for FRANK

[Guest guest]

FRANK I REALLY APPRECIATE the articles u had here on baby

shots and autism i have copied every one down and giving

them to my granddaughter she has 6 months old twins and

one recently got the lousy 4 shots and the hib and 2

hours later in a coma of course the hospital said no

way connected to shots tried to say it was reflus problem

they had reflux since birth and never this but i gave

her the first article u sent and the shots are off now

till at least one year old hooping when she reads rest

that ll change too KEEP UP YOUR POSTS they re really

importand as is everyones on this site i love it

and i would rather follow this than any doctor im really

leary of docrors and hospotals had a lot of bad

experiences last 2 years have a good day mary

-

" Frank " <califpacific

<alternative_medicine_forum >

Wednesday, November 19, 2003 1:20 AM

Research is serving up the evidence

for brain food

 

 

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/7283965.htm

 

Research is serving up the evidence for brain food

BY TOM SIEGFRIED

The Dallas Morning News

 

 

NEW ORLEANS - (KRT) - Eating a spinach salad for lunch every day might be

smarter than you think - it could make you think smarter.

 

If you don't like spinach, try a cup of blueberries instead. Unless you plan

on flying to Mars - or otherwise exposing yourself to cosmic rays. In that

case forget the blueberries - snarf down a daily pint of strawberries.

 

OK, this all sounds a little suspiciously like the dietary advice you get

from those paid TV or radio shows pushing " miracle " medicines that

supposedly maintain your mind in a perpetually youthful condition. But

actually it's what real brain scientists are finding out about food for

thought. If you want to keep your brain healthy and wise as you age, you

don't need to be making the health-food-fad industry wealthy.

 

To be sure, it's a little too soon to clip a recipe for retaining your

faculties from the meeting program of the Society for Neuroscience. But at

the society's annual meeting, held last week in New Orleans, several

researchers reported intriguing new clues, mostly from animal studies, to

the secret of keeping the mind youthful as the body ages.

 

In rats, for instance, a blueberry-rich diet seemed to reduce levels of a

brain chemical linked to memory loss with age. Older rats generally possess

higher levels of the chemical, known as NF-Kappa-B, and higher levels of it

correspond with poorer memory. But older rats that had been fed blueberry

supplements had NF-Kappa-B levels similar to young rats in several brain

regions involved in memory.

 

" Of course, you cannot automatically apply these findings from rats to the

human being, " said David Malin, a neuroscientist at the University of

Houston-Clear Lake, who participated in the study. " But nevertheless, these

results . are also consistent with a wider pattern of results emerging from

a number of laboratories. And this pattern of results raises at least the

possibility that fairly simple diet modifications might slow down the normal

process of brain aging and memory impairment. "

 

Malin said that it isn't clear how blueberries confer their benefits, but

presumably some of the chemicals that produce the blue color also protect

cells against the renegade molecular fragments called free radicals. Free

radicals damage cells by the chemical process called oxidation; the

protective chemicals found in blueberries and many other fruits and

vegetables are therefore known as antioxidants. Common dietary antioxidants

include vitamins C, E and forms of vitamin A.

 

Naturally you don't need to eat a cup of blueberries to get a good dose of

antioxidants - you get about as much from a large spinach salad, said James

Joseph of Tufts University in Boston. But nobody knows which particular

antioxidant gives the brain the most benefit. In fact, it seems most likely

that the best recipe contains combinations of various antioxidants.

 

" I think it's becoming clear that there's going to be no universal

antioxidant, " said Bernard Rabin, a psychologist at the University of

Maryland, Baltimore County.

 

Furthermore, different combinations may be best for protecting against

different dangers. Blueberries, for instance, don't seem to help rats

exposed to heavy atomic nuclei present in cosmic rays.

 

The cosmic ray question is a serious one, since future space travelers would

no doubt be exposed to damaging doses without some sort of protection.

 

" There's no way to send enough shielding up there to protect the astronauts

and still fly the mission, " Rabin said during a news conference at the

neuroscience society meeting. " We thought we would try some of the diets

we've heard had been successful in counteracting the effects of aging. "

 

Rats exposed to cosmic ray particles do not perform very well on tasks

designed to get them to push a bar many times for a food reward. Even rats

fed blueberry-enriched diets before and after exposure to the rays still

eventually show less skill on the task.

 

But cosmic-rayed rats given a strawberry supplement perform similarly to the

rats never exposed to cosmic ray particles at all.

 

" We believe diet can be an important component of radiation protection for

astronauts on exploratory class missions to Mars and perhaps even to other

planets, " Rabin reported at the meeting.

 

Of course, many questions remain to be answered before you'll know for sure

which is the best berry for your brain.

 

" It's still too early in the study of dietary supplements in fruits and

vegetables to really zero in on exactly what's happening, " said Carl Cotman,

of the University of California, Irvine. Much more information is needed on

what the proper doses are to produce beneficial effects, and especially on

what mixture of chemicals is helpful in which circumstances.

 

" We scientists love to study known amounts of single characterized

compounds - it's easy for us to study in a rigorous way, " said Malin. " But

Mother Nature may not think that way. "

 

Nature, in other words, may produce complicated foods for a reason -

possibly to help make brains smart enough to figure out what their owners

ought to eat.

 

---

 

© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.