Keep Health Up

Archive for August, 2010

Eat well and feel good! According to newscientist.com combating diabetes and depression, as well as improving educational standards and diets, are the best ways to reduce the incidence of dementia. That’s the conclusion of a study published today in the BMJ that followed 1433 elderly people living in the south of France, testing them for signs of dementia over seven years.

Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society in the UK, said that taking measures to tackle diabetes, depression and heart disease could improve the lives of millions of people and save huge amounts of money currently being spent on caring for sufferers:

This important study builds on existing evidence that a healthy lifestyle can lower your risk of dementia even more than if we had been allowed to select our genes ourselves.

Modern studies have shown that chronic shortage of vitamin B12 can lead to serious harms. This vitamin is essential to every cell in your body. The vitamin takes important part in the process in which your body makes the genetic material that comprises the cell nucleus.

Vitamin B12 is far more than a cheerleader in this process. It rolls up its sleeves and goes to work, helping to make the nucleic acids that are strung together like pearls to form DNA, the genetic e-mail system. It also helps make RNA, the copy of DNA that’s sent along to each cell.

Vitamin B12 also maintains the fatty sheath, called myelin, that surrounds and protects nerve fibers and promotes their normal growth, Dr. Pinto says. Like insulation around copper wires, this sheath allows your radiating network of nerves to send their electrical messages without short-circuiting. When B12 is missing, the myelin sheath breaks down, which eventually leads to nerve damage. Vitamin B deficiencies are one of the most common deficiencies with consequences for your mouth and teeth. Teeth whitening in Oxford is a good chance for your teeth to look great but don’t forget about vitamins as well.

Adults need approximately 0.0015 mg a day and if you eat meat, fish or dairy foods then you should be able to get enough vitamin B12 from your diet. All people who are keeping vegan diet might not get enough of this vitamin because vitamin B12 was not found in vegetable foods (such as fruit, vegetables and grains), but in all meat products and certain algae such as seaweed. Good sources include meat, salmon, cod, milk, cheese, eggs, yeast extract, and some fortified breakfast cereals.