Daily Vitamin B Pill Can Help Stave Off Alzheimer's Disease

The tablet, containing high doses of B vitamins and folic acid, reduced memory decline by 70 per cent in some elderly people.

It also halved the rate of brain shrinkage in some patients - a physical symptom associated with forgetfulness that can lead to full blown Alzheimer's disease.

More than 800,000 people in Britain suffer from dementia and the number is forecast to double within a generation, but previous drug trials have been unsuccessful.

In future people could be tested for vitamin B levels in middle age and alter their diet to boost their chances of remaining healthy, researchers said.

A full scale national trial to establish whether the breakthrough can actually delay the slide into Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia is expected to begin within the next year.

Dr Celeste de Jager of Oxford University, who led the trial, said the trial had "definitively" shown that the vitamins were a good way of preventing mental decline.

Speaking at the British Science Festival, she said: "A lot of the time brain changes start in your forties and fifties before you get clinical symptoms.

"I would think that in middle age people should start thinking about their vitamin levels."

People should not begin taking supplements without consulting their doctor because they can have a harmful impact on other conditions such as cancer, she added.

Asked if she would take the vitamins as a precaution, Dr de Jager said: "I would ask the doctor to check my B12 and my folic acid levels for starters.

"I take supplements when I'm feeling a bit low, I don't take one every day but I would certainly have multi-vitamins and B vitamins in my cupboard."

Researchers recruited 270 people aged 70 and above who suffered from lapses in memory known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

The condition affects 1.5 million people in Britain, or one in six people aged over 70, and half of all sufferers slip into dementia within five years of being diagnosed.

The new treatment targets a compound in the bloodstream called homocysteine which is produced naturally by the body but reaches higher levels in old age.

It damages the lining of blood vessels and leads to shrinkage of the brain, causing an increased risk of Alzheimer's as well as stroke and heart disease.

Half of patients were given pills containing extremely high doses of vitamins B6, B12 and folic acid, which are known to lower blood homocysteine levels, while the rest were given a placebo.

At several points during the study patients were given a simple verbal memory task in which they learnt a list of 12 words and required to recall them 20 minutes later.

After the first year, those with the highest levels of homocysteine were 70 per cent more likely to give a correct answer if they had been taking the vitamins than if they took the placebo.

There was little difference in memory rates between patients with below average levels of homocysteine regardless of which pills they took.

This indicated that normal amounts of the compound do not affect brain function.

Scans of patients' brains showed that the vitamin pills reduced shrinkage by 30 per cent on average, rising to 50 per cent among patients with high homocysteine levels.

"The higher the homocysteine level in the blood, the better the response was on treatment," Dr de Jager said.

"We need more research to show that we can actually delay the decline to dementia."

The doses of vitamins patients were given were far higher than those found in vitamin supplements or in food, she added.

For example the pills contained 20mg of vitamin B6, which is found in meat, whole grains, nuts and bananas and for which the recommended daily allowance is 1.4mg for men and 1.2mg for women.

An Alzheimer's Society spokesperson said: "We all know it’s important to get enough vitamins.

"However, people shouldn’t rush out and empty the shelves of vitamin B tablets. More research is needed to establish whether it has benefits for people without existing memory problems, and if it could prevent dementia."

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8760703/Daily-Vitamin-B-pill-can-help-stave-off-Alzheimers-disease.html

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Study: Multivitamin Intake Linked to Younger ‘Biological Age’

The cells of multivitamin users may have a younger biological age than cells from non-users, according to new research from the US.

Researchers led by Honglei Chen, MD, PhD from National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences looked at the length of telomeres, DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that shorten as cells replicate and age.

The ageing and lifespan of normal, healthy cells are linked to the so-called telomerase shortening mechanism, which limits cells to a fixed number of divisions.

During cell replication, the telomeres function by ensuring the cell's chromosomes do not fuse with each other or rearrange, which can lead to cancer.

Elizabeth Blackburn, a telomere pioneer at the University of California San Francisco, likened telomeres to the ends of shoelaces, without which the lace would unravel.

