Recently, I spoke on a panel for PBS TV at the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) convention in Boston. The topic was dementia.

There was a woman with mild cognitive impairment on the panel. Her condition is sort of like pre-Alzheimer's disease. Everyone on the panel - including the Harvard neurologist - agreed that memory loss is NOT a normal part of aging. The sad part was that the panel didn't have much to offer people in the way of prevention. Their only solution was just a very bad and pretty ineffective selection of drugs with lots of side effects.

But there is another way to think about brain aging. The brain responds to all the same insults as the rest of the body - stress, poor diet, toxins, lack of exercise or sleep, nutritional deficiencies, and more. All we have to do is give the brain a tune-up and we can see miracles. In today's blog I will give you nine tips that will allow you to do that. But first, let's look a little more closely at the magnitude of this problem.

Dementia on the Rise

Dementia is a big problem and growing every day. Ten percent of 65-year olds, 25 percent of 75-year olds, and 50 percent of 85-year olds will get Alzheimer's disease - at a cost of $60 billion a year to society. Worse, the number of people with Alzheimer's is predicted to triple in the next few decades. It is now the seventh leading cause of death.(i)

Doctors may be able to invoke the same benefits of placebos without the deception.
The Gist

- Even when patients know they're just taking a placebo, they can still see an improvement in their symptoms.

- Doctors sometimes prescribe actual drugs to patients just for the placebo effect, even if they don't think the particular drug will help the patient.

- The placebo effect could be the result of the doctor-patient relationship and the "exchange of healing symbols," according to one researcher.

When they excavated a Scythian burial mound in the Russian region of Tuva about 10 years ago, archaeologists literally struck gold. Crouched on the floor of a dark inner chamber were two skeletons, a man and a woman, surrounded by royal garb from 27 centuries ago: headdresses and capes adorned with gold horses, panthers and other sacred beasts.

But for paleopathologists - scholars of ancient disease - the richest treasure was the abundance of tumors that had riddled almost every bone of the man's body. The diagnosis: the oldest known case of metastasizing prostate cancer.

The prostate itself had disintegrated long ago. But malignant cells from the gland had migrated according to a familiar pattern and left identifiable scars. Proteins extracted from the bone tested positive for PSA, prostate specific antigen.

Often thought of as a modern disease, cancer has always been with us. Where scientists disagree is on how much it has been amplified by the sweet and bitter fruits of civilization. Over the decades archaeologists have made about 200 possible cancer sightings dating to prehistoric times. But considering the difficulties of extracting statistics from old bones, is that a little or a lot?

A recent report by two Egyptologists in the journal Nature Reviews: Cancer reviewed the literature, concluding that there is "a striking rarity of malignancies" in ancient human remains.

"The rarity of cancer in antiquity suggests that such factors are limited to societies that are affected by modern lifestyle issues such as tobacco use and pollution resulting from industrialization," wrote the authors, A. Rosalie David of the University of Manchester in England and Michael R. Zimmerman of Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Also on the list would be obesity, dietary habits, sexual and reproductive practices, and other factors often altered by civilization.

Agency officials say action taken because of reports of severe liver damage

Hursday - U.S. health officials announced Thursday that they will lower the maximum amount of the pain reliever acetaminophen allowed in prescription opioid products such as Vicodin and Percocet because of reports of severe liver damage.

Over a period of three years, the upper threshold of acetaminophen in prescription drugs containing opioids such as codeine will be set at 325 milligrams per dose. Right now, such products can contain up to 750 milligrams of acetaminophen, Dr. Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the Office of New Drugs in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said during a Thursday news conference.

The FDA will also be mandating that such prescription combination products include "black box" warnings on their labels alerting users to the potential for liver damage.

If you are looking to lose weight in the coming year, you may need help from an unexpected place: the bacteria in your gut. That's because scientists have discovered that the bacteria living in your intestines may play a far more significant role in weight loss and gastrointestinal problems than ever imagined.

