THC from cannabis found to dramatically slow memory loss by protecting brain cells

Despite the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) still classifying marijuana as a schedule 1 drug (similar to heroin, ecstasy, LSD, and peyote), a new study confirms that the active compound in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), can benefit the elderly — particularly in preventing memory loss. Researchers from Germany studied THC’s effects on the brains of older mice and found that these animals regained mental clarity after being given pot. To be more specific, the scientists found that the neural connections within the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and emotions, were firing at a rate comparable to younger adults. These findings, if proven similar among humans, could signal better and more affordable treatment options for adults suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Andreas Zimmer, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at Bonn University in Germany, says that the results of this research aids in understanding marijuana’s use as medicine. “Chronic, low-dose treatment with THC or cannabis extracts could be a potential strategy to slow down or even reverse cognitive decline in the elderly,” he stated in an article on DailyMail.co.uk. “THC treatment for 28 days restored the learning and memory performance of mature and old animals in the water maze, novel object recognition social recognition tests to the levels observed in young mice.”

For the study, Professor Zimmer and his team carried out three experiments. The team gave low doses of THC to mice at three different ages: two months, 12 months, and 18 months. In human age, this is roughly the equivalent to 20, 58, and 64-years old, respectively. Over the course of 28 days, the mice were subjected to three tests. In the first, mice had to learn how to navigate around a water maze. The second experiment had mice locate a specific object. The last test related to partner recognition. In all three tests, mature and old mice performed worse than the young group. However, when these groups were introduced to THC, the scientists found that their performance significantly improved. Researchers also noted a profound enhancement in memory and cognitive performance. Professor Zimmer published their findings in Nature Medicine and concluded with, “Cannabis preparations and THC are used for medicinal purposes. They have an excellent safety record and do not produce adverse side-effects when administered at a low dose to older individuals. Thus, chronic, low-dose treatment with THC or cannabis extracts could be a potential strategy to slow down or even to reverse cognitive decline in the elderly.”

Cannabis as medicine?

Zameel Cader, an associate professor in clinical neurosciences at Oxford University commented on the study on NewsWeek.com and said the results of the study were “interesting.”

He was mentioned as saying, “first of all there’s clearly growing interest in the potential therapeutic role of cannabinoids, and in this particular case, THC on various human conditions. This paper is addressing a possible role for that compound in memory and cognition, which is relevant to disorders such as Alzheimer’s and other dementias.” Professor Cader does caution the public not to jump to conclusions though; these findings are limited to animal models. Testing on humans, he said, would be problematic. “This is a challenge faced by anyone wanting to develop a therapy for a human disorder such as dementia. Human lifespan is very extensive. So the question would be, when would be the most appropriate time to give these kinds of medications? Over what period of time do you need to evaluate the effects? In humans it could be years before an effect is noticed.”

Professor Cader’s statement is reflective of the general medical community’s opinion regarding marijuana use. The issue here is the supposed adverse effects (especially in terms of addiction) marijuana can have. That being said, recent research indicates that cannabis use among older adults is rising. Data from the annual National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) showed that from 2002-2014, the number of adults aged 50 to 64 who reported to have used cannabis more than tripled from 2.9 percent to nine percent.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NewsWeek.com

LearnAboutMarijuana.org

SeniorDirectory.com

MedsNews.com

Mic.com

Power of the MIND: Patients cured by sham surgeries because they think the surgeon solved their problem

Scientists have long been aware of what is known as the “placebo effect,” which refers to a treatment that has a positive therapeutic impact on a patient, even though the treatment or medication they received wasn’t actually real. Drugs.com notes that placebo effects have been noted in as many as 40 percent of patients in research studies. But did you know that even surgery is subject to this effect, and that patients can actually be cured by totally fake operations?

The U.K.’s Daily Mail reports that thousands of patients are possibly undergoing invasive surgical procedures for nothing, because the benefits they perceive are placebo effects rather than actual results of the surgery.

