Your Brain, Your Health

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The Alzheimer's Association reports that it believes the first person to be cured of this dreaded disease is walking around today .

The Human Rights Commission reports that violence and murder against trans people, especially trans people of color, is rising at an alarming pace. New research from Holland is quickly unraveling the mysteries of sexuality and sexual orientation to show that all sexuality takes place in the brain, in the uterus, and is out of the control of all parties, except to embrace it and love the baby and the child and the adult. 

Gene editing is being called the miracle of the future, which may be closer than we think. Imagine diagnosing and repairing some of our worst remaining diseases, which mostly have their basis in our brains. 

These examples show the importance of the brain for every person. Even from a budget perspective, brain-related diseases and disorders account for more than half of our health care bill each year. 

I think you might like this book – "A Thousand Moms' Sourcebook of Brain and Behavior: For Teachers, Parents and Students. Second Edition (Make America Smart Again)" by David Balog.

Start reading for free: https://a.co/05DIU6Sm

All of these facts make it important to be aware of the brain, it's capabilities, it's limitations, it's realities. Based on the widely used Dana Sourcebook of Brain Science, published from 1997 until 2006 and now updated, this sourcebook tells readers why the brain matters, outlines basic workings of this remarkable structure, and how self-inflicted wounds from substance abuse can produce an immediate euphoric feeling--at the cost of long-term, devastating addiction and damage. 

This source book office offers a panoramic overview of what has been called the most remarkable resource in the known, or even unknown, will world. 

Author David Balog created, wrote, and edited the Dana Sourcebook of Brain Science through its first four editions. He now is back editing this resource to help parents, teachers, and students understand more who they are and why they act the way they do. 

Available now at a reduced introductory price. Just some of the topics cover covered include: Alzheimer's disease, dyslexia, ADHD, stroke, speech disorders, eating disorders, autism, Parkinson's disease and more. David Mahoney, founder of the Brain Awareness Movement at the Charles a Dana Foundation, said, "One out of five people will have a brain disease or disorder. Five out of five will know or be a caregiver for someone with a brain disease or disorder."

I think you might like this book – "A Thousand Moms' Sourcebook of Brain and Behavior: For Teachers, Parents and Students. Second Edition (Make America Smart Again)" by David Balog.

Start reading it for free: https://a.co/05DIU6Sm

7-8 hours of sleep improves health

 

Credit: © Brian Jackson / stock.adobe.com

Less than five hours' sleep a night linked to higher risk of multiple diseases

Date:

October 19, 2022

Source:

University College London

Summary:

Getting less than five hours of sleep in mid-to-late life could be linked to an increased risk of developing at least two chronic diseases, finds a new study.

Getting less than five hours of sleep in mid-to-late life could be linked to an increased risk of developing at least two chronic diseases, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

Your brain at risk. Start reading for FREE.

The research, published in PLOS Medicine, analysed the impact of sleep duration on the health of more than 7,000 men and women at the ages of 50, 60 and 70, from the Whitehall II cohort study.

Researchers examined the relationship between how long each participant slept for, mortality and whether they had been diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases (multimorbidity) -- such as heart disease, cancer or diabetes -- over the course of 25 years.

People who reported getting five hours of sleep or less at age 50 were 20% more likely to have been diagnosed with a chronic disease and 40% more likely to be diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases over 25 years, compared to people who slept for up to seven hours.

Additionally, sleeping for five hours or less at the age of 50, 60, and 70 was linked to a 30% to 40% increased risk of multimorbidity when compared with those who slept for up to seven hours.

Researchers also found that sleep duration of five hours or less at age 50 was associated with 25% increased risk of mortality over the 25 years of follow-up -- which can mainly be explained by the fact that short sleep duration increases the risk of chronic disease(s) that in turn increase the risk of death.

Lead author, Dr Severine Sabia (UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health, and Inserm, Université Paris Cité) said: "Multimorbidity is on the rise in high income countries and more than half of older adults now have at least two chronic diseases. This is proving to be a major challenge for public health, as multimorbidity is associated with high healthcare service use, hospitalisations and disability.

