NOW Foods - Fish Oil Found to Increase Brain Chemicals that Help Protect Against Alzheimer Disease

Fish Oil Found to Increase Brain Chemicals that Help Protect Against Alzheimer Disease

By Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS, May 10, 2006, abstracted from Synaptic proteins and phospholipids are increased in gerbil brain by administering uridine plus docosahexaenoic acid orally” printed online April 21, 2006

Alzheimer’s is a disease that has doubled among Americans since 1980, currently affects more than 4.5 million Americans, is expected to hit 16 million by 2050,¹ and costs $100 billion each year to treat.² However, there are a number of ways to help protect yourself against Alzheimer Disease (AD), including increasing your intake of wine,³apples,⁴ vitamin E,⁵ grape seed extract,⁶green tea,⁷ increasing your HDL cholesterol,⁸ and exercising.⁹

While most of these protective measures are aimed at preventing oxidative stress in the brain, fish oil has been found to help protect against AD by increasing levels of certain brain chemicals. Along with DHA (the fat in fish oil), these brain chemicals, called phosphatides, have been found to be decreased in AD patients.^(10,11)

In the new study,¹² researchers gave animals a diet containing special phosphatides called choline and uridine (CU), DHA, or both CU and DHA daily for four weeks. Each consumed an average of 5 g of food per day so that their average intakes of uridine, choline, and DHA were 240, 80, and 300 mg per kg per day, respectively.

At the end of one month, researchers found that brain phophatides increased by 13–22% in both the CU and DHA groups and by 45% in the CU + DHA group. The CU + DHA combination also increased brain proteins that are decreased in AD patients¹³by as much as 48%.

For the researchers, DHA, CU, or CU + DHA “might thus be useful and offer therapeutic benefit in treating [AD].”

Greg Arnold is a Chiropractic Physician practicing in Danville, CA. You can contact Dr. Arnold directly by emailing him at mailto:ChiroDocPSUalum@msn.com or visiting his website www.CompleteChiropracticHealthcare.com

Reference:

¹ Hebert, LE; Scherr, PA; Bienias, JL; Bennett, DA; Evans, DA. “Alzheimer Disease in the U.S. Population: Prevalence Estimates Using the 2000 Census.” Archives of Neurology August 2003; 60 (8): 1119 – 1122

² Ernst, RL; Hay, JW. “The U.S. Economic and Social Costs of Alzheimer’s Disease Revisited.” American Journal of Public Health 1994; 84(8): 1261 – 1264

³ Yanai, T., Y. Suzuki, and M. Sato, Prolyl endopeptidase inhibitory peptides in wine. Biosci Biotechnol Biochem, 2003. 67(2): p. 380-2

⁴ Lee, C. Y. (2004). "Protective Effects of Quercetin and Vitamin C against Oxidative Stress-Induced Neurodegeneration." Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 52: 7514-7517

⁵ Morris, M. C., D. A. Evans, et al. (2005). "Relation of the tocopherol forms to incident Alzheimer disease and to cognitive change." Am J Clin Nutr 81(2): 508-14

⁶ Kim H. Consideration of Grape Seed Extract as a Preventive against Alzheimer Disease. The Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Prevention of Dementia, June 18-21, 2005 www.alz.org/preventionconference/pc2005/overview.asp

⁷ Tan J. Green Tea Epigallocatechin-3-Gallate (EGCG) Modulates Amyloid Precursor Protein Cleavage and Reduces Cerebral Amyloidosis in Alzheimer Transgenic Mice J. Neurosci. 2005 25: 8807-8814

⁸ Wolf, H., A. Hensel, et al. (2004). "Serum lipids and hippocampal volume: The link to Alzheimer's disease?" Ann Neurol 56(5): 745-9

⁹ Tan, Z. S., S. Seshadri, et al. (2005). "Bone mineral density and the risk of Alzheimer disease." Arch Neurol 62(1): 107-11

¹⁰ R.M. Nitsch, J.K. Blusztajn, A.G. Pittas, B.E. Slack, J.H. Growdon and R.J. Wurtman, Evidence for a membrane defect in Alzheimer disease brain, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 89 (1992), pp. 1671–1675

¹¹ M. Soderberg, C. Edlund, K. Kristensson and G. Dallner, Fatty acid composition of brain phosholipids in aging and in Alzheimer's disease, Lipids 26 (1991), pp. 421–425

¹² Wurtman RJ. Synaptic proteins and phospholipids are increased in gerbil brain by administering uridine plus docosahexaenoic acid orally. In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 21 April 2006 in Brain Research