In a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal, researchers show that a deficiency of Toll-like receptor 2 (Tlr2) -- used by mammals (including humans) to recognize resident microbes in the intestines -- leads to changes in gut bacteria that resemble those of lean animals and humans. This discovery builds on previous research demonstrating that a deficiency of TLR2 protects against obesity, while at the same time promoting gastrointestinal problems like excessive inflammation. It also shows that genes controlling TLR2 expression play a very important role in one's gastrointestinal health and weight management.

The bodies of virtually all U.S. pregnant women carry multiple chemicals, including some banned since the 1970s and others used in common products such as non-stick cookware, processed foods and personal care products, according to a new study from UCSF. The study marks the first time that the number of chemicals to which pregnant women are exposed has been counted.

Analyzing data for 163 chemicals, researchers detected polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides, perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), phenols, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), phthalates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and perchlorate in 99 to 100 percent of pregnant women. Among the chemicals found in the study group were PBDEs, compounds used as flame retardants now banned in many states including California, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane ( DDT), an organochlorine pesticide banned in the United States in 1972.

Bisphenol A (BPA), which makes plastic hard and clear, and is found in epoxy resins that are used to line the inside of metal food and beverage cans, was identified in 96 percent of the women surveyed. Prenatal exposure to BPA has been linked to adverse health outcomes, affecting brain development and increasing susceptibility to cancer later in life, according to the researchers.

Findings will be published in Environmental Health Perspectives on Jan. 14, and now are available on an embargoed basis.

The study was not designed to identify direct connections to adverse health outcomes.

A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), found higher Bisphenol A (BPA) levels in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) compared to controls. Furthermore, researchers found a statistically significant positive association between male sex hormones and BPA in these women suggesting a potential role of BPA in ovarian dysfunction.

BPA is a very common industrial compound used in food and drink packaging, plastic consumer products and dental materials. PCOS is the most common endocrine disorder of women of reproductive age and is characterized by excessive secretion of androgens which are masculinization-promoting hormones. The syndrome raises the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, infertility and heart disease.

"Our research shows that BPA may be more harmful to women with hormonal and fertility imbalances like those found in PCOS," said Evanthia Diamanti-Kandarakis, MD, PhD, study co-author and professor at the University of Athens Medical School in Greece. "These women should be alert to the potential risks and take care of themselves by avoiding excessive every-day consumption of food or drink from plastic containers."

Current guidance advising mothers in the UK to exclusively breast feed for the first six months of their baby's life is being questioned by child health experts in the British Medical Journal today.

The authors, led by Dr Mary Fewtrell, a consultant paediatrician at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London, have reviewed the evidence behind the current guidance and say the time is right to reappraise this recommendation.

The researchers stress that while they fully back exclusive breast feeding early in life, they are concerned that exclusively doing so for six months and not introducing other foods may not always be in the child's best interests.

In 2001 the World Health Organisation (WHO) made its global recommendation that infants should be exclusively breast fed for the first six months. Many western countries did not follow this recommendation but in 2003 the UK health minister announced that the UK would comply.

Scientists have genetically modified chickens to prevent the transmission of avian influenza, an innovation that could cut the risk of a lethal strain crossing to the human population and boost the poultry industry.

The chickens created at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities produce a genetic "decoy" molecule that mimics part of the replication machinery of the flu virus. This diverts the enzyme required for the virus to pass between cells - and stops the infection.

Although GM birds could still succumb when injected with the lethal H5N1 strain, they never passed the infection on to healthy cagemates, even those without genetic modification.

The research appears in the journal Science.

Apart from their flu protection, the GM birds are indistinguishable from non- GM chickens of the same breed. Laurence Tilney of Cambridge university said they would be safe to eat.

New science is proving that a simple, ancient method of cleansing the body used by Native Americans for centuries has widespread positive effects on health and can help you lose weight, lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, enhance detoxification, and experience less joint pain. I'm talking about heat therapy-specifically, the use of infrared saunas.

Heat therapy is a significantly underutilized treatment in medicine. However, with the growing movement to find more self-directed, more natural, less invasive ways to overcome health problems and lose weight, it's becoming more popular among the American public. And that's a good thing! As we will see in a moment, the science bears out the use of heat as a treatment modality for a wide variety of health conditions.