four patients who were either treated with conventional therapy (such as systemic or topical medications) or with laser energy but without ALA PDT.

After the analysis, Alexiades-Armenakas found that all (100 percent) of the 14 patients in the ALA PDT treatment group experienced complete clearance of their acne.

She reported that an average of 2.9 ALA PDT treatments was administered to this patient group and improvement in the acne lesions was visible within one to two weeks after the first treatment.

She said: “The first-of-a-kind study found this particular form of photodynamic therapy used in conjunction with topical therapy to be the first such treatment to achieve complete clearance of acne up to 13 months post treatment and a 77 percent clearance rate per treatment. Four subsequent studies conducted by other investigators involving an additional 75 patients demonstrated similar results.

“Patients also experienced an added benefit of significant improvement in their acne scars, as the pulsed dye laser offers superior penetration to the deeper layers of the skin where scars form.”

Side effects were limited to mild redness that lasted for 48 hours, and the treatment was found to be safe even for patients of color with no complications, such as hyperpigmentation.

For patients with intermittent acne flares and pronounced oily skin with large pores, ALA PDT treatment with a 1450nm diode laser that heats the deep layer of skin where the oil glands are located has been shown to help these patients in as little as one to three treatments.

The findings of the study were presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology (Academy).

It's all about stimulating the brain. The brain is like a giant battery that needs to be charged and one of the major ways it receives that charge is through exercise. If the brain isn't working at close to 100% you will start to see break downs in the body systems. That's why you can see people who are sleep deprived have high B.P, Anxiety problems, depression, and a bunch of other health problems. Keep exercising and eating a whole foods diet to feed your brain.

From ScienceDaily.com:

Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School, the University of Cambridge and the University of Michigan, have for the first time identified a relationship between Vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin”, and cognitive impairment in a large-scale study of older people. The importance of these findings lies in the connection between cognitive function and dementia: people who have impaired cognitive function are more likely to develop dementia.

The study was based on data on almost 2000 adults aged 65 and over who participated in the Health Survey for England in 2000 and whose levels of cognitive function were assessed. The study found that as levels of Vitamin D went down, levels of cognitive impairment went up. Compared to those with optimum levels of Vitamin D, those with the lowest levels were more than twice as likely to be cognitively impaired.

Vitamin D is important in maintaining bone health, in the absorption of calcium and phosphorus, and in helping our immune system. In humans, Vitamin D comes from three main sources – exposure to sunlight, foods such as oily fish, and foods that are fortified with vitamin D (such as milk, cereals, and soya drinks). One problem faced by older people is that the capacity of the skin to absorb Vitamin D from sunlight decreases as the body ages, so they are more reliant on obtaining Vitamin D from other sources.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, dementia affects 700,000 people in the UK and it is predicted that this figure will rise to over 1 million by 2025. Two-thirds of sufferers are women, and 60,000 deaths a year are attributable to the condition. It is believed that the financial cost of dementia to the UK is over £17 billion a year.

Dr. Iain Lang from the Peninsula Medical School, who worked on the study, commented: “This is the first large-scale study to identify a relationship between Vitamin D and cognitive impairment in later life. Dementia is a growing problem for health services everywhere, and people who have cognitive impairment are at higher risk of going on to develop dementia. That means identifying ways in which we can reduce levels of dementia is a key challenge for health services.”

Dr Lang added: “For those of us who live in countries where there are dark winters without much sunlight, like the UK, getting enough Vitamin D can be a real problem – particularly for older people, who absorb less Vitamin D from sunlight. One way to address this might be to provide older adults with Vitamin D supplements. This has been proposed in the past as a way of improving bone health in older people, but our results suggest it might also have other benefits. We need to investigate whether vitamin D supplementation is a cost-effective and low-risk way of reducing older people’s risks of developing cognitive impairment and dementia.”

