middle-aged

Calcium and vitamin D improve cholesterol in postmenopausal women

A new study from the Women's Health Initiative has found that calcium and vitamin D supplements after menopause can improve women's cholesterol profiles, with much of that effect tied to raising vitamin D levels. Taking the calcium and vitamin D supplements was especially helpful in raising vitamin D levels in women who were older, women who had a low intake, women who had levels first measured in the winter, and women who didn’t smoke and who drank less alcohol.

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New cause of high blood pressure and heart disease discovered

Two studies help explain why kidney disease increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure and vascular calcification. The mediator seems to be a hormone called FGF23, which is sensitive to the level of phosphates in the body.

Phosphate rich foods include processed cheese, Parmesan, cola, baking powder and most processed foods.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-05/uovm-nco050514.php

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How stress increases your risk for stroke and heart attack

A study in which 157 healthy adult volunteers were asked to regulate their emotional reactions to unpleasant pictures, has found that those who showed greater brain activation when regulating their negative emotions also had higher blood levels of interleukin-6 (a marker for inflammation) and increased thickness of the carotid artery wall (a marker of atherosclerosis).

The finding helps explain why stress increases the risk for stroke and heart attack.

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Diabetes duration and severity associated with brain atrophy

A study involving 614 patients with type 2 diabetes (mean age 62) has found that longer duration of diabetes was associated with more brain volume loss, particularly in the gray matter. Roughly, for every 10 years of diabetes, the brain was similar to that of a non-diabetic person who was two years older.

However, the study did not confirm any association of diabetes characteristics with small vessel ischemic disease.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/rson-dda042214.php

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Gender affects cardiovascular risk in those with type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes greatly increases a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease, but a new study shows that cardiovascular risk factors such as elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels differ significantly between men and women with diabetes.

The study, involving 680 diabetics, found that blood pressure and LDL cholesterol levels were significantly higher in women, and women were significantly less likely to have these factors under control. Some 17% of men had control of these factors, compared to 6% of women.

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Gum disease bacteria may cause heart disease

A mouse study has found that introduction of oral bacteria into the bloodstream increased risk factors for atherosclerotic heart disease, including cholesterol and inflammation, suggesting that the same bacteria that cause gum disease also promotes heart disease. The findings are consistent with recent evidence that patients with gum disease are at higher risk for heart disease.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

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Early surgical menopause linked to faster cognitive decline

February, 2013

Women who undergo surgical menopause at an earlier age may have an increased risk of cognitive decline.

The issue of the effect of menopause on women’s cognition, and whether hormone therapy helps older women fight cognitive decline and dementia, has been a murky one. Increasing evidence suggests that the timing and type of therapy is critical. A new study makes clear that we also need to distinguish between women who experience early surgical menopause and those who experience natural menopause.

The study involved 1,837 women (aged 53-100), of whom 33% had undergone surgical menopause (removal of both ovaries before natural menopause). For these women, earlier age of the procedure was associated with a faster decline in semantic and episodic memory, as well as overall cognition. The results stayed the same after factors such as age, education and smoking were taken into consideration.

There was also a significant association between age at surgical menopause and the plaques characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. However, there was no significant association with Alzheimer’s itself.

On the positive side, hormone replacement therapy was found to help protect those who had surgical menopause, with duration of therapy linked to a significantly slower decline in overall cognition.

Also positively, age at natural menopause was not found to be associated with rate of cognitive decline.

Reference: 

Bove, R. et al. 2013. Early Surgical Menopause Is Associated with a Spectrum of Cognitive Decline. To be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 21, 2013.

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Why learning gets harder as we get older

February, 2013

A mouse study shows that weakening unwanted or out-of-date connections is as important as making new connections, and that neurological changes as we age reduces our ability to weaken old connections.

A new study adds more support to the idea that the increasing difficulty in learning new information and skills that most of us experience as we age is not down to any difficulty in acquiring new information, but rests on the interference from all the old information.

Memory is about strengthening some connections and weakening others. A vital player in this process of synaptic plasticity is the NMDA receptor in the hippocampus. This glutamate receptor has two subunits (NR2A and NR2B), whose ratio changes as the brain develops. Children have higher ratios of NR2B, which lengthens the time neurons talk to each other, enabling them to make stronger connections, thus optimizing learning. After puberty, the ratio shifts, so there is more NR2A.

Of course, there are many other changes in the aging brain, so it’s been difficult to disentangle the effects of this changing ratio from other changes. This new study genetically modified mice to have more NR2A and less NR2B (reflecting the ratio typical of older humans), thus avoiding the other confounds.

To the researchers’ surprise, the mice were found to be still good at making strong connections (‘long-term potentiation’ - LTP), but instead had an impaired ability to weaken existing connections (‘long-term depression’ - LTD). This produces too much noise (bear in mind that each neuron averages 3,000 potential points of contact (i.e., synapses), and you will see the importance of turning down the noise!).

Interestingly, LTD responses were only abolished within a particular frequency range (3-5 Hz), and didn’t affect 1Hz-induced LTD (or 100Hz-induced LTP). Moreover, while the mice showed impaired long-term learning, their short-term memory was unaffected. The researchers suggest that these particular LTD responses are critical for ‘post-learning information sculpting’, which they suggest is a step (hitherto unknown) in the consolidation process. This step, they postulate, involves modifying the new information to fit in with existing networks of knowledge.

Previous work by these researchers has found that mice genetically modified to have an excess of NR2B became ‘super-learners’. Until now, the emphasis in learning and memory has always been on long-term potentiation, and the role (if any) of long-term depression has been much less clear. These results point to the importance of both these processes in sculpting learning and memory.

The findings also seem to fit in with the idea that a major cause of age-related cognitive decline is the failure to inhibit unwanted information, and confirm the importance of keeping your mind actively engaged and learning, because this ratio is also affected by experience.

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