With each replication the telomeres shorten, and when the telomeres are totally consumed, the cells are destroyed (apoptosis). Previous studies have also reported that telomeres are highly susceptible to oxidative stress.

Dr Chen and his co-workers noted that telomere length may therefore be a marker of biological ageing, and that multivitamins may beneficially affect telomere length via modulation of oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.

According to results published in the new issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the telomeres of daily multivitamin users may be on average 5.1 per cent longer than in non-users.

“To our knowledge, this was the first epidemiologic study of multivitamin use and telomere length,” wrote Dr Chen and his co-workers.

“Regular multivitamin users tend to follow a healthy lifestyle and have a higher intake of micronutrients, which sometimes makes it difficult to interpret epidemiologic observations on multivitamin use.

“Further investigations would be needed to understand the role of multivitamin use and telomere length and its implication in the etiology of chronic diseases.”

Multivitamin Use

According to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) State-of-the-Science Panel, half of the American population routinely use dietary supplements, with their annual spend estimated at over $20 billion.

Recent results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that 35 per cent of the US adult population regularly consumes one or more types of multivitamin product (Am. J. Epidemiol., 2004, Vol. 160, Pages 339-349).

New Study

Dr Chen and his co-workers analysed multivitamin use and nutrient intakes, as well as telomere length of 586 women aged between 35 and 74 in the Sister Study. A 146-item food-frequency questionnaire was used to determine multivitamin use and nutrient intakes.

Compared to non-multivitamin users, the researchers noted that that telomeres were on average 5.1 per cent longer for daily multivitamin users.

In an attempt to identify specific nutrients that could be behind the observations, a positive relationship between telomere length and intakes of vitamins C and E from foods was observed.

“Whereas the evidence is not sufficient to conclude that these 2 dietary antioxidants mediated the observed relation, the results are consistent with experimental findings that vitamins C and E protect telomeres in vitro,” wrote the researchers.

Being the first study to report such an association, Dr Chen and his co-workers emphasized that the evidence is only preliminary and that additional epidemiologic studies are required to further explore the association. The implications of the findings in terms of ageing and the etiology of chronic diseases should be carefully evaluated.

From: http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/

By Stephen Daniells

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

June 2009, Volume 89, Number 6, Pages 1857-1863, doi:10.3945/ajcn.2008.26986

"Multivitamin use and telomere length in women"

Authors: Q. Xu, C.G. Parks, L.A. DeRoo, R.M. Cawthon, D.P. Sandler, H. Chen

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Would the medical community lie to you for money?

Would the medical community lie to you for money?

The medical community loves flawed medical studies. They use them for two specific purposes:

First, they use flawed medical studies to gain approval for dangerous prescription drugs that kill more than 100,000 Americans per year and seriously injure some 2.1 million more.

Secondly, they used flawed medical studies to “prove” that nutritional supplements and other natural healing modalities are “useless” or even “dangerous.”

In short, raw corporate greed is the main reason the medical community loves flawed medical studies. They make billions of dollars a year selling the latest prescription “miracle drugs” that get approved based upon the results of their flawed studies. And they keep millions of Americans in a constant state of ill-health by using flawed medical studies to promote the idea that better nutrition is worthless.

Only last week it was revealed by Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, that doctors receiving huge pay-offs from the pharmaceutical industry (one doc got over $1.6 million in payoffs) used flawed medical studies to justify the use of potentially dangerous prescription drugs, oftentimes even on children.

Did you hear about that on the news? Probably not. And here’s why: As soon as the story broke, the orthodox medical community released their latest study claiming to demonstrate that multi-vitamins have no beneficial effects whatsoever against cardiovascular disease or cancer. And of course, the news media dutifully ate up that story, plastering it across headlines in the print and internet news media, and running the story ad nauseum on their TV news broadcasts.

Pot Calls the Kettle Black

It seems the orthodox medical community pot is always calling the natural health community kettle black, in order to protect their own turf.