From MedicalNewsToday.com:

UCLA scientists and colleagues from UC Riverside and the Human BioMolecular Research Institute have found that a form of vitamin D, together with a chemical found in turmeric spice called curcumin, may help stimulate the immune system to clear the brain of amyloid beta, which forms the plaques considered the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

The early research findings, which appear in the July issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, may lead to new approaches in preventing and treating Alzheimer’s by utilizing the property of vitamin D3 – a form of vitamin D – both alone and together with natural or synthetic curcumin to boost the immune system in protecting the brain against amyloid beta.

Vitamin D3 is an essential nutrient for bone and immune system health; its main source is sunshine, and it is synthesized through the skin. Deficiencies may occur during winter months or in those who spend a lot of time indoors, such as Alzheimer’s patients.

“We hope that vitamin D3 and curcumin, both naturally occurring nutrients, may offer new preventive and treatment possibilities for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Milan Fiala, study author and a researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

Using blood samples from nine Alzheimer’s patients, one patient with mild cognitive impairment and three healthy control subjects, scientists isolated monocyte cells, which transform into macrophages that act as the immune system’s clean-up crew, traveling through the brain and body and gobbling up waste products, including amyloid beta. Researchers incubated the macrophages with amyloid beta, vitamin D3 and natural or synthetic curcumin.

The synthetic curcuminoid compounds were developed in the laboratory of John Cashman at the Human BioMolecular Research Institute, a nonprofit institute dedicated to research on diseases of the human brain.Researchers found that naturally occurring curcumin was not readily absorbed, that it tended to break down quickly before it could be utilized and that its potency level was low, making it less effective than the new synthetic curcuminoids.

“We think some of the novel synthetic compounds will get around the shortcomings of curcumin and improve the therapeutic efficacy,” Cashman said.

The team discovered that curcuminoids enhanced the surface binding of amyloid beta to macrophages and that vitamin D strongly stimulated the uptake and absorption of amyloid beta in macrophages in a majority of patients.

Previous research by the team demonstrated that the immune genes MGAT III and TLR-3 are associated with the immune system’s ability to better ingest amyloid beta. In this earlier work, Fiala noted, it was shown that there are two types of Alzheimer’s patients: Type 1 patients, who respond positively to curcuminoids, and Type II patients, who do not.

“Since vitamin D and curcumin work differently with the immune system, we may find that a combination of the two or each used alone may be more effective – depending on the individual patient,” he said.

Fiala noted that this is early laboratory research and that no dosage of vitamin D or curcumin can be recommended at this point. Larger vitamin D and curcumin studies with more patients are planned.

The study was funded by the Human BioMolecular Research Institute, the Alzheimer’s Association and MP Biomedicals LLC, a global life sciences and diagnostics company dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease research. Fiala is a consultant for MP Biomedicals and also served in the company’s speakers bureau.

From. foodnews.org:

What’s the Difference?
An EWG (Environmental Working Group) simulation of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets shows that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 80 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead. Eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables will expose a person to about 10 pesticides per day, on average. Eating the 15 least contaminated will expose a person to less than 2 pesticides per day. Less dramatic comparisons will produce less dramatic reductions, but without doubt using the Guide provides people with a way to make choices that lower pesticide exposure in the diet.

Most Contaminated: THE DIRTY DOZEN
Consistent with two previous EWG investigations, fruits topped the list of the consistently most contaminated fruits and vegetables, with seven of the 12 most contaminated foods. The seven were peaches leading the list, then apples, nectarines and strawberries, cherries, and imported grapes, and pears. Among these seven fruits:

Nectarines had the highest percentage of samples test positive for pesticides (97.3 percent), followed by peaches (96.7 percent) and apples (94.1 percent).
Peaches had the highest likelihood of multiple pesticides on a single sample – 87.0 percent had two or more pesticide residues — followed by nectarines (85.3 percent) and apples (82.3 percent).
Peaches and apples had the most pesticides detected on a single sample, with nine pesticides on a single sample, followed by strawberries and imported grapes where eight pesticides were found on a single sample of each fruit.
Peaches had the most pesticides overall, with some combination of up to 53 pesticides found on the samples tested, followed by apples with 50 pesticides and strawberries with 38.
Sweet bell peppers, celery, kale, lettuce, and carrots are the vegetables most likely to expose consumers to pesticides. Among these five vegetables:

Celery had the highest of percentage of samples test positive for pesticides (94.1 percent), followed by sweet bell peppers (81.5 percent) and carrots (82.3 percent).
Celery also had the highest likelihood of multiple pesticides on a single vegetable (79.8 percent of samples), followed by sweet bell peppers (62.2 percent) and kale (53.1 percent).
Sweet bell peppers had the most pesticides detected on a single sample (11 found on one sample), followed by kale (10 found on one sample), then lettuce and celery (both with nine).
Sweet bell peppers were the vegetable with the most pesticides overall, with 64, followed by lettuce with 57 and carrots with 40.
Least Contaminated: THE CLEAN FIFTEEN
The vegetables least likely to have pesticides on them are onions, sweet corn, asparagus, sweet peas, cabbage, eggplant, broccoli, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes.

Over half of the tomatoes (53.1 percent), broccoli (65.2 percent), eggplant (75.4 percent), cabbage (82.1 percent), and sweet pea (77.1 percent) samples had no detectable pesticides. Among the other three vegetables on the least-contaminated list (asparagus, sweet corn, and onions), there were no detectable residues on 90 percent or more of the samples.
Multiple pesticide residues are extremely rare on any of these least contaminated vegetables. Tomatoes had the highest likelihood, with a 13.5 percent chance of more than one pesticide when ready to eat. Onions and corn both had the lowest chance with zero samples containing more than one pesticide.
The greatest number of pesticides detected on a single sample of any of these low-pesticide vegetables was five (as compared to 11 found on sweet bell peppers, the vegetable with the most residues on a single sample).
Broccoli had the most pesticides found on a single type of vegetable, with up to 28 pesticides, but far fewer than the most contaminated vegetable, sweet bell peppers, on which 64 were found.
The fruits least likely to have pesticide residues on them are avocados, pineapples, mangoes, kiwi, papayas, watermelon and grapefruit.

Fewer than 10 percent of pineapple, mango, and avocado samples had detectable pesticides on them, and fewer than one percent of samples had more than one pesticide residue.
Though 54.5 percent of grapefruit had detectable pesticides, multiple residues are less common, with only 17.5 percent of samples containing more than one residue. Watermelon had residues on 28.1 percent of samples, and just 9.6 percent had multiple pesticide residues.
METHODOLOGY
The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides ranks pesticide contamination for 47 popular fruits and vegetables based on an analysis of 87,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted from 2000 to 2007 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Nearly all the studies used to create the list test produce after it has been rinsed or peeled. Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.

The six measures of contamination we used were:

Percent of the samples tested with detectable pesticides
Percent of the samples with two or more pesticides
Average number of pesticides found on a sample
Average amount (level in parts per million) of all pesticides found
Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample
Number of pesticides found on the commodity in total
The philosophy behind the guide is simple: give consumers the information they need to make choices to reduce pesticides in their diets. In this spirit, the Guide does not present a complex assessment of pesticide risks, but instead simply reflects the overall load of pesticides found on commonly eaten fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainty of the risks of pesticide exposure and the value judgments involved in the choice to buy food with less pesticides.

Pesticides cause many adverse effects in well designed animal studies, from cancer to nervous system damage to reproductive effects. Rather than assign more weight to cancer than birth defects, we simply assumed that all adverse effects are equal. There is a significant degree of uncertainty about the health effects of pesticide mixtures. This ranking takes this uncertainty into account in the most defensible way possible, by simply ranking fruits and vegetables by their likelihood of being consistently contaminated with the greatest number of pesticides at the highest levels.

The produce listed in the Guide was chosen after an analysis of USDA food consumption data from 1994-1996. The 47 selected were those reported eaten on at least one tenth of one percent of all “eating days” in the survey and with a minimum of 100 pesticide test results from the years 2000 to 2007. An eating day is one day of food consumption reported to USDA by one individual, some of whom were followed for three days.