Many different types of surgery may be putting patients at unnecessary risk, including keyhole knee surgery, gastric balloons for the morbidly obese and arthritis operations. Surgery for endometriosis, a debilitating condition which can cause infertility and extremely painful periods for women, is another type of surgery in which the results seem to rest more in the mind of the patient than in the surgery itself. [Discover more about the power of the mind at Psychiatry.news]

Other possibly useless surgeries include vertebroplasty, which involves fusing vertebrae by injecting liquid bone cement into the spine; migraine implants; and the removal of damaged bone in osteoarthritis patients.

Studies have found that patients who undergo sham surgeries and are never actually operated on can recover virtually as well as those who really do have the surgery. It would seem that people’s minds are so powerful that just expecting a procedure to work is enough to do the job. [RELATED: Did you know that surgical removal of wisdom teeth is often just a sham?]

Andrew Carr, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Oxford, believes that for certain surgeries patients should be advised about this placebo effect. He notes that the hospital environment, medical professionals being dressed in a certain way, and the fact that the patient is put under anesthesia, combine to “create a phenomenal placebo effect.”

“The correct thing has got to be to do the trials, and not to continue doing operations where we don’t know whether or not there’s a strong placebo component or an entire placebo component, because that means that tens or hundreds of thousands of patients are having unnecessary operations,” Professor Carr noted.

Of course, getting surgeons who have been performing a certain procedure for many years to accept that it is essentially unnecessary can be very difficult. Nonetheless, it is important that they recognize which procedures can be avoided to spare their patients unnecessary and even dangerous surgical interventions.

For a study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers reviewed multiple clinical trials to compare true surgical results versus placebo. They found that in 39 out of 53 trials there was an improvement among the placebo control group. In 27 of the studies they found that results were no different for the placebo group when compared to the surgical group. Interestingly, in 18 of the trials serious adverse effects were reported among the control group, which really illustrates the power of the mind.

In 2014, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study which once again proved the power of sham surgeries. Participants in the trial were divided into two groups; one group received knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus, while the second group only thought they had received the surgery. All the patients were put under anesthesia, and the surgical team went to great lengths to pass instruments and do whatever was necessary to make sure that even patients who could hear what was going on would not know that they were not truly being operated on. Amazingly, both groups recovered from their injuries equally well.

So, next time your surgeon wants to operate on you, it might be worth doing a little extra research and finding out if the surgery is truly necessary.

Sources:

Drugs.com

DailyMail.co.uk

BMJ.com

NEJM.org

New study proves meditation can keep brains young

Taking a few moments each day to quiet your mind can reduce stress, depression, pain, and fight inflammatory diseases on a genetic level. While the scientific world often remains skeptical about the healing powers of this ancient technique, sometimes we don’t need scientific proof since there is no denying that this non-invasive technique works on so many levels. Although the practice of meditation is more than a thousand years old, research on its health benefits only started recently.

Thanks to the growing health-conscious population, meditation is rapidly gaining popularity in the West. With more people turning to this ancient technique, it got some scientists wondering. Curious to find out more, researchers around the world are slowly unraveling the secrets of meditation.

According to new research conducted at the UCLA School of Medicine’s Department of Neurology, anti-aging of the brain can now be added to the growing list of meditation benefits.

A few minutes of meditation a day can make your brain 7.5 years younger

The fact that meditation has a strong influence on our body and mind is nothing new. Previous research already showed that meditation can rebuild the brain’s gray matter in just eight weeks. Meditation can also have a significant impact on our stress levels and the clinical symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Furthermore, scientists recently discovered that meditation forges a network of specific anti-aging genes while improving the overall health of our cells. Building on these previous findings, the UCLA researchers were eager to find out whether the regular practice of meditation is linked to reduced brain age.

The study found that long-term meditators have younger brains, with a higher concentration of brain tissue that is normally depleted as we age. According to the researchers’ findings, long-term meditation can protect our brain against age-related brain decline, thus keeping our brains younger.

