Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience – Page 963

Summary: Health organizations recommend keeping high cholesterol levels in check to be healthier. [Author: Brady Hartman – This article first appeared on the website LongevityFacts.]

High cholesterol levels are a silent killer that significantly increases the risk of stroke, kidney disease heart attack, and death. Cholesterol builds up the insides of artery walls, blocking the arteries that feed the brain, heart, kidneys. Treatment is efficient and inexpensive, yet many people walk around with high cholesterol levels, needlessly letting it steal years from their lives.

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Summary: A wrap-up of the 2017 reports on the search for breakthrough treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and other forms of dementia, showing the advancements made in understanding, treating and preventing these neurodegenerative diseases, including promising therapies in the pipeline. [This article first appeared on the website LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

During 2017, researchers made advances towards understanding what causes Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other forms of dementia. During the year, brain scientists announced they have many promising treatments for dementia in the pipeline. Moreover, researchers have suggested ways to prevent these disabling neurodegenerative diseases.

Here’s a wrap-up of advancements made in understanding, treating and preventing dementia.

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Summary: Researchers say coffee prevents Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s for those consuming 3 cups daily. The brain health benefits of the beverage seem to differ between decaf and regular coffee. [Author: Brady Hartman. This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.com.]

Perhaps you’ve heard the latest news – the evidence on coffee’s health benefits is increasing every day.

In fact, new research shows that coffee protects your brain, and recent studies show that daily coffee drinkers have a significantly reduced risk of both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

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“Yes, Mr. Bedford is here.”

That’s what Marji Klima, executive assistant at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, told me over email this week. She was referring to Dr. James Hiram Bedford, a former University of California-Berkeley psychology professor who died of renal cancer on Jan. 12, 1967. Bedford was the first human to be cryonically preserved—that is, frozen and stored indefinitely in the hopes that technology to revive him will one day exist. He’s been at Alcor since 1991.

His was the first of 300 bodies and brains currently preserved in the world’s three known commercial cryonics facilities: Alcor; the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan; and KrioRus near Moscow. Another 3,000 people still living have arranged to join them upon what cryonicists call “deanimation.” In other words, death.

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For anyone who has accidentally injured themselves, Dr. Zachary Campbell not only sympathizes, he’s developing new ways to blunt pain.

“If you have ever hit yourself with a hammer, afterward, even a light touch can be painful for days or even weeks,” said Campbell, who researches pain on the molecular level at The University of Texas at Dallas. “While many of us may not be coordinated enough to avoid an accident, my goal is to disrupt the inception and persistence of pain memories.”

Campbell directs the Laboratory of RNA Control and recently published a study in the journal Nature Communications in close collaboration with Dr. Ted Price, an associate professor from the Pain Neurobiology Research Group, and Dr. Michael Burton, a new assistant professor from the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences who conducted postdoctoral work at UT Dallas.

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Distinct amyloid-beta prion strains discovered in different variants of Alzheimer’s disease.

In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by Carlo Condello presented their results from a study of the sliced brain fragments of deceased Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. It appears different amyloid-beta prions are uniquely associated with different AD variants [1].

A primer on Alzheimer’s disease

AD is a chronic neurodegenerative disease affecting about 5% of the population above 65 years of age—the time when the first symptoms usually manifest. It is estimated to be the cause of up to 70% of all cases of dementia, which according to WHO projections, by 2050 will be around 115 million.

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