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The Raelian Movement
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Eating berries may activate the brain's natural housekeeper for healthy aging
http://www.physorg.com/news201789781.html
August 23, 2010
Many berries, including blueberries, could help protect the brain against aging.
Scientists today reported the first evidence that eating blueberries,
strawberries, and acai berries may help the aging brain stay healthy
in a crucial but previously unrecognized way. Their study, presented
at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS),
concluded that berries, and possibly walnuts, activate the brain's
natural "housekeeper" mechanism, which cleans up and recycles toxic
proteins linked to age-related memory loss and other mental decline.
Shibu Poulose, Ph.D., who presented the report, said previous research
suggested that one factor involved in aging is a steady decline in the
body's ability to protect itself against inflammation and oxidative
damage. This leaves people vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases,
heart disease, cancer, and other age-related disorders.
"The good news is that natural compounds called polyphenolics found in
fruits, vegetables and nuts have an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory
effect that may protect against age-associated decline," said Poulose,
who is with the U. S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research
Service (USDA-ARS) Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston.
Poulose did the research with James Joseph, Ph.D., who died June 1.
Joseph, who headed the laboratory, pioneered research on the role of
antioxidants in fruits and nuts in preventing age-related cognitive
decline.
Their past studies, for instance, showed that old laboratory rats fed
for two months on diets containing 2 percent high-antioxidant
strawberry, blueberry, or blackberry extract showed a reversal of
age-related deficits in nerve function and behavior that involves
learning and remembering.
In the new research, Poulose and Joseph focused on another reason why
nerve function declines with aging. It involves a reduction in the
brain's natural house-cleaning process. Cells called microglia are the
housekeepers. In a process called autophagy, they remove and recycle
biochemical debris that otherwise would interfere with brain function.
"But in aging, microglia fail to do their work, and debris builds up,"
Poulose explained. "In addition, the microglia become over-activated
and actually begin to damage healthy cells in the brain. Our research
suggests that the polyphenolics in berries have a rescuing effect.
They seem to restore the normal housekeeping function. These findings
are the first to show these effects of berries."
The findings emerged from research in which Joseph and Poulose have
tried to detail factors involved in the aging brain's loss of normal
housekeeping activity. Using cultures of mouse brain cells, they found
that extracts of berries inhibited the action of a protein that shuts
down the autophagy process.
Poulose said the study provides further evidence to eat foods rich in
polyphenolics. Although berries and walnuts are rich sources, many
other fruits and vegetables contain these chemicals -- especially those
with deep red, orange, or blue colors. Those colors come from pigments
termed anthocyanins that are good antioxidants. He emphasized the
importance of consuming the whole fruit, which contains the full range
of hundreds of healthful chemicals. Frozen berries, which are
available year round, also are excellent sources of polyphenolics, he
added.
Provided by American Chemical Society
"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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