They reported that, on average, the brains of long-term meditators were 7.5 years younger at the age of 50 than the brains of people who do not meditate. Additionally, they noted that for every year after 50, the meditators’ brains were an extra one month and 22 days younger compared to the non-meditating group.

Though the years of meditation experience ranged from 4 to 46 years, by the age of 50, most volunteers that participated in the study had close to 20 years of meditation experience. The authors of the study explained that their findings are consistent with prior research that detected significant differences in brain structure among people that meditate on a regular basis.

The results, however, did not reveal how many years of meditation are necessary to have the anti-aging effect. More research will be needed to find the answer to that question. Whatever the answer is, if you are not already engaging in this powerful ancient technique, now is the time to start, regardless of your age.

Meditation, how to start

There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding meditation. Fundamentally, most people think meditation is not for them or they can’t meditate if they don’t sit still in a lotus pose for at least 30 minutes to empty their mind.

While these are common concerns, they are usually based on inaccurate information. Everybody can meditate, and you don’t necessarily have to sit still in a forced lotus pose for extended periods of time. Some like to meditate while laying down, walking around, or while sitting in a chair. Also, while we often hear we should empty our minds, which can be difficult for many of us, meditation is more a practice of letting your thoughts, feelings, and emotions flow, but without judging or focusing attention on them.

If you are worried that you aren’t doing it right or don’t exactly know how to start, just remember there is no wrong way to meditate. If you want some more guidance, you can find tons of beginner videos on YouTube to get you started, or look for a local class.

Sources:

Collective-Evolution.com

Neuro.Uni-Jena.de^PDF

Dangerous Alzheimer’s treatment drug DONEPEZIL being widely prescribed “off-label” was never approved for such uses by the FDA

Donepezil is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Since mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or the phase between normal age-related brain decline and dementia, displays similar symptoms to Alzheimer’s, many physicians also prescribe this drug off-label to patients with MCI.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Nursing, however, are urging doctors to stop prescribing Donepezil, also sold under the brand name Aricept, to people with MCI without first giving them a genetic test. The scientists found that for individuals who carry a specific genetic variation of the butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) gene, this drug may accelerate cognitive decline instead of stopping it.

The study, led by Sophie Sokolow, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Nursing, was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease earlier this year. The co-authors included Ziaohui Li, Lucia Chen, Kent Taylor, and Jerome Rotter, who are all researchers connected to the UCLA. For their study, the team received funding from the National Institute on Aging.

Most commonly prescribed Alzheimer’s drug could speed up mental decline in some people

Though donepezil was previously tested as a possible treatment for MCI in a federally funded study (the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study), it was never approved by the FDA. Nonetheless, many doctors prescribe it off-label to their patients, putting patients at greater risk of mental decline.

For this study, the UCLA scientists analyzed the data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study, which took place in 2005. To reach their conclusion, the team looked for a possible association between the BChE-K gene variation and changes in brain health, reanalyzing the data from the 2005 study. During the trial, researchers used two tests to measure cognitive impairment, the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Clinical Dementia Rating Sum of Boxes.

Sokolow and her colleagues discovered that patients with the K-variant of the BChE gene who took donepezil showed greater changes in their scores on both tests and had more rapid cognitive decline than those who received a placebo.

Previously, the BCHE gene has been identified as one of the few Alzheimer’s disease susceptibility genes with distinct pharmacogenomic properties, meaning drug activity and reactions to a certain drug can vary with the patient’s genes.

“Genetic heterogeneity in amnestic mild cognitively impaired (aMCI) subjects could lead to variations in progression rates and response to cholinomimetic agents. Together with the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE-?4) gene, butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE) has become recently one of the few Alzheimer’s disease (AD) susceptibility genes with distinct pharmacogenomic properties,” the UCLA researchers pointed out.

The use of pharmacogenomic testing has the potential to improve the safety and effectiveness of many drug therapies. Unfortunately, most physicians lack knowledge about the topic of pharmacogenomics and are not prepared to implement it in a clinical setting, a 2014 survey of primary care physicians, cardiologists, and psychiatrists reported.