"As people get older, their sleep habits and sleep structure change. However, it is recommended to sleep for 7 to 8 hours a night -- as sleep durations above or below this have previously been associated with individual chronic diseases.

"Our findings show that short sleep duration is also associated with multimorbidity.

"To ensure a better night's sleep, it is important to promote good sleep hygiene, such as making sure the bedroom is quiet, dark and a comfortable temperature before sleeping. It's also advised to remove electronic devices and avoid large meals before bedtime. Physical activity and exposure to light during the day might also promote good sleep."

As part of the study, researchers also assessed whether sleeping for a long duration, of nine hours or more, affected health outcomes. There was no clear association between long sleep durations at age 50 and multimorbidity in healthy people.

Your brain at risk. Start reading for FREE.

Breakthrough Test for Alzheimer's

New blood test shows great promise in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease

Date:

July 29, 2020

Source:

Lund University

Summary:

A new blood test demonstrated remarkable promise in discriminating between persons with and without Alzheimer's disease and in persons at known genetic risk may be able to detect the disease as early as 20 years before the onset of cognitive impairment, according to a large international study.

Brain essentials in plain language. Click here!

    

FULL STORY

A new blood test demonstrated remarkable promise in discriminating between persons with and without Alzheimer's disease and in persons at known genetic risk may be able to detect the disease as early as 20 years before the onset of cognitive impairment, according to a large international study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and simultaneously presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference.

For many years, the diagnosis of Alzheimer's has been based on the characterization of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, typically after a person dies. An inexpensive and widely available blood test for the presence of plaques and tangles would have a profound impact on Alzheimer's research and care. According to the new study, measurements of phospho-tau217 (p-tau217), one of the tau proteins found in tangles, could provide a relatively sensitive and accurate indicator of both plaques and tangles -- corresponding to the diagnosis of Alzheimer's -- in living people.

"The p-tau217 blood test has great promise in the diagnosis, early detection, and study of Alzheimer's," said Oskar Hansson, MD, PhD, Professor of Clinical Memory Research at Lund University, Sweden, who leads the Swedish BioFINDER Study and senior author on the study who spearheaded the international collaborative effort. "While more work is needed to optimize the assay and test it in other people before it becomes available in the clinic, the blood test might become especially useful to improve the recognition, diagnosis, and care of people in the primary care setting."

Brain essentials in plain language. Click here!

Researchers evaluated a new p-tau217 blood test in 1,402 cognitively impaired and unimpaired research participants from well-known studies in Arizona, Sweden, and Colombia. The study, which was coordinated from Lund University in Sweden, included 81 Arizona participants in Banner Sun Health Research Institute's Brain Donation program who had clinical assessments and provided blood samples in their last years of life and then had neuropathological assessments after they died; 699 participants in the Swedish BioFINDER Study who had clinical, brain imaging, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and blood-based biomarker assessments; and 522 Colombian autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease (ADAD)-causing mutation carriers and non-carriers from the world's largest ADAD cohort.

In the Arizona (Banner Sun Health Research Institute) Brain Donation Cohort, the plasma p-tau217 assay discriminated between Arizona Brain donors with and without the subsequent neuropathological diagnosis of "intermediate or high likelihood Alzheimer's" (i.e., characterized by plaques, as well as tangles that have at least spread to temporal lobe memory areas or beyond) with 89% accuracy; it distinguished between those with and without a diagnosis of "high likelihood Alzheimer's" with 98% accuracy; and higher ptau217 measurements were correlated with higher brain tangle counts only in those persons who also had amyloid plaques.

In the Swedish BioFINDER Study, the assay discriminated between persons with the clinical diagnoses of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases with 96% accuracy, similar to tau PET scans and CSF biomarkers and better than several other blood tests and MRI measurements; and it distinguished between those with and without an abnormal tau PET scan with 93% accuracy.

