Opinion by Brett Arends •
If you’re getting more forgetful as you age—and who among us isn’t—
there are two things you can do about it this Memorial Day weekend.
Take a multivitamin. And go for a 30-minute walk.
Oh — and then keep both of them up.
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(Dailymotion) – Search (bing.com)
So report peer-reviewed scientific studies out this week, which have found that regular vitamins and walks can slow or even reverse the effects of cognitive decline on the aging brain.
The average effect on the aging brain of a daily multivitamin is the equivalent of being a full three years’ younger, according to the study conducted by researchers at Columbia and Harvard medical schools and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
“We estimate that the effect of the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance above placebo by the equivalent of 3.1 years of age-related memory change,” the researchers report in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
This was based on a study of more than 3,500 senior citizens over three years.
The participants were randomly assigned either to take a Centrum Silver multivitamin
or a placebo every day. They were subjected to various standard brain tests every year,
such tests requiring people to recall as many words as possible from a random list.
Researchers say the benefits were most pronounced in those with underlying heart disease. The benefits of the daily vitamin showed up as early as the first annual test,
and persisted in years afterward, the researchers said.
These findings confirm similar findings in a parallel study published last year,
which found that a daily multivitamin benefited the whole brain, not just the memory. That study, too, found the effects were most pronounced among those with underlying heart disease.
Meanwhile another independent study, conducted at the University of Maryland,
found that walking for 30 minutes three or four times a week also has a significant
beneficial effect on the brains of older people.
The study involved 33 participants aged between 71 and 85, who exercised on a treadmill under supervision over 12 weeks. Verbal memory tests and MRI scans showed brain and memory benefits, even that quickly.
There are so many scientific studies coming out these days—on age-related
cognitive decline as well as everything else—that it’s easy to become injured.
But cognitive impairment, and full-blown dementia, are already pandemics…
way more extensive than Covid.
Alzheimer’s is currently killing over 6 million Americans, and the numbers are rising.
And the scientific breakthroughs in terms of medical treatments, let alone cures, are scarce and expensive. Alzheimer’s is already killing six times as many Americans as all those who died with Covid, and the numbers are heading up.
So it’s good news that there are things we can do on our own.
These include not just vitamins and walking, but eating the right foods,
avoiding the wrong ones, studying, doing crosswords, and meditating.
We can hardly do them all at once. But anything is better than nothing.
How B Vitamins Can Help Your brain – Search (bing.com)
Next challenge for those of us getting older?
Remember to take the multivitamin every morning.
And remembering where we put them.
Multivitamins may help slow age-related memory loss, study shows – YouTube
Those who took a daily Centrum Silver pill over a period of three years had better
memories than those who received a placebo treatment, new research found.
By Linda Carroll
Multivitamin supplements may help slow
the normal forgetfulness that comes with aging, researchers reported Wednesday.
The analysis of data from more than 3,500 older participants showed that those who
took a daily Centrum Silver pill over a period of three years had better memories than
those who received a placebo treatment, according to the report published in
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The effects seen in the study are “very, very encouraging,” said study co-author
Adam Brickman, a professor of neuropsychology at the Vagelos College of Physicians
and Surgeons at Columbia University.
“Cognitive change and memory loss are a top health concern for older adults,” he said. “And we don’t have many strategies to mitigate the changes that come with aging.
So, it’s encouraging that a supplement can help address one of the main health
concerns older adults have.” To explore whether a daily multivitamin could benefit cognitive function, the researchers turned to participants in the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), a multiyear study which has enrolled 21,442 older men and women to investigate the effects of cocoa supplements and multivitamins on cognition and the risk of cancer and cardiovascular events.
Haleon, formerly known as Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, makes Centrum Silver and provided vitamins used in the trial. Mars Edge, part of the Mars candy and snack maker, partially funded the study with the National Institutes of Health. Neither company had any role in designing the trial or input in the findings.
A multivitamin supplement may slightly improve memory and slow decline.
For the new study, Brickman and his colleagues followed a subset of 3,562 individuals from the larger trial who were randomly assigned to receive a multivitamin or a placebo. The researchers used a new web-based test to evaluate participants’ memories at the beginning of the study, at one year and at three years.
Compared to the placebo group, the men and women taking a daily multivitamin did significantly better on the memory test, which evaluated a person’s ability to immediately reproduce a list of words after reading it, the study found.
The researchers estimate that the multivitamin intervention improved
memory performance by the equivalent of 3.1 years compared to the placebo.
It’s the second large study to find a cognitive benefit from taking multivitamins.
Last year, another trial, COSMOS-Mind, found that daily multivitamins were associated with a 60% slowing of cognitive aging globally. That study also used data from a subset
of COSMOS participants.
It’s not uncommon for researchers to fail to replicate the results of “big flashy studies,” Brickman said. “We have a clear replication of the effect of multivitamins on cognition. That gives us a lot more confidence in the data.”
The researchers don’t yet know which ingredient in the multivitamins,
which include A, C, B vitamins and zinc, might be driving the effects on cognition.
“It’s important to understand this,” said epidemiologist Howard Sesso, an associate
professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and study co-author.
It’s also not clear whether these results would be seen with other brands of multivitamins.
“This particular brand was selected because it is commonly used in the U.S. and has a good quality and safety record,” said Sesso, who is also a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “In addition, we tested a very similar Centrum Silver formulation” in an earlier study called the Physicians’ Health Study II, he said. That study found no cognitive benefit from taking multivitamins.
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The researchers have not yet looked at other types of multivitamins to determine
if they would work as well or if the benefit is specific to a certain formulation.
The effect seen by the researchers is relatively small, so an individual might not notice
any improvement although it can be seen in the larger data, said Dr. Paul Newhouse,
director of the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive Medicine, who was not involved with
the new research. It’s notable “neither group showed a decline in cognition,” he said.
“Rather, you’re seeing the degree to which one group improved over three years.”
Although the effect is small, using multivitamins along with other lifestyle
modifications already shown to reduce the risk of cognitive decline, such as exercise
and following the Mediterranean diet, might lead to a larger combined impact, he said.
Newhouse doesn’t recommend that doctors prescribe multivitamins to their patients to prevent cognitive decline.
“We need longer studies,” he said. “But this study does suggest that multivitamin supplementation is not harmful and may be potentially beneficial.” Also, because the participants had either finished or attended college, the results might not be the same for other groups of people, said Dr. Riddhi Patira, an investigator at the Alzheimer’s Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
They are also not typical of the patients she sees, who are already experiencing cognitive decline. “These are normal individuals who are able to go online to take the test,” Patira said. “They are highly motivated people.” When patients ask her for lifestyle changes that might help prevent cognitive decline, she suggests a healthy diet.
Patira, who was not involved with the new study, feels the follow-up isn’t long enough
to suggest multivitamins for a cognitive boost. In healthy people with normal cognition,
declines “move so slow, it’s hard to detect anything meaningful after a year,” she said,
adding that differences might not be detectable for five to 20 years.
I have been researching everything I need to know about Alzheimer’s & Dementia lately. What has been helping my 94-year-old mother is a complete breakfast, Shopping Cart Therapy, Word Search Puzzles and in the Evening MeTV (MASH, Andy Griffith Show, Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres). Laughter is Great Medicine and after she watches those old shows she is fast asleep, and a good night sleep helps a lot.
Ageless Brain (getagelessbrain.com)
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