Since doctors are increasingly prescribing this drug to people with MCI, the researchers hope that their study reinforces the importance of discussing the benefits and risks of every treatment option with their patients.

“These results clearly emphasize the necessity of monitoring potential pharmacogenomic effects in this population of subjects, and suggest enrichment strategies for secondary prevention trials involving prodromal AD [Alzheimer’s disease] subjects,” the UCLA research team concluded.

Stay informed about more brain health news at Brain.news.

Sources include:

NewsWise.com

NeuroDegenerationResearch.eu

USPharmacist.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

Stunned researchers discover that the impact of walking dramatically boosts blood flow to the brain, boosting cognitive function

It’s spring time, with summer on the horizon, and many people are looking to get in shape, get back in shape, or just simply get outside and get some fresh air daily. There are several benefits to going for a brisk walk, especially in the morning, some of which you may not realize. Now, even science is proving that your feet’s impact increases blood flow to not only the heart and other muscles, but walking sends pressure waves through the arteries that increase the supply of blood to the brain.

Did you know that walking just two miles daily reduces the risk of death by nearly 50 percent? Walking in the morning reduces that risk even more. Even the risk of cancer is reduced by walking. But wait, there’s lots more walking does for you. Let’s take an inside look at this simple, enjoyable way to increase longevity and cognitive function.

Research presented at the Experimental Biology 2017 annual meeting shows walking dynamically regulates blood circulation to the brain

Researchers at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) discovered something amazing. Until now, scientists and health researchers thought cerebral blood flow was only involuntarily regulated by the body, and that changes in blood pressure from exercise did not effect the blood supply to the brain.

Using non-invasive ultrasound to measure carotid artery blood velocity waves and arterial diameters, the NMHU researchers measured cerebral blood flow on both sides of the brain. The effects were contrasted between the 12 healthy young adults while they were standing upright during rest and then while steadily walking about one meter per second. Though the blood circulation effects in the brain are less than those from running, they were greater than cycling, since cycling does not involve any foot impact.

From brain power to self esteem to cancer prevention, a morning walk is proving to be a huge asset for mental and physical health

Get ready to jumpstart your energy for the entire day. You don’t have to join a gym or cycle 10 miles to get in shape and get healthy. You don’t have to “cross train” or run in mini-marathons to lose weight, fight disease and get smarter. When people say, “there’s no easy way out,” they’re wrong, because walking is easy. Daily morning walks can help you regulate your sleep cycle, lower your risk of breast cancer, burn glucose, improve blood sugar levels, improve blood circulation, and increase the flow of oxygen to the brain. Want improved mental faculties? Walk. Want to raise your self-esteem? Walk. Want to reduce stress? Walk.

Taking prescription medications to alleviate “symptoms” of deeper rooted health problems can complicate matters and lead to worsening health conditions. Prescription medications are nearly always made in laboratories with chemicals, and that is why there are so many horrific side effects and “adverse events” listed on the warning labels and reviewed on the commercials on television. There’s always the freedom of choice to eat organic food, consult a naturopathic physician, investigate natural medicine, and choose an easy daily workout that won’t injure your body. Go buy some good walking shoes today and choose to walk. It’s as essential to your health as clean food and clean water.

Other benefits of walking every morning include beautiful skin, better vitamin D absorption by your body, better control of cholesterol levels, increased stamina, increased muscle strength and improved metabolism. Are you ready for some extra energy throughout the day, better mental alertness and psychological clarity?

Drop the gluten, the GMOs, the tap water and the flu shots, they’re just polluting your body. Start walking every morning and experience clarity and longevity, the natural way. Now there’s science behind the “theory” that walking helps your brain!

Learn more about the benefits of exercise at MensFitnessFocus.com and WomensFitnessFocus.com.

Sources for this article include:

ScienceDaily.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

NaturalNewsBlogs.com

GoodRelaxation.com