It is almost a proverb that accusers with vested interests in maintaining the status quo and protecting their turf tend to reveal more about themselves in their accusations than they do about their victims. They point the finger and scream “Quackery!” and “Fraud!” at the natural health industry, when in reality it is they who are committing the quackery and fraud. Their accusations against natural health are only designed to hide their own evil doings.

The Study that Studied Nothing

In the news article below, we see the how the news media has loudly touted the latest new “study” by the medical community, which supposedly proves that multi-vitamins are useless. Yet a careful examination of the study demonstrates that absolutely nothing was actually “studied.”

In fact, far from a “study,” it was really more of a poll in which the medicrats simply asked women whether or not they take multi-vitamins and whether or not they have ever had heart disease or cancer. They then concluded that because many people who claim to have taken multi-vitamins later got either cancer or heart disease, vitamin intake must be worthless!

I wonder if they’ve ever done a poll like that, asking people if they’ve ever taken aspirin, and then asking them if they’ve ever had a headache. Obviously, just about everybody would say “yes” to both questions, and the only conclusion that could be deduced from the results would be that aspirin is useless against headaches.

Deceiving the Gullible Public Into Staying Sick and Dependent on Drugs

As usual, the medicrats know exactly what they are doing. The general public is unfortunately very gullible. They believe pretty much everything they hear on the news. And even more so if the name of a prestigious medical group or medical journal is invoked. And they never look any further into it than what their newsman tells them.

Mores the pity, because they have no idea that the medicrats have a vested financial interest in keeping them in a chronic state of ill-health, which means keeping them off of vitamins and other inexpensive nutrients that could bolster their immunity, strength and well-being.

After all, healthy people don’t make the medical community any money. Only weak, unhealthy people do.


Women's Multivitamin Study Seriously Flawed, As Usual
http://www.naturalnews.com/025576.html

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine claims that multivitamins are useless at preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease in women. The mainstream media has predictably picked up on this story, gleefully running it as "proof" that nutrition is worthless and only pharmaceuticals can enhance your health.

What they're not telling you, though, might shock you. Here's the truth about this so-called "scientific" study on multivitamins:

• No multivitamins were even used in the study! The women followed in this study weren't actually given any multivitamins at all. They were simply asked if they take multivitamins!

• There was no quality control in the study. Since no multivitamins were given to women, there was no quality control at all. Did these women take cheap, synthetic vitamins bought at Costco? Or did they take quality supplements from better sources? Nobody knows because it wasn't tracked!

• Most people SAY they take multivitamins, but don't. If you ask most people, they will TELL you they eat healthy, and that they take multivitamins. But in reality they don't. Most people greatly exaggerate the description of their own health habits.

• Multivitamin consumption FREQUENCY was not accurately measured. There was no ability of this study to reliably measure how often consumers actually took their multivitamins. Did they take them once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Even taking them once a year would have counted in this study as "taking multivitamins." Gee, no wonder the results showed no improvement...

In effect, this study did not measure the effects of multivitamins on cancer and heart disease. What it really measured was the degree to which people exaggerate their own claims of health habits, and the degree to which the mainstream media so easily falls for junk science.

The MSM remains utterly clueless about nutrition, and it simply reprints practically any study published in a medical journal, even when that study is obviously based on deceptive science and a pro-Pharma agenda.

All these attacks on vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants and multivitamins have the same source: The Big Pharma-funded mainstream media and its effort to try to discredit nutritional supplements in order to please advertisers.

The very idea that nutrition is bad for you but Big Pharma's chemicals are good for you is insane to begin with. But that's what they want you to believe: Nutrition isn't required in the human body, they claim. But pharmaceutical chemicals are essential!

What they want you to do is shut up, eat your (processed) food, take your (chemical) medications, get your (fraudulent) disease screening, pay your taxes, watch television ads, make more (sheeple) babies and stop questioning the status quo. And multivitamins? Stop wasting your money on them. You'll need that money to buy more monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals, after all.Buzz up!3 votes

About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org