In the Colombia Cohort, the assay began to distinguish between mutation carriers and non-carriers 20 years before their estimated age at the onset of mild cognitive impairment.

In each of these analyses, p-tau217 (a major component of Alzheimer's disease-related tau tangles) performed better than p-tau181 (another component of tau tangles and a blood test recently found to have promise in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's) and several other studied blood tests.

In the last two years, researchers have made great progress in the development of amyloid blood tests, providing valuable information about one of the two cardinal features of Alzheimer's. While more work is needed before the test is ready for use in the clinic, a p-tau217 blood test has the potential to provide information about both plaques and tangles, corresponding to the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. It has the potential to advance the disease's research and care in other important ways.

"Blood tests like p-tau217 have the potential to revolutionize Alzheimer's research, treatment and prevention trials, and clinical care," said Eric Reiman, MD, Executive Director of Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix and a senior author on the study.

"While there's more work to do, I anticipate that their impact in both the research and clinical setting will become readily apparent within the next two years."

Alzheimer's is a debilitating and incurable disease that affects an estimated 5.8 million Americans age 65 and older. Without the discovery of successful prevention therapies, the number of U.S. cases is projected to reach nearly 14 million by 2050.

Brain essentials in plain language. Click here!

Limited offer: free e-books on the brain and health

These books, part of the Healing the Brain Series from A Thousand Moms cover topics important to teachers, students, parents, counselors...anybody concened with their family, their friends, theirselves. Please take a look, download these flipbooks, and share. 

About the author: David Balog is chief information officer for A Thousand Moms: Building Community Support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth in Foster/Adoptive Care. He was a science/medical writer at the Dana Foundation in New York City, where he created, wrote and edited the Dana Sourcebook of Brain Science through four editions. More than 50,000 copies of this widely acclaimed book was distributed to teachers, students, and professionals in all 50 states and numerous other countries.

Amazon.com reviews: Author David Balog has done an excellent job of creating a book for educators (or anyone working with youth) that explains the complicated workings of the brain in an easy to understand manner. Balog goes on to discuss various types of trauma and how the adolescent brain responds to trauma such as depression, stress, addiction, risk taking, PTSD, etc. 

[A] cohesive narrative about a subject that has been put in the dark by society. I was informed about things I thought I knew plenty about. I was inspired by the read and heavily recommend that anyone reading this reviews invests themselves into this book and the cause it strives for. 

Provides comfort and learning to the reader. Flows easily from one topic to the next and knits tidbits of information together in a unifying mosaic. Easy to read. Difficult to put down. 

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Memory Slips: It Was on the Tip of My Tongue

 

In Making Memories, Change Is Good

Learning depends on the plasticity of the circuits in the brain--the ability of the neurons to make lasting changes in the efficiency of their synaptic transmission.

The brain can thus be said to store information in networks of modified synapses (the arrangement of which constitutes the information) and to retrieve this information by activating these networks.

Our understanding of the rules that govern association and the networking of neurons goes back to the groundbreaking work done by Donald Hebb more than 50 years ago. Hebb had an intuition that if two neurons are active at the same time, the synapses between them are strengthened. This hypothesis inspired many researchers, and the first mechanism supporting it, long-term potentiation (LTP), was discovered in the early 1970s.

Memory Slips

The neurons involved in establishing a network must already be connected by synapses in order for these synapses to be strengthened or weakened. Networks are thus fashioned out of pre-existing “wiring.” Some of these pre-wired networks, such as those in the hippocampus, play a key role in the formation of memories.

 Montreal Neurological Institute

“I Have It at the Tip of My Tongue!”

Having a word “at the tip of your tongue” is a familiar but frustrating sensation. There it is, not very far, you know it, you can feel it, but you can’t find it! To make matters worse, very often another word keeps popping into your mind—you know it’s not the right one, but it keeps getting in the way so that you can’t find the one you’re